Flying at speeds twice that of sound, equipped with a variety of smart bombs and long-range missiles, the F-16 is an air force's dream war bird. It can be used to not only strike targets with surgical precision but also shoot down enemy aircraft and give a nation control over the skies. Anywhere else in the world, the F-16 is essentially a fighter aircraft. But in the Indian subcontinent where it has become a carrot-and-stick arm of us foreign policy, this agile aircraft has in the past 25 years, acquired near mythic proportions. Far greater, one might imagine, than the nuclear-capable Agni and Ghauri ballistic missiles both countries routinely test.

When the US State Department announced last week that it was resuming the sales of F-16 to Pakistan, it triggered familiar alarms. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressed his disappointment while senior BJP leader Jaswant Singh warned that it would spark off a new arms race in the subcontinent. Signalling a new strategic partnership with India, the US, after decades of stonewalling, cleared the purchase of, among other things, top-of-the-line fighters from its defence industry. That includes the F-16s that it was selling to Pakistan and also the comparable F/A-18 Super Hornet.

The move comes even as the Indian Air Force (IAF) has invited bids for the mother of all defence deals-a global tender for the purchase of 126 versatile warplanes which can perform a variety of missions from shooting down other aircraft to bombing targets-for which it is prepared to pay about $6 billion (Rs 26,000 crore). This is nearly double the $3 billion contract signed in 2001 to build 140 of Russia's Su-30MkI aircraft in India. The greying F-16-an aircraft which first flew 30 years ago-is one of the contenders in this deal which also has Russia fielding its newest MiG variant, the MiG-29M2, Sweden's JAS-39 Gripen and French aircraft maker Dassault's Mirage-2000-5.

The urgency to buy these aircraft lies in the need to replace the ageing MiG-21s and MiG-23s which have been the workhorse of the combat air fleet for decades. In the meanwhile, the Government last week cleared the purchase of a dozen second-hand Mirage 2000-5 from Qatar's air force worth an estimated $700 million. The announcement made by Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee was also seen as a signal to the US that India has plenty of options to purchase aircraft from other countries.

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Indeed, the F-16 announcement served to underline another growing subtext to the arms race in the subcontinent. On the surface, relations between India and Pakistan have never been better. Aided by a groundswell favouring peace and people-to-people contacts, both countries now eyeball each other only on the cricket field. And, despite Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's unwavering Kashmir pitch, both nations are reopening the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus route, plan to open two more routes and in the near future may even run a gas pipeline across the border to fuel their growing economies.

Somewhat incongruous then is the massive arms build-up which has escalated since the 1999 Kargil war. It saw India more than double its defence budget in the past seven years from Rs 41,000 crore in 1998 to Rs 83,000 crore in 2005. This year's budget may have gone up only marginally but it set aside as much as Rs 34,375 crore or 41 per cent of it for fresh acquisitions. With imports of over $9.5 billion in the past six years, India is already the world's second largest arms purchaser after China. This year, it begins a fresh round of arms purchases conservatively estimated at over $15 billion.

While the IAF takes the largest chunk of this pie, the other two forces are not too far behind. The navy will buy six Scorpene class diesel-electric submarines for over Rs 20,000 crore to be built at Mazagon Docks Ltd, Mumbai. It also wants eight long-range maritime patrol strike aircraft-as a replacement for its vintage Soviet-built fleet-to patrol India's 7,600 km-long coastline. Navy chief Admiral Arun Prakash visited the US last week to examine P-3C Orion maritime patrol and strike aircraft costing nearly $40 million a piece. The army will decide a vendor for a multi-billion dollar contract for nearly 400 towed and self-propelled 155 mm artillery guns and Smerch multiple launch rocket systems from Russia. The army is also spending nearly Rs 4,000 crore to make its footsoldiers technologically among the most advanced. They are being equipped with battlefield surveillance radars that can spot infiltrators 15 km away, night-vision goggles that make the night as clear as day and anti-material rifles and automatic grenade launchers which can pulverise enemy fortifications.

PICTURE SPEAK

AIMING HIGH: The F-16s will alter Pakistan's defence capabilities

Experts don't blink at the contradictory signals. Commodore C. Uday Bhaskar, acting director of the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), Delhi, says such incongruities were a part of the post-Cold War era. "Look at the example of China and the US or China and Japan. Globalisation demands that you trade with each other but that doesn't prevent them from retaining their strategic anxieties about each other.''

Strategic anxiety is only one of the reasons why India's buys have hit big time. It has introduced new military doctrines to jointly fight short sharp conventional wars without crossing the nuclear threshold. But bogging it down is an ageing obsolete arsenal still comprised predominantly of 1970s and '80s Soviet era tanks, warships, aircraft and artillery systems. They are the results of the so-called "lost decade", the years between 1987 and 1998 when the government did not acquire any major weapon systems. "If you've had free lunches for a decade, prepare to pay for multiple lunches over the next few years,'' says Air Vice-Marshal (retd) Kapil Kak, additional director, Centre for Air Power Studies.

Now, the Indian armed forces are forking out the greenbacks to bolster their capabilities and discovering that imported arms don't come cheap-at over Rs 3,000 crore a piece a 1,500 tonne Scorpene submarine costs almost as much as the 37,500 tonne aircraft carrier India is building at Kochi. So the armed forces, particularly the cost-intensive air force and navy, have to balance cost with capability. "Cost is a major concern for us,'' says IAF chief Air Chief Marshal S.P. Tyagi, explaining why the IAF is looking at aircraft like the Mirage and F-16 which the US and France are planning to phase out and not at stratospherically priced next-generation aircraft like the F-35 costing over $100 million each.

Adding to their worries are delays in delivery schedules of indigenous defence products which means the services have had to shop overseas to plug gaps in their capabilities. Five years ago, Pakistan stunned India by purchasing a fleet of 310 Ukrainian-built missile-firing T-80 tanks. These were more than a match for the Indian Army's main battle tank, the T-72 and capable of denting an Indian armoured thrust across the western plains. To restore the balance of power, the army bought 310 T-90 tanks from Russia at a cost of Rs 3,000 crore.

VIEW FROM PAKISTAN

The Return Gift American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's announcement that the US was finally lifting its opposition to selling the F-16 fighter aircraft to the Pakistan Air Force has certainly allowed President Pervez Musharraf to heave a big sigh of relief. No issue in recent memory has bedevilled relations between Pakistan and the US more than the F-16 issue. Ever since 1990, when the US slapped a ban on the transfer of 28 aircraft already paid for by Pakistan, the issue has become an emotive one in the country, often used by the opposition to whip up anti-American sentiments to the detriment of rulers perceived to be cosying up too much to the US.   PICTURE SPEAK FIRMING UP RELATIONS: Rice (left) with Musharraf in Rawalpindi For Musharraf, the announcement came at a time when the hardline Mutahidda Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) coalition was readying to rally countrywide protests to attack the general for his support to the US in its war against terrorism. The F-16 proclamation has taken the wind temporarily out of the MMA's sails. Pakistan Air Force chief Air Chief Marshal Kaleem Saadat alluded to the symbolism of the announcement in the face of a growing feeling that the Americans have not given as much to Pakistan as they have got from it. "From day one, we have been impressing upon the US government that by selling F-16s to Pakistan, the Americans will convince the Pakistani people of their sincerity," he says. The sale of the nuclear warhead capable F-16s is also a tacit acceptance by the US of Pakistan's nuclear status. But the acquisition of the F-16s is more than just symbolic for Pakistan. The strike capability of its air force has been severely depleted by almost 15 years of military sanctions that have impacted spares for its existing lot of F-16s as well. Only between 28 and 32 of the original 40 F-16s purchased in the 1980s are still operational and the air force has been forced to rely on the inferior Chinese F-7Ps. Now Pakistan is looking to buy around 70 F-16 aircraft. "It is a matchless aircraft in its range, is battle proven, and given the options available to us, the best possible choice," says defence analyst General (retd) Talat Masood. "Plus our systems are already developed since the 1980s with the F-16 in mind." The only damper in the sense of elation in Pakistan has been the concurrent US announcement of larger military sales to India and that it would like to help India become a world power. But government officials in Pakistan dismiss the concerns raised about the possible sale of F-18 aircraft and Patriot missiles to India. "We have got what we need for our deterrence," says Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed. "What suits India isn't necessarily our concern." The F-18, according to a government official, is not suitable for Pakistan as it is a heavier aircraft with a shorter range and "more useful for other roles such as espionage". "As for Patriot missiles, we saw how inaccurate they were in the Iraq war," the official says. "They are pointless against the faster Ghauri and Agni missiles." There has been much speculation about the timing of the US offer and its motivations. Government sources say that the decision to give the go-ahead on the F-16s was actually taken when Musharraf visited the US in 2004 but the announcement was delayed as the US worked out what it would offer India in return. "We've known about it for months," Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri quipped. "We were just good at keeping our mouths shut." As for American motivations, Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institution best explains it: "This gives us leverage on Musharraf in pushing him in the direction of accommodation over Kashmir and other disputes." Pakistan, he wrote, has "got nuclear weapons, it is in a critical part of the world, and we can't afford to let it go down the drain". The US offer to boost India's position as a major power, analysts say, should be seen in the regional context rather than in the Pakistani one. "The issue here is actually American concern with China's growing economic and military might," says Masood. "They want regional powers to challenge China before it can challenge the US." By Hassan Zaidi in Karachi

The IAF is grappling with dipping numbers of fighter aircraft-from a sanctioned strength of 45 combat squadrons (each with 18 aircraft), it has come down to 32 squadrons. It is now facing a bigger gap in its capabilities as it replaces over 300 MiG-21s and MiG-23s, or nearly half its combat air fleet in the next decade. The first squadron of indigenous Light Combat Aircraft, meant to replace the MiG-21 a decade ago, won't be inducted at least until 2012. So the IAF wants 126 aircraft and plans to license-build an additional 140 Su-30MKI aircraft in India to bolster its fleet.

Across the border, Musharraf, the first Pakistani leader since General Zia-ul Haq to be baptised with F-16s, hailed the deal for bolstering Pakistan's defensive deterrence. A senior naval official sees it otherwise: "We have to look at the kind of behaviour pattern the sale of US arms triggers in Pakistan, it has always raised its level of belligerence". But the biggest gainer from the F-16 sale could be the US itself. Last Friday, the US Air Force flew away with its last F-16 fighter aircraft and its manufacturer Lockheed Martin laid off 200 workers at its Fort Worth, Texas plant. Without new orders, nearly one in three of the company's 15,500 workforce could be unemployed in 2008.

PICTURE SPEAK

BIG FISH: India plans to acquire at least six Scorpenes at Rs 3,000 crore each

"There is no arms race,'' says Bharat Karnad of the Centre for Policy Research. "An arms race is only between equals. It is this Pakistan fixation which has reduced us to Pakistan's size. We have to accept that Pakistan needs security. Would India accept some other country dictating its security needs?'' Air Marshal Kak calls India's modernisation the equivalent of buying an insurance policy against the possibility of a belligerent China in the near future: "Don't forget, one of the primary drivers for the Pokhran tests was the strategic threat from China."

Pakistan has always upped the ante in fielding force multipliers in the subcontinent-its 40 F-16s in the early 1980s, a reward for General Zia's bleeding of the Soviets in Afghanistan, triggered one of the IAF's largest aircraft buying sprees with the French Mirages and Russian MiG-29s. It is now concerned about India's growing conventional arms capability, particularly the qualitative leap in its navy and air force which could enable it to fight a short decisive or "limited war" under the nuclear umbrella and weaken its Kashmir card. "Decreasing the ratio of Pakistan Air Force fighters to IAF fighter aircraft is of paramount importance,'' says Brigadier (retd) Shaukat Qadir, founder of the Islamabad Policy Research Institute. "A ratio which used to be around 1:2.5 has now increased to 1:3 or one PAF fighter aircraft for every three IAF fighters.''

This year, Pakistan hiked defence spending by 21 per cent to $3.4 billion to pay for its new acquisitions, most of which are designed to offset India's air force and naval superiority. Prime among these are the purchase of eight sophisticated P-3C Orion aircraft meant to counter the growth of the Indian Navy-the very aircraft India is looking at-and acquired as part of a $1.2 billion US package last year which also included 2,000 TOW-2A anti-tank missiles. It is also forking out $750 million for buying four F-22P frigates from China, wants force multipliers like Airborne Early Warning aircraft and is jointly developing the FC-1 light fighter aircraft with China.

The arms race between the two countries takes away from development-after China, Pakistan is the world's highest spender on defence as a part of GDP. In the long term, the soaring defence expenditure, a vote of not-enough-confidence in lasting peace, will have to come down. If only the two countries at the bottom of the human development index could hear that above the roar of the F-16 engines.

INDO-US RELATIONS

Strategic Upgrade The world's most powerful man and a devout born-again Christian had more than just a religious connotation of Good Friday on his mind last week. US President George W. Bush also had the delicate task of driving the nails through some uncomfortable news to a leader who, in his opinion, represents a country that ranks among the most important strategic partners of the US.   PICTURE SPEAK EYE ON THE FUTURE: Pranab Mukherjee with Mulford (left) By 8.40 a.m. (EST) Bush was down to business. Talking long distance with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, he said the Americans were poised to initiate a new South Asia strategy-one that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had laid out during her Asian tour. And while it did involve the sale of F-16s to Pakistan-a sore point with India-the President was at pains to explain that the Americans were laying out the blueprint of a long-term strategic partnership with India. It would, once the details were in place, lift restrictions on American firms bidding for Indian defence contracts-the first step in what would eventually, and for the first time, involve transfer of critical defence technology to India. "The sale of jets to Pakistan will create new opportunities for India. The Administration has made it clear that it is not only prepared to sell advance fighter aircraft but is also willing to consider co-production of defence equipment with India," says Karl F. Inderfurth, former assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs and now professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. The US has struck several defence deals with India in the past four years, including the $190 million AN-TPQ/37 Firefinder radars deal, delivery of GE-404 engines for the LCA and opening of negotiations for acquiring P-3 Orion naval reconnaissance aeroplane. Also on the cards are the acquisition of AWACS and Patriot missiles. Senior US government officials insist all this will be but a trifle when compared to the progress that Bush promised Manmohan on Good Friday. "Not just F-16s, it could be F-18s. Beyond that, the US is ready to discuss even more fundamental issues of defence transformation with India," they say. Also, the US has agreed to assist in nuclear technology for generation of power, while at the same time acknowledging India's interests in long-term energy requirements-an obvious reference to the proposal to push for a gas pipeline from Iran. "The package announced by the US Government meets the needs of the moment. Neither India nor Pakistan is going to be happy about the deal that the other has swung. Hence, it would not be a hyphenated relationship. This is the new reality," says Dennis Kux, senior policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. By acceding to the long-standing demand from Pakistan, analysts believe the Americans may have gained more leverage. "The F-16 sale will demonstrate to Pakistan that the US is indeed a partner and wants to have a long-term relationship. This was a litmus test of its seriousness. Washington will now wield greater influence over Islamabad," says Inderfurth. The US was also aware that the relationship with India was not spawned by any short-term gain. As David Mulford, US Ambassador to India, explains: "It is a serious comprehensive initiative which is seen as a major expansion of India-US strategic relationships that will move beyond the next step process currently on. We want to help India in its vision to be a global power of the 21st century." By Anil Padmanabhan in New York

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