NEW DELHI – The United States said on Tuesday it had approved the sale of24 MH-60R helicopters to India, significantly boosting its emerging ally’sfirepower to target submarines as China expands in the Indian Ocean.
In a quick reply to an Indian request submitted late last year, the USState Department said it was informing the US Congress as legally requiredthat it was giving the green light for India to buy the 24 helicoptersworth a total of $2.6 billion.
Nicknamed the Romeo, the MH-60R helicopters manufactured by Lockheed Martinare designed for hunting submarines as well as knocking out ships andconducting search-and-rescue operations.
“This proposed sale will support the foreign policy and national securityof the US by helping to strengthen the US-Indian strategic relationship andto improve the security of a major defensive partner,” the State Departmentsaid in a statement.
It called India “a major defensive partner which continues to be animportant force for political stability, peace and economic progress in theIndo-Pacific and South Asia region”.
India, which had estranged relations with the US since the Cold War, hasemerged as one of its leading defense partner with the interests of theworld’s two largest democracies largely overlapping amid their concernsover a rising China and extremism.
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India has been alarmed by China’s growing interest in the Indian Ocean asit becomes a global naval power.
In a strategy dubbed by Indian and US observers as the “string of pearls”,China has made use of a growing number of naval bases in the Indian Ocean,most notably the Gwadar port.
Indian naval planners have responded with a doctrine to ensure freedom ofmovement throughout the Indian Ocean, stretching from the Strait of Hormuzto the Strait of Malacca.
The Romeos would replenish India’s aging fleet of British-made Sea Kinghelicopters. – APP/AFP
