WASHINGTON: The United States said Tuesday it had approved the sale of 24MH-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 StateDepartment said it was informing the US Congress as legally required thatit was giving the green light for India to buy the 24 helicopters worth atotal 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 at sea.
“This proposed sale will support the foreign policy and national securityof the United States by helping to strengthen the US-Indian strategicrelationship and to improve the security of a major defensive partner,” theState Department said 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 United States since the ColdWar, has emerged as one of its leading defense partner with the interestsof the world’s two largest democracies largely overlapping amid theirconcerns over a rising China and Islamist extremism.
Read Top Stories
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 it is developing in India’s historic rivalPakistan.
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
