If there's one lesson the Indian defence establishment will be taking away from Aero India 2007, one of the largest aerospace fairs in Asia, it’s this—the world has leapt too far ahead for Cold War-style assurances. Old friends are now necessarily opportunistic. And new friends won’t think twice about selling the same weapons to professed adversaries. The hundreds of companies represented here over the next three days all have offers to India’s purported rivals Pakistan and China. India’s single largest defence supplier, Russia, has spiraling ties with Beijing, but has just about drawn the line at allowing China to re-export JF-17 fighters with Russian RD-33 engines to Pakistan — an Indian stipulation. On the other hand, Moscow no longer indulges New Delhi with “friendly prices” — India will pay $1.6 billion shortly for an emergency purchase of 40 Sukhoi-30MKI fighters right off the shelf. The fighters will be delivered by 2010. India’s new strategic partner, Washington, on the other hand, reserves the right to supply to Pakistan, everything that it already supplies to India. Starting with 2005’s F-16 offer — which Islamabad wasn’t very comfortable with — down to the P-3 Orion maritime patrol aircraft, no bonds hold the transfer of weapons any more. “We have to stop worrying about what our neighbours are getting. We have to get out of that mindset. This is a globalised world we live in. We can no longer dictate terms on who sells to who and such,” Air chief Shashi Tyagi said on Thursday.
