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Paris Air Show: Israel woos India with its hardware

Ranvir Nayar in Paris

Israel is using the current Paris Air Show to target India as a major destination for the export of its military-industrial products. After the United States and the United Kingdom, Israel has the largest presence at the air show, occupying a huge area at the Le Bourget airport.

''We have an entire range of products that could interest India. We have some of the best air-to-air missiles, air-to-ground missiles, radars and advanced ammunition, besides communication systems and night vision capabilities. These are the systems that India is on the look out for. And we would be very much interested in exporting these to India,'' said Brigadier General Kuti Mor, deputy director general in the Israeli ministry of defence.

He claimed that Israeli defence equipment was among the best in the world and hence had a good chance of developing new export markets.

Last year, Israel exported defence goods worth nearly two billion dollars, of which only a fraction were for India.

As part of their product promotion, the Israelis specially invited the vice- chief of the Indian Air Force, Air Marshal Naqvi, to visit their facility at Le Bourget. Air Marshal Naqvi was shown around the entire pavilion and later also held extended discussions with his Israeli counterparts.

Brigadier General Mor told rediff.com that while his country was very satisfied with the current state of relations with India -- formal diplomatic ties were established in the early 1990s -- there was scope to improve it further.

''We would like to see wider, and if I can call it that, deeper, relations with India. We are expanding our relationship and moving towards a more extensive co-operation with India in the defence sector,'' he said.

Israel is particular about developing a relationship in the research and development sector. ''Ìndia has great experience in a wide variety of R & D and we would like to have some exchanges with them in that sector. There can be very useful two-way exchange between India and Israel in these areas,'' the brigadier general says.

The main focus of the Israeli exposition at the Air Show is on three primary sectors -- the aircraft upgrades that Israel has successfully carried out on the Romanian MiG-21s, the communication, night vision and radar systems and the advanced munitions.

Eighteen Israeli companies are participating in the air show. Then there are the pavilions taken up by the Israeli defence ministry and the Sukhoi design bureau, which incidentally has worked wonders in upgrading the basic Russian design..

Actually, it is in this respect that Israel would like to entice India. The IAF needs to upgrade its vast fleet of MiG-21s, MiG-27s and MiG-29s and Israeli expertise can come in handy there.

The Israelis say though they lost out to the Russians in the previous race for the upgrading programme of MiG-21s, they are hopeful of bagging more orders in the near future.

They hope to get Air Marshal Naqvi interested enough to be able to convert that into commercial orders later on.

''Air shows are not the place for bagging deals. This is the place where you just display what you have and generate customers interest. Orders can be bagged later on,'' Brigadier General Mor exclaims.

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