BY : TNN
India and Israel will hold a joint working group (JWG) meeting on defence on Tuesday to review ongoing cooperation in military R&D projects, counter-terrorism and intelligence-sharing as well as chalk out new areas for collaboration.
The JWG will be co-chaired by the director-general of Israeli defence ministry Brigadier-General (retd) Pinchas Buchris and defence secretary Pradeep Kumar, said officials.
Buchris also has meetings lined up with defence minister A K Antony, national securityadvisor M K Narayanan, Army chief General Deepak Kapoor, IAF chief Air Chief Marshal P V Naik and Navy chief Admiral Nirmal Verma, among others.
This comes shortly after Gen Kapoor visited Israel, which in turn was followed by a reciprocal visit here by Israeli Defence Forces chief of general staff Lt-General Gabi Ashkenazi.
As reported earlier, Israel has emerged as the second largest defence supplier to India, notching up military business worth a whopping $9 billion since the 1999 Kargil conflict, next only to Russia.
Despite allegations of kickbacks, India has pressed ahead with joint R&D projects with Israeli armament companies. For instance, the Rs 2,606-crore project between DRDO and Israeli Aerospace Industries (IAI) to develop a supersonic 70-km range Barak-NG (next generation) missile defence systemor LR-SAM (long-range surface-to-air missile) system for Indian Navy is scheduled for completion by May 2011.
Similarly, IAF wants to induct nine air defence squadrons under the mammoth Rs 10,075 crore DRDO-IAI project to develop a MR-SAM (medium-range SAM) system, capable of detecting and destroying hostile aircraft at a 80-km range, at the earliest.
The focus in the Indo-Israeli defence relationship is now on having joint R&D projects in fields like high-endurance and rotary UAVs, submarine-launched cruise missiles, anti-ballistic missile systems, network-centric operations, micro-satellite surveillance systems, advanced precision-guided munitions (PGMs) and third-generation night-vision devices.


Source: IDRW