Predator drones on top of Nirmala Sitharaman’s agenda in US visit

Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will embark on a three-day bilateral visit to US in December first week with the acquisition of weaponized Predator drones and anti-missile shield for Delhi on top of the agenda with Pentagon.

Updated on: Nov 17, 2018, 11:23:32 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will embark on a three-day bilateral visit to US in December first week with the acquisition of weaponized Predator drones and anti-missile shield for Delhi on top of the agenda with Pentagon as the two countries take their defence cooperation to the next level.

Sitharaman will be the first NDA defence minister to visit Hawaii to honor the renaming of Pacific Command as Indo-Pacific command, recognising the salience of India in east and far east.

According to diplomats based in New Delhi and Washington, Defence Minister Sitharaman will be in the US from December 3 to December 6 and will be hosted by Secretary of Defense James Mattis even as the possibility of US President Donald Trump reshuffling his Cabinet remains a distinct possibility.

Apart from her meetings in Washington, Minister Sitharaman will also visit the Mountain View headquarters of Pentagon’s defence innovation unit (DIUx), which recently tied up with its Indian counterpart. The innovation unit scours the West Coast of the US for the best technologies developed by the private sector which have military use in the future.

Government officials said on condition of anonymity that Sitharaman will discuss the acquisition of MQ-9 Reaper or Predator B drones from the US after the Pentagon gave a green signal to the weaponized platform being sold to India.

The Predator-B is a game changer as it performs multi-mission intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and hunter-killer missions over land and sea from a height of 50,000 feet. While the US first agreed to give 22 unarmed Guardian drones to India, the Modi government made it known that it would rather have a drone that not only locates but also targets the enemy.

It is understood that the Indian military is now working on its requirements for Predator-B deones. With an endurance of over 27 hours and speed of 240 knots, the drone can either be deployed by C-130 J Hercules aircraft or self-propelled. The Predator carries Hellfire missile, laser guided bombs and precision guided ammunition.

India has already initiated the process of acquiring $ 1 billion worth National Advanced Surface to Air Missile System -II or a missile shield for New Delhi as well as 24 multi-role Sikorsky helicopters worth $1.8 billion through the government to government route.

During her visit, Sitharaman will also re-pitch for a Presidential waiver on CAATSA for the Indian acquisition of S-400 missile system from Russia; there were some positive signals on this during her meeting with Secretary Mattis on October 19 on the sidelines of the ADMM plus meeting in Singapore.

The two defence ministers are expected to review bilateral defence cooperation and discuss regional environment particularly in context of Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the Indo-Pacific. Apart from a military exchange, the two countries are gearing up for a first of a kind tri-service amphibious exercise early next year.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

Get the latest India News, breaking headlines and real-time updates from across the country. Stay informed about politics, government policies, crime, weather and major national developments.