US defence secretary’s maiden India trip to focus on key deals

US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter is expected to arrive in India late on June 2 on a visit aimed at inking an amendment to the 2005 India-US Defence Framework Agreement to allow co-development and co-production of military hardware and platforms.

Updated on: Apr 29, 2015, 01:41:23 IST

Hindustan Times | By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

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US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter is expected to arrive in India late on June 2 on a visit aimed at inking an amendment to the 2005 India-US Defence Framework Agreement to allow co-development and co-production of military hardware and platforms.

The amendment will breathe new life into the bilateral Defence Trade and Technology Initiative (DTTI) with a proposal to make Scorpion light attack aircraft in India as well as to use it as an intermediate jet trainer (IJT) for the Indian Air Force (IAF). A known defence expert, it was Carter as Deputy Secretary (Defence) under Chuck Hagel who had initiated the DTTI government-to-government (G2G) programme with India.

The proposed amendment to the framework agreement will also include advanced joint exercises. It is also learnt that the Pentagon has set up a Rapid Action Task Force to deal with military technology co-development and co-production .

South Block officials told Hindustan Times that Carter will be making his maiden trip to India after taking over as defence secretary on February 17, 2015. He will have a full working day on June 3. During US President Barack Obama’s Republic Day visit, both countries had identified the Raven hand-launched UAV and C-130J’s roll-on and roll-off reconnaissance and surveillance modules for G2G transfer under the DTTI apart from Washington offering “hot engine jet technology” and electromagnetic catapult for Indian-built aircraft carriers.

Carter will be accompanied by US DTTI points person Under Secretary (Acquisition, Technology and Logistics) Frank Kendall. He will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and defence minister Manohar Parrikar, besides key defence and industry representatives.

With Indian defence PSUs failing to deliver on the Sitara IJT despite red-flagging by Air Force Chief Arup Raha, the IAF has shown keen interest in Scorpion jet plane, jointly developed by Textron and AirLand Enterprises. The Sitara IJT is under development since 1997. Powered by two Honeywell engines with missile hardpoints, the two seater sub-sonic Scorpion not only fits the IJT role but can also be used for intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance in war. The plane, which has been inducted into US Air Force, has a composite body with operating cost as low as $3,000 per hour compared to over $18,000 per hour for fourth generation US fighters. “If India agrees to bring Scorpion under DTTI, then the company has plans to set up a manufacturing facility in the country,” said a Delhi-based American diplomat.

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

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