Weeks after UN vote, India seeks Israel missile deal

A fortnight after India voted for a UNHRC resolution against Tel Aviv on its Gaza offensive, the government is moving the CCS to buy 262 Barak-I anti-ship missile systems and spares, costing nearly Rs. 1,000 crore, from Israel.

Updated on: Aug 7, 2014, 01:31:23 IST

Hindustan Times | By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

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A fortnight after India voted for a UNHRC resolution against Tel Aviv on its Gaza offensive, the Modi government is moving the cabinet committee on security (CCS) to buy 262 Barak-I anti-ship missile systems and spares, costing nearly Rs. 1,000 crore, from Israel.

The purchase was cleared by defence acquisition council under then defence minister AK Antony last December.

South Block sources said the CCS note was moved this week for the purchase of the missiles from Israeli Aircraft Industries and Rafael Advanced Systems of Israel. Both firms were probed by the CBI in 2006 for a Rs. 1,100 crore missile deal in 2000 under the previous NDA regime and were black-listed by the UPA regime.

However, the ban on purchase of Barak missiles was lifted by Antony after the Navy raised a hue and cry about protection of its warships from anti-ship missiles.

“India needs Barak missiles to arm its aircraft carriers and front-line warships against strike aircraft and anti-ship missiles. The Barak will be fitted on at least 14 Indian warships and the newly acquired Vikramaditya,” said a South Block official.

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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