india

Updated: Jul 27, 2019 23:16 IST

The United States has approved the sale of $670 million worth of support equipment and services for India’s C-17 transport planes, and $125 million for the end-use monitoring of Pakistan’s F-16s.

Washington made the twin announcements three minutes apart on Friday afternoon (the one about C-17s at 1.13pm and F-16s at 1.10pm). Though they came just a few days after Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s meeting with US President Donald Trump at the White House, they appeared not connected.

A diplomat said the move to pay technical support staff of American personnel based in Pakistan for F-16 monitoring did not indicate any change in Washington’s stand on military assistance to Islamabad. The US suspended all security-related aid to Pakistan in January 2018.

“$125 million [is] a paltry amount for [an] aircraft and is only for 24/7 monitoring,” said the diplomat cited above. One F-16 fighter jet can cost, according to reports, anything from $16 million to $21 million.

In a statement, the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) said India had requested to buy spare parts and test equipment for Boeing C-17 transport planes, and was seeking personnel training, among other things, “for an estimated cost of $670 million”.

“India needs this follow-on support to maintain its operational readiness and ability to provide Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HA/DR) assistance in the region.

“India will have no difficulty absorbing this support into its armed forces,” the statement said.

Separately, the DSCA statement for Pakistan said the potential sale will support US foreign policy and national security “by protecting US technology through the continued presence of US personnel that provide 24/7 end-use monitoring”.

India will pay for the support services approved, while the US will pay Pakistan, which will, in turn, pay the Americans — government officials and representatives of F-16 manufacturer Lockheed Martin — stationed at Pakistan Air Force airbases Mushaf and Shahbaz to support and monitor Pakistan’s F-16s, a second diplomatic said on condition of anonymity.

Both statements added that the proposed sales of equipment and support “will not alter the basic military balance in the region”.

President Trump suspended all security-related aid to Pakistan last year, saying it had only given America “deceit and lies” in return for that aid and, in fact, had hosted the terrorists that America was fighting in Afghanistan. That amount was said to be around $1.3 billion (or $2 billion to $1.6 billion, according to other accounts).

But the administration also built in exceptions, which were not as publicly acknowledged and discussed as the aid suspension. Here is what the state department said about the exemptions in a note to the US Congress on April 4, several weeks before the Trump-Khan meet: “Three FMF-related programmes have been exempted from the suspension — Technical Support Services (TSTs), C-130 Sustainment and Refurbishment; and Communications Security”.

These TSTs came into much public attention after Pakistan used the America-supplied F-16s against India, a day after the Indian Air Force targeted a terror camp deep inside Pakistan on February 26. In the February 27 dogfight, Pakistan lost one of the fighter jets. The TSTs, as they are called, provide technical support for the jets and also monitor their use as per the agreement.