[ravager]

Personally I don't think the demands are unreasonable at all. Too bad you think India is being too demanding. Its not India that's complaining but Americans like you who are complaining that Indian isn't being a good ally. India has options and India is merely exercising them.

Until now US is used to having allies who would play by America's rules. Well....India is different. US will just have to get used to that.

American’s like you are very predictable when you start spewing about Indian corruption and graft especially when India rejects an American vendor and picks European or Russian instead. Those corruption charges are plain BS and clearly you forget America's own poor record at preventing advance technology from falling in the hands of Russians and Chinese. But its a very common American reaction to piss on foreigners (read India) for what is actually their own fault.

What US has to offer is not the top of the line weapon systems but more often the same thing that Pakistan already has, with very little or no technology transfer or domestic production offset and with demand for rigorous end user monitoring. In contrast Russians and Europeans are ready to offer everything under the sun. India is actually a bigger customer then their own domestic market. India has a huge leverage there. And its not the actual weaponry that India wants but the technology and domestic production. Its just a simple case of what Russians and Europeans have to offer as against what US has to offer....which is very little and with too many strings.

[Rockingham]

Nations are obliged to look to their interests first, not their sympathies. Although the US and India are more than friends, they are less than allies. With the US denying key first tier arms and technologies even to its closest allies, it cannot be expected to provide them to India, which is not an ally.

The key consideration is whether India's arms procurement practices and strategies serve India's interests. I submit that delays, corruption, poor planning and management, and over reaching have squandered time and resources and diminished India's military strength and her security as a nation.

Coming from an American, this claim seems to offend you. I urge you to take that out of consideration by running a Google search with the terms +India +military +corruption and focusing on Indian and other non-US sources. Note the many courageous military officers, journalists, and civilian reformers who address the corruption issue.

More broadly, with the same method, take a critical look at India's national security strategy and whether its military procurement effort actually serves India's interests as well as it should. I submit that India's lack of adequate modern weapons today means that she should seek to procure them and put them into service as soon as possible instead of in the extended time frames that joint development projects with Russia imply.

Otherwise, it seems likely that a militarily weak India will one day need to call Washington for essential help at a decisive moment. I prefer for the sake of both countries that such a day never arrives.