The US emerged as the largest supplier of weapon systems to India in the last three years and Russia, so far the biggest supplier, has slipped to second position followed by France and Israel.
Giving this information in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday, Defence Minister Arun Jaitley said India spent Rs 83,458 crore in the last three years for procuring weapon systems from foreign vendors. The US bagged orders worth over Rs 32,615 crore, while Russia exported hardware worth Rs 25,363.96 crore in this period, he said.
Russia, the longest and trusted strategic ally of India, used to be the Number 1 exporter of weapons with our armed forces still having more than 70 per cent of Defence systems of Russian and erstwhile USSR origin in its inventory.
In the last three years, India has bought several equipment from the US, including C-130J Super Hercules aircraft, Harpoon anti-submarine missiles, C-17 heavy lift transport aircraft and P-8I long range maritime reconnaissance aircraft.
France, which bagged a number of deals from India for submarines and fighter aircraft, emerged as the third-largest supplier by selling equipment worth Rs 12,046 crore, Jaitley said. Israel is at the fourth position with sales of Rs 3,389 crore while other sources account for Rs 10,043 crore worth of sales.
Incidentally, visiting US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said here on last Saturday that his country sold weapons worth over nine billion dollars since 2008 and this figure stood at just one billion dollar pre-2008.
The US was now pushing hard for bagging contracts worth over Rs 20,000 crore, including its Apache and Chinook helicopters besides howitzers and Javelin anti-tank missiles. Negotiations for 15 Chinooks and 22 Apache helicopters were in advanced stage and India was likely to ink the deal soon.