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| US-2 Flying boat (Image: Wiki Commons) |
By Ankit Panda
Tokyo and New Delhi may complete four year long negotiations on the sale of Japan’s US-2 surveillance aircraft to India.
I’ve been writing on Japan-India relations for years and it seems like a highly anticipated deal for the sale of Japanese-made Shinmaywa US-2 amphibious aircraft has been just around the corner since at least 2011. Now, the Japan Times reports that the two countries are likely to at long last reach “a broad defense accord” when Shinzo Abe visits New Delhi from December 11 to 13. New Delhi and Tokyo, under their strategic global partnership, hold annual prime ministerial summits (each affords this privilege to no other country). The deal, once completed, would signal a major step forward in India-Japan security ties, building on parallel developments including Japan’s bid to join the U.S.-India Malabar naval exercises as a permanent member.
Negotiations for a US-2 sale to India began in Japan under the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) governments of Naoto Kan and Yoshihiko Noda. The amphibious aircraft sale issue was swiftly picked up by Abe’s government, which has sought to expand Japan’s role as a defense exporter in Asia. In April 2014, the Abe administration formally altered Japan’s decades-old self-imposed ban on selling arms, which effectively blocked Japanese firms from participating in global defense commerce. (For more background on Japan’s export policies, see here.) Meanwhile, Japan and India, though close strategic partners whose ties have only grown since Shinzo Abe and Narendra Modi rose to the helm of the bilateral, have no formal government-to-government channels to negotiate arms sales.
Read the full story at The Diplomat