The Indian Fighter Competition

I've commented on the Indian fighter purchase competition. Our entries lost and I think it was a mistake on India's part. It is surely an important issue. I'm a ground-centric kind of guy, and even I think that the Indian air force is the key to Indian defense needs right now, and the fighter decision is India's most important defense question this decade.

DID has a nice discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of all the planes involved in the competition.

I know that after a century of focusing on security interests in an arc from Western Europe, to the Middle East, and on to the Western Pacific, it is not a habit of Americans to think of the Indian subcontinent as a major theater of interest. That region was a gap in the arc we focused on.

But a new arc from the Middle East to the Western Pacific (with a major extension southeast to Indonesia, Australia, and New Zealand) is emerging as the main front given the rise of a potentially hostile China.

We need to pay more attention to what India does. How India chooses its new fighters is as good a place to start as any.