US approves sale of anti-submarine warfare sonobuoys to India for $52.8 million

MH 60R Seahawk multi-role helicopters, a maritime variant of the Blackhawk helicopter, ahead of their commissioning into the Indian Navy.

US secretary of state Antony Blinken has approved a possible foreign military sale to India of anti-submarine warfare sonobuoys and related equipment for an estimated cost of $52.8 million, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) announced in Washington. According to the DSCA, New Delhi asked for three different types of sonobuoys and the approval covers all the three types.

The development came on a day defence minister Rajnath Singh and his American counterpart Lloyd Austin held wide-ranging talks at the Pentagon to deepen the bilateral relationship, with the dialogue putting the spotlight on a raft of issues including defence cooperation, industrial collaboration, regional security, the Indo-Pacific region, and other pressing international matters.

India has purchased 24 MH-60R choppers from the USA and received six of them so far. The sonobuoys will be a key equipment for the all-weather helicopters known as submarine hunters. The announcement from Defence Security Cooperation Agency comes soon after  Rajnath Singh had a bilateral meeting with the Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin to review the global and regional security scenario. Austin made a special reference to the Indian Navy.

In March, India raised its first squadron of the MH-60R helicopters with the six choppers that had been delivered till then. India ordered 24 Lockheed Martin-Sikorsky MH-60R multi-role helicopters, worth around Rs 17,500 crore, from the US in 2020 to modernise its ageing naval helicopter fleet.

The equipment will improve India’s capability to meet threats by enhancing its capacity to conduct anti-submarine warfare operations from its US-origin MH-60R helicopters.

India and the US adopted a defence industrial cooperation roadmap last year. It seeks to fast-track technology cooperation and co-production in critical areas including air combat and land mobility systems, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, munitions, and the undersea domain.