Article Posted on : - Jan 10, 2009

A PAC-3 launch. Boeing photo

WASHINGTON, DC (BNS): The Pentagon has denied reports that it was in talks with India for selling missile defense systems.

A US defence spokesman here said that India and the US have had “contacts” over the missile defense issues, but there was no talks about selling them to India. “The United States and India currently are not discussing the sale of any US missile defense systems to India,” Lieutenant Colonel Stewart Upton, a US defense department spokesman, said.

The Financial Times and the Times of India had reported over the past few days that the two sides were in talks for the sale of US missile shield systems. In fact, the Times of India said an MoU was imminent between the two sides on the missile shield.

News agencies quoted another Pentagon official as saying that the contacts were “very rudimentary”. And that they had invited some Indian officials to observe two tests of the BMD systems this year so that discussions could be facilitated between the two sides about their “ballistic missile defense test programmes.”

India too has its own missile defence programmes, and has had a few tests both endo and exo atmospheric, and all of them have been reported successful.

The US side has briefed the Indian Ministry of Defence on both PAC-3 and Aegis missile defense systems, according to informed officials in New Delhi.