Pentagon Tiger teams may have already carried out inspection.
United States inspectors can randomly check India’s second largest naval ship and helicopters deployed on it, the army’s sophisticated weapon-locating radars, and VVIP jets for the prime minister and president under the stringent end-user verification agreement (EUVA).
The Pentagon’s Tiger teams may have carried out at least one inspection in India between 2002 and now, though the defence ministry hesitates to discuss it.
It is not clear if the latest agreement will minimise the embarrassment of possible random US inspections at locations where those systems are deployed, letting Indian forces move the systems to a more amenable area.
A senior ministry official told DNA that it was the text of the agreement for counter-missile suits on VVIP jets allowing Pentagon inspectors to visit the aircraft’s home base at the Indira Gandhi international airport in Delhi that forced them to “correct it for the future”. So the Indian side ensured that “onsite” verification was not mentioned in the agreement.
However, military sources pointed that even if India had the right to decide the location of these American-origin systems, it may not be physically possible to do so beyond a point. A senior army source said the weapon-locating radar is a huge two-truck system — one carrying a generator and the other the radar itself. At best, “we can move it from its deployment location to Srinagar by road,” he pointed out.
The official pointed out that there has not been physical inspection by the Tigers of the radar system. “May be now it is all peaceful, but they could plan an inspection whenever they feel like,” he said.
Last year, the comptroller and auditor general (CAG) had pointed out that the agreement for INS Jalashwa, the old ship that India bought from US, was intrusive. The CAG pointed out that the US had permission to “conduct an inspection and inventory of articles transferred under the end-user monitoring clause”.
Jalashwa, the navy’s second largest ship, was the amphibious American-landing dock USS Trenton that India bought along with half a dozen helicopters.
The ministry seems to have no clear records if US teams carried out inspections. However, details on Pentagon’s website show there may have been at least one inspection. According to a presentation by Leon N Yates of the policy, plans, and programmes directorate of the Pentagon’s defence security cooperation agency, India may have been visited by the Tiger teams to possibly inspect some of the eight AN/TPQ-37 Firefinder radars deployed along our borders in 2002 or after that.
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