By: Joe Gould
WASHINGTON — A bipartisan pair of key senators are pressing the Trump administration to approve two defense deals between the U.S. and India, arguing that U.S. jobs hang in the balance.
Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Mark Warner, D-Va., jointly sent letters to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. The lawmakers pressed, in one letter, to approve co-production of Lockheed Martin’s F-16 in India and, in the other letter, to approve the export of General Atomics’ Guardian, a nonlethal maritime version of the MQ-9 Reaper.
The two lawmakers co-chair the U.S.-India caucus, while Cornyn is the No. 2 Republican in the Senate and Warner is vice chairman on the Senate Intelligence Committee. For the defense industrial base, the F-16 deal would help sustain the existing fleet, they argue, while the potential Guardian sale is worth $2 billion.
Calling a potential F-16 deal “a historic win,” they urged Mattis and Tillerson “to weigh in forcefully with the White House on the strategic significance of this deal, both to America’s defense industrial base and to our growing security partnership with India.”
“It will increase interoperability with a key partner and a dominant power in South Asia, build India’s capacity to counter threats from the north, and balance China’s growing military capability in the Pacific,” they said.
The deal would also, they argued, sustain the fleet of more than 1,000 F-16s in the U.S. Air Force and “help preserve thousands of jobs in the supplier base across 42 states, maintain approximately 800 high value design and engineering jobs in the United States, and extend the only scalable single-engine 4th generation fighter aircraft as a significant security cooperation tool for the United States.”
India has long sought a new fighter aircraft and is said to be considering both the Lockheed F-16 and the Saab Gripen. Lockheed has boosted its chances by pledging a production line in India, which is in line with New Delhi's Make in India policy but seems to cut against the Trump administration’s focus on domestic jobs.
On the Guardian, India has requested information multiple times over the last year. Reportedly, India sent letters of request for 22 Guardian drones and three electromagnetic catapults, under the U.S. Foreign Military Sales program.
While a broad 40-nation agreement on the use and export of armed drones remains stalled, the lawmakers argued special consideration should be given to India, as the deal would foster better joint operations and intelligence sharing.
“Lack of support for this sale will not only have implications for regional security in the Asia-Pacific, but could also significantly impact the MQ-9 production line and put thousands of U.S. manufacturing jobs at risk,” Cornyn and Warner warned.
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