I agree with Vikash here. Sure Israel testing the limits of US tolerance is par for the course.
China wants to upgrade its military capability, as does India. I would be someone in a think tank in China got the brilliant idea that it wouldn't take 400 billion dollars a year on military equipment to be powerful enough to tell the US to mind its own business.
Israel possesses a lot of that upgrade capability. For example, it would seem that Israeli capability with the drone aircraft helped US forces in Afghanistan. And if the ever do get a Patriot to shoot down a Scud, it will be because Israel got the anti-missile missile to work.
US concern over Israel and other countries compromising US technology (or technology it tries to covet since it is crucial to military equipment) has been made rather public since the early 90s. It flared up considerably under Clinton and Cohen. One problem is that since Israeli companies help develop those technologies, the US can't really claim the right to keep them out of other countries' hands (there was a round of Japan bashing with a Toshiba scandal back in the 1980s if you remember, when Toshiba supposedly sold milling technology which helped the Soviet subs evade detection, though after my brother's navy stories, and the stories of the same US sub hitting two surface vessels within a year, I have my doubts that Toshiba was the problem).
The US even has this problem with its own defense industry: how can you be a major arms exporter but keep all that is supposed to make your weapons superior to yourself? You can't.
The Israeli-China aspect of the phenomenon picked up with this GAO report back in '96:
http://www.fas.org/man/gao/gao9664.htm
Also, here's a good Israel-China-India arms story:
http://www.stratmag.com/issue2Sep-1/page02.htm
THE LONG-AWAITED India-Israel deal for the Phalcon AEW maybe have become hostage to Israel's ties with China!
According to the weekly Defense News, Israel is worried that selling the Phalcon to India could impact on future sales of defence equipment to China. China sees India as its rival in the region and selling the Phalcon could add insult to injury since Israel had denied the same to China following pressure from Washington. Ironically, Washington has reportedly assured Israel it would not object to the Phalcon sale to India.
Admitted a senior Israeli defence ministry official: "We haven't yet decided whether a sale of the Phalcon to India is in our national interest given the complexity of the situation. We've received the green light from the Americans as far as India is concerned. Our problem is not with the Americans but with China."
Indications are that India maybe interested in acquiring at least three Phalcon AEW systems, the cost of which could go as high as $750 Mn. But the Phalcon deal could open the doors to other lucrative contracts from India. For instance, advanced ship defence missiles, unmanned aerial attack vehicles, aircraft upgrades, communications and electronic warfare equipment.
India and Israel have already moved some way in that direction. Israel Aircraft Industries and Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd Bangalore signed an MoU in July for joint development and production of a range of defence equipment spread over the next decade.
Both sides have held extensive talks in each other's capitals: India's Secretary for Defence Production, S. Dutta was recently in that country with a delegation that visited among other establishments, the Rafale Armament Development Authority and Elbit Systems in Haifa. Earlier in February, the Director-General of Israel's Defence Ministry Amos Yaron was in Delhi to discuss defence cooperation in various fields.
India has already purchased a number of Barak missile systems for its Delhi class destroyers. But Israel is apparently willing to transfer technology to India on some of its latest most sophisticated projects: The Advanced Naval Attack Missile and the Next Generation Defence Missile provided India is willing to invest money in their development. Another potential project is an aerial attack vehicle configured for striking at ballistic missiles in their boost phase.
"We're still in the very early stages of discussion," said the Israeli Defence Ministry official. "We need to figure out whether our military requirements are complementary, how much technology we can transfer and how much money the Indians are willing to put into the program."
India has already acquired an unspecified number of Israeli Searcher UAVs, some of which have reportedly been put to use by the army in Kashmir. Other reports say that the Indian Navy is acquiring six Heron UAVs at a cost of $3 mn each, for surveillance and monitoring purposes in the Arabian Sea and areas around the Andaman and Nicobar chain of islands.
----- Posted by Charles Jannuzi