Official visits of the national leaders, meetings, and negotiations have brought the landmark contributions in the position of India in the world. Increasing friendly terms of India with the developed countries like US has resulted into the strategic involvements of both nations in various fields such as co-operation in defence, security, anti-terrorism, economic development and much more due to end of the cold war era, an opening of the Indian economy and the most important strong Indian Diaspora. The bilateral relations between two nation has emerged into “global strategic partnership” as a result of similar interest convergence related to the regional and global issues. The strengthening can also be attributed to the democratic values the two countries shares as well as India’s relation with its neighbouring countries like China and Pakistan that has prompted USA to come in support of India as evident from US support for India’s permanent membership of the UN security council.
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The engagement of the nations in the 2+2 dialogue can be seen as the extent of convergence between two countries that reflects the recognition of India as one of the “major defence partners” by the US. Following this, a number of agreements has been inked by two nations facilitating the technology transfer more easy and secure. Amid this increasing bond some of the major agreements have been signed under the ambit of “foundational agreements” established with the defence partners of US, involves GSOMIA (general security of military information agreement), LEMOA(logistics exchange memorandum of agreement) in 2002 and 2016 respectively. It also covers the COMCASA which was recently in news addressed as a part of most awaited 2+2 talks between external affairs ministry and defence ministry of the two nations. It is featured as:
- It is one of the basic agreements that the USA signs with the countries having friendly relations in order to enhance the high-end technology exchange in defence related domain.
- COMCASA standing for communication compatibility and security agreement is an Indian version of CISMOA (communication and information on security memorandum of agreement) that holds validity for the next 10 years.
- It will provide a legal framework which will facilitate INDIA to bring home high-tech sensitive communication equipment associated with the US origin military platforms like C-17, C-130 and P-8Is.
- It will help India to procure the defence equipment with encrypted installed communication systems which otherwise would not have possible without COMCASA.
- It will help INDIA to do away with less secure systems of the commercially available communication system as USA will now provide with the best-secured communication system installed in the aircraft purchased from the USA.
- The agreement will benefit the nation through the ground to air communication with the help of military aircraft installed by the US, which will provide awareness regarding the real-time battle situation.
- This agreement will give access to big database of American intelligence including real-time imagery.
- Being a technology transfer agreement, it will ensure the interoperability of the equipment of both the militaries.
- Provided with the coded communication and military equipment, will prevent the leaking of the secrecy system of C4ISR (Commands, Controls, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) to nations like Russia.
- India will be provided with installed weapons on the Drones meant for sea surveillance. This will also help both the countries to have an eye on the military deployments by Pakistan and China.
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The recent engagements between the two countries can be seen as promising avenues for future escalated growth of India as visioned by our leaders at the beginning of the 21 century. The signing of the COMCASA agreement paves the way for another engagement BECA (basic exchange and cooperation agreement) in near future. These will also help India in dealing in a more strategic way with China and Pakistan in relation to issues of maritime security in Indo-pacific region and encroachments of Indian territories encompassing J&K with reference to Belt and road initiative.
