Israel Aerospace Industries Wednesday announced that it has entered into a $777 million deal with India’s public sector defence manufacturer Bharat Electronics Limited for supply of Barak 8 long range surface to air missiles for seven ships of Indian Navy.
State owned Bharat Electronics Limited is the main contractor from Indian side for this project.
Earlier, India had announced that it would not procure the anti-missile defence system for its navy from abroad and instead would build its own missiles under Make in India programmme.
Israel PM Netanyahu & PM Modi in India, Jan 2018.
However, during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s India visit in January this year, Israeli firm IAI had announced that the deal was ‘back on the table’.
IAI said that with this deal the order book for Barak family of missiles in last several years has touched $6 billion in sales.
IAI said: “LRSAM is an operational AMD system of Barak 8 family. It provides broad aerial and point defense against a wide range of threats to the marine arena from the air, sea or land.”
IAI said the system integrates several advanced state-of-the-art systems as, digital radar, command and control, launchers, interceptors with modern RF seekers, data link and system-wide connectivity.
Nimrod Sheffer, CEO and President of Israeli company said, “India is a major market for IAI and we plan to reinforce our positioning in India.”
IAI pavilion at Defence Expo 2017.
According to the official release issued by the company, Barak-8 AMD system was developed by IAI in collaboration with Israel’s MOD India’s DRDO (Defense Research and Development Organization), the navies of both countries, IAI’s ELTA Group, RAFAEL and local industries in India and Israel.
Boaz Levi, executive vice president said, “We thank our partners in India and BEL for their choice of IAI in a project that best reflects the close technological cooperation between Israel and India.”
