Parrikar to visit important US military command at Hawaii

Ajay Banerjee

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, December 1

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar will make history of sorts when he embarks on a visit to the United States in the first week of December.

Parrikar will visit the Hawaii-based headquarters of the US Pacific Command (PACOM), making him the first Indian Defence Minister to see the biggest operational command of the US.
Parrikar is slated to visit the US spreads across seven days when he leaves on December 4 to visit PACOM in the first leg of the his visit before heading off to Washington DC to meet US Secretary Defence Ashton Carter.
The substantive meeting with Carter is on December 9-10. This will be Parrikar’s first official visit to the US as Defence Minister.

At the PACOM the Indian Defence Minister will be briefed on operational issue and also about the significance of the command that tackled the onslaught of the Japanese imperial forces during the World War II (1939-1945).
The significance of Parrikar’s visit could be gauged from the fact that PACOM is the most powerful military commander on earth: almost 60 per cent of the US Navy – including six sea-borne aircraft carriers — is under it. According to US demarcations, it oversees 52 per cent of the planet and is the Command in touch with 36 countries — including China, Japan, India, South Korea, Australia and Vietnam.

In the last month, the PACOM was engaged in an exercise with Japan in the South China Sea.

The Indian Navy has been engaging with the US. Last month Parrikar visited two key Russian military establishments in Saint Petersburg. 

In Washington, Parrikar will discuss proposals for co-production of top-end military equipment besides looking at beefing up maritime security, counter-terrorism and sharing intelligence-sharing between the two countries.
Parrikar will raise the issue of a threat from Pakistan’s tactical nuclear weapons. The US is keen to ink two bilateral "foundational agreements" with India that have been pending for long. The previous UPA Government kept the military pacts —named the Logistics Support Agreement (LSA) and the Communication Interoperability and Security Memorandum Agreement (CISMOA) — in abeyance as the previous Defence Minister, AK Antony, opposed them.

The LSA agrees to provide logistics support, refuelling and berthing facilities for each other's warships and aircrafts on barter or an equal-value exchange basis.

On CISMOA, the US looks at it as a ‘technology enabler’ that will allow transfer of high-tech avionics and electronics from the US.