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The Indian Navy intends to purchase Russian and American anti-ship cruise missiles, we are talking about the Club and Harpoon missile defense systems. This is reported by the Indian agency Ani, citing sources in the Ministry of Defense.
The Indian military plans to purchase in Russia at least 20 Russian anti-ship cruise missiles of the Club system, which are an export version of the Kalibr cruise missile, which received a lot of publicity during the conflict in Ukraine. The complex is well known to Indian sailors, it was installed on surface ships (Club-N) and submarines (Club-S) The Indian Navy has repeatedly demonstrated high efficiency. By the way, India became the first foreign customer of this complex, having signed the first contract in 1998 for 50 3M54E missiles for Soviet-built project 08773 submarines.
- the agency writes.
In addition to Russian cruise missiles, the Indians plan to purchase American Harpoon missile defense systems worth about $ 80 million. Details are not disclosed, but it is known that India has already received permission from the US State Department to purchase missiles, although the contract itself has not yet been signed. Earlier, the Indian military purchased anti-submarine aircraft P-8I "Neptune" in the United States, which are a special version of the American P-8 "Poseidon", the arsenal of which includes the Harpoon missile defense system. The Indians had to order the missiles separately.
According to the Indian press, recently the Indian military has been paying great attention to American and French weapons, but they do not intend to abandon the traditional Soviet and Russian because of the excellent price-quality ratio.