India-US-Russia: The Arms Tangle

India’s military rebalancing tack with russia has raised president trump’s hackles. Multi-billion dollar arms deals with the us hang in the balance. Can India have its way?

- Sandeep Unnithan

The entry was befitting of a Hollywood blockbuster. The long green silhouette of an eight-wheeled monster truck roar out of a high-roofed test facility, bellowing furiously, its headlights lancing the tumbling white fog. The facility is meant to simulate a Siberian winter of 50 degrees below zero. White lab-coat wearing technicians watch it carefully from a distance, like scientists would a rare carnivore. The BAZ truck, dripping frost, raises four giant launchers into the ready-to-fire vertical position— canisters for what are the world’s most controversial missile today, the System-400, a fearsome weapon system that NATO somewhat appropriately calls the ‘Growler’. In the bright sunshine outside the sprawling test facility of Russian missilemaker Almaz Antey on the outskirts of St Petersburg, sharp-suited executives reel off its capabilities and unveil plans for a fiery successor— the S-500 ‘Prometheus’—that can reportedly knock down fast-moving targets at the edge of space.