Pakistan cautioned the United States against sale of armed drones to India

Pakistan on October 27, cautioned the United States that sale of armed drones to India would lower the threshold for conflict and undermine strategic stability in the region.

Pakistan’s Foreign Office spokesman Nafees Zakaria said at a media briefing, “Pakistan has consistently maintained that preserving regional stability should be the fundamental consideration in any international arms transfer,” warning that introduction of armed drones could lower the threshold for conflict.

India, it is said, intends to buy 80 to 100 units of General Atomics Predator C Avenger drones from the US. The Trump administration had a few months ago expressed its readiness to sell 22 unarmed Guardian drones to India.

The FO had also opposed the Guardian drones deal. “We had expressed our concerns on the sale of advanced military technologies to India. We believe that such sales accentuate military imbalances in the region and undermine strategic stability in South Asia,” Mr Zakaria had said on that occasion.

The FO spokesman urged the European Union not to consider nuclear cooperation with India as long as it does not place its entire nuclear programme under the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) safeguards. “The minimum requirement for any nuclear cooperation agreement should be placement of all civilian nuclear facilities under safeguards, without exception. Moreover, IAEA safeguards should be permanent without any provision for their temporary application or the use of safeguarded nuclear materials in un-safeguarded facilities,” Mr Zakaria said and called for greater insistence on “a stronger commitment on nuclear non-testing”, while considering cooperation.

Having a nuclear deal with India without getting its entire nuclear programme under the IAEA safeguards, the spokesman said, would be detrimental to the objectives of non-proliferation and strategic stability in South Asia, besides undermining the credibility of multilateral global non-proliferation regimes.

Media reports suggested that India and the EU had restarted their negotiations on a civil nuclear agreement that had been held up since 2009.

Why Avenger is so important?

The General Atomics Avenger (formerly Predator C) is a developmental unmanned combat air vehicle built by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems for the U.S. military. Its first flight occurred on 4 April 2009. Unlike the previous MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper (Predator B) drones, the Avenger is powered by a turbofan engine, and its design includes stealth features such as internal weapons storage, and an S-shaped exhaust for reduced infrared and radar signatures. The Avenger will support the same weapons as the MQ-9, and carry the Lynx synthetic aperture radar and a version of the F-35 Lightning II's electro-optical targeting system (EOTS), called the Advanced Low-observable Embedded Reconnaissance Targeting (ALERT) system. The Avenger will use the same ground support infrastructure as the MQ-1 and MQ-9, including the ground control station and existing communications networks.

The Indian government officially requested the possible sale of 100 Predator C/Avenger drones early in mid 2016. With India at that time not yet a signatory to the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) that governs trade in missile systems beyond a certain range, the Obama administration didn’t play ball. India was persuaded in the interim to accept a fleet of MQ-9B Sea Guardian unarmed maritime drones, an export that was cleared by the Trump administration in June when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the U.S. News from the GA open house last week now makes it virtually certain that India’s original Avenger request is far from a crumpled piece of paper at the State Dept. or Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) that administers foreign military sales.

In 2015, India decided to contract for 10 IAI Eitan/Heron TP hunter-killer drones, deliveries of which are expected to begin later this year or early 2018.