Click to play videoNew Delhi: The Left is against India getting too close to the US but the Indian armed forces seem to be enjoying a bear hug.
The armed forces of the two nations reached perhaps their highest level of military engagement so far in the recent Malabar Exercise. Air Chief Marshal Fali Major on Friday confirmed that Indian Air Force jets participated in the exercise under NATO procedures, a development which puts the two sides within a whisker of a military partnership.
"We will be learning about equipment, communication, command and control. There is nothing wrong in this,” said Major.
India is headed even farther down this path. It has asked the US for participation in the famed Red Flag Exercise at Nellis in 2008.
The US Red Flag Exercise at Nellis represents the pinnacle of its efforts to groom allies and partners in air combat under NATO procedures. The Left may be threatening to pull down the government over the nature of India's ties with the US but this the threat doesn't seem to show in the growing military intimacy between the two countries.
""It will be a tremendous learning curve for us. And it is got nothing to with any controversy. NATO is there to facilitate war fighting," said Major.
But it'll be the outcome of the ideological contest in India which will whether this military tango blossoms into a full-blown relationship.
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