India has complained to Russia about the unreliability of some of its weapon systems as well as tardy product support in execution of several projects. Top-level sources say it has been made very clear to Russia that apart from "quality control" of the military equipment being bought from it, India wants assurances on maintenance of delivery schedules of contracted weapon systems, uninterrupted supply of spares and life-term product support.
"Russia is our long-standing strategic partner but there are some areas of worry in the huge bilateral military-technical cooperation. Defence minister A K Antony, in fact, raised these issues with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Ivanov, during Russian president Vladimir Putin's visit here last month," said a source.
The defence ministry is particularly worried about the reliability of certain Russian-origin weapon systems and equipment like the Appassionata navigation systems for the 10 Kilo or Sindhugosh-class 877EKM submarines as well as the large number of Uran subsonic anti-ship cruise missiles in the Indian inventory.
The IAF, on its part, is upset with the "distortions" on the canopies of the Sukhoi-30MKI Phase-3 fighter jets. This comes at a time when India is on the verge of signing a $1.6-billion deal with Russia to acquire another 40 Sukhoi-30MKIs, in addition to the 190 such jets already contracted through two big deals in 1996 and 2000.