New Delhi (Sputnik) — Any kind of sanctions on India over the S-400 air defense missile system will place a big question mark before Indo-US relations and in fact will prove counter-productive for the US, says a senior defense analyst, who also served in the acquisitions wing of India's Defense Ministry.
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"It places [a] big question mark before the India-US relation which, had been on the upswing for quite some time. In fact, the sanctions will prove counterproductive and it will further bring India much closer to Russia than ever," Amit Cowshish, a former financial advisor (acquisition) to India's Ministry of Defense, told Sputnik.
"India will have to live with the sanction. It will have to find alternative ways of meeting the defense requirement, which it thought the USA could meet. On the issue of fighter aircraft, Russia, France, and Sweden will help India anyway as [they] did in the past," Amit Cowshish added.
Except for some aircraft, the US has not sold India any of its major defense equipment or technology, despite several rounds of talks under the Defense Technology and Trade Initiative. The Indian government has been looking at countries such as Israel and France, other than Russia, as far as the requirements of armed drones or other defense technologies are concerned.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.