On Trump’s F-35 sale remark, India says ‘it is at the state of proposal’ and not formal acquisition

India has said that the process to acquire US-made F-35 warplanes has not yet started and talks are “at the state of proposal” at the moment.

At a press conference following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting with US President Donald Trump, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said that “this is currently something that’s at the stage of proposal, but I don’t think the formal process in this regard has started as yet”.

Earlier in the day, Trump had said that the United States is going to sell F-35s to India.

At the press conference, Misri said, “There is a process by which platforms are acquired. You are well aware of that process. There is in most cases a request for proposals that is floated. There are responses to those. They are evaluated I don’t think with regard to the acquisition of an advanced aviation platform by India, that process has started as yet. So this is currently something that’s at the stage of proposal, but I don’t think the formal process in this regard has started as yet.”

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Earlier, it was understood that Modi and Trump were going to discuss the deliveries of GE engines for fighter planes and the sale of Stryker combat vehicles among other defence- and security-related issues.

The F-35 is a single-seat fighter plane that also has a naval variant. Its maker, Lockheed Martin, says that it is the world’s most advanced fighter plane and hails it stealth features that are said to make it quite hard to detect. In addition to the United States, 15 countries, such as the United Kingdom, Israel, Australia, etc. currently operate the planes.