India's Military Buildup May Be Too Little Too Late

Defence chiefs are hurrying to modernise ageing weaponry as China reinforces a 3,500-km (2,200-mile) shared but disputed border through the Himalayas.

It took 11 years to select France's Rafale as the favored candidate for a $15 billion splurge on 126 new combat jets to replace a Soviet-era fleet of MiGs dubbed "flying coffins" for their high crash rate.

At the same time, feeling encircled as China projects its fast-growing naval power from Hormuz to Malacca, India is rushing to firm up friendships the length and breadth of the Indian Ocean.

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India is the world's largest arms importer with plans to spend $100 billion on weapons over the next decade.

"The Indian military is strengthening its forces in preparation to fight a limited conflict along the disputed border, and is working to balance Chinese power projection in the Indian Ocean," U.S. Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper told the U.S. Senate this week.

That "balance" includes a strategic alliance with Washington that in turn has stoked Chinese fears of containment. It is due to test-fire its nuclear capable Agni V rocket in the next few weeks, with a strike range reaching deep into China.

In 2009, the air force reopened a high-altitude, landing strip in Ladakh last used during a 1962 border war with China. Along with other Himalayan bases, it is now upgrading the strip for fighter operations.

About 500 Indian MiG-21s have plunged to the ground since the 1960s, yet the jet is still in use, raising the question of whether painfully slow defence procurement procedures can come up with new hardware faster than old equipment is sent to the scrap heap.

According to Indian media, Russia delivered the nuclear submarine INS Chakra on a 10-year lease at the end of last month, eight years after India first asked for it.

A shortfall of about 200 planes means the air force is operating at its lowest level in decades - just 33 squadrons against a goal of 45. By the time all the Rafales are delivered, more MiGs will have been decommissioned.

"It's taken too long," said Jasjit Singh, a retired commander and director of the think tank Centre for Air Power Studies. "Can we live with a certain shortfall in the force, and for how long?"

India is developing a fifth-generation fighter with Russia and aims to fly it in 2015, as well as a fleet of 272 Sukhois, half of which have already been built.