By NNN-PTI,
Farnborough, United Kingdom : With India hastening its search for a system to beat threats from ballistic, tactical and cruise missiles, the US has raised a pitch to sell its front-line ‘Patriot’ missile system, and also delivered “classified presentation” to Defence Ministry officials.
“Raytheon is interested to bid with the Patriot system to the Request for Quotation (RFQ) for medium range surface-to -air missile (MR-SAM) issued by India recently,” the US defence major’s Patriot Programme vice president and deputy Skip Garret said here on the sidelines of the Farnborough international air show.
Though India has sought a small number of the MR-SAM with 50-km range – PTI has learnt that the RFQ was for just one system – the Patriot missiles with “high probability kill” could easily take care of India’s needs, Garret said, raising the campaign decibels to a new high.
Officials from the US Department of Defence had in the last few months given some classified presentations on the Patriot’s capabilities to officials from the Indian Defence Ministry, who “formally expressed interest” in the system, he said.
Patriot, the foundation of the US Army’s integrated air and missile defence architecture, is a long-range, all-altitude, all-weather system field to defence advanced threats, including aircraft, tactical-ballistic-cruise missiles.