I knew this sounded familiar... looks like the deal is done now.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1711023/posts
Cool!
Bump
“It’s the first time India has purchased a U.S. Navy ship, according to Ronen Sen, India’s ambassador to the United States.”
Good news BUMP. It makes a lot of sense that India is getting into more military collaboration with the US. With increasingly belligerent China and Russia and several islamofascist states in the neighborhood (Pakistan, B-desh, and Iran), it only makes sense that USA, India, and Israel strive for closer military and socio-political ties.
Great! Now, can our Subcontinental friends do us a favor and TAKE CONTROL OF THE CITY OF TRENTON? I mean, it already abuts the Route One corridor (home to the largest concentration of Indians i the United States), and turning it into Bangalore would be an improvement!
>With the ship going to India, the city of Trenton is getting back the silver set it donated
Cute.
I hear they bought it because it has a Double Syrup Slushie Machine....
Because of China’s intense build-up of its naval forces, India has seen fit to expand its navy. Since as a local force, it would be advantageous to the US for India to assert its naval authority in this regard, I think another ship transfer is in order.
That is, the US should sell India the now-being-mothballed USS Kennedy aircraft carrier.
To start with, while the Kennedy is obsolete by US standards, it is still a far more potent aircraft carrier than China will be able to float in the next 10 or more years, though they are desperate to do so.
By providing the ship to India, they will be able to both restore it to a ship of the line, and be able to reverse engineer it, allowing them to leapfrog Chinese aircraft carrier development by 20 years, at a tremendous cost savings that they can use to improve their navy elsewhere.
Both the Kennedy and any derivative ships will provide a local and permanent distraction to the Chinese navy, whose most likely reaction will be to commit enormous sums of money and effort to develop comparable ships, and at the expense of the rest of their military build-up.
So instead of China using its resources with the intent of confronting the US navy in the far future, it will have to spend far more resources having to confront a lower technological opponent, in the nearer future.
Which will significantly aid the US navy in its development.
Too bad we can’t get them to take the actual city named Trenton, or the vacant Lott named Trenton, for that matter.