In light of India's endemic governmental corruption and many arms procurement scandals, it is hard not to suspect that behind the nationalistic and supposed merits based explanations, what is actually at work is the rich prospect for graft offered by deals with Russia and other non-US arms vendors.
Even promises of domestic production and technology transfer for well-proven US weapons systems have not satisfied India's procurement officials. They then start mumbling that they want the very best the US has to offer in the way of new weapons systems still in development. Yet why should the US endanger its military edge and the vast sums that the US spent to develop its first line weapons?
Until now US is used to having allies who would play by America's rules. Well....India is different. US will just have to get used to that.
American’s like you are very predictable when you start spewing about Indian corruption and graft especially when India rejects an American vendor and picks European or Russian instead. Those corruption charges are plain BS and clearly you forget America's own poor record at preventing advance technology from falling in the hands of Russians and Chinese. But its a very common American reaction to piss on foreigners (read India) for what is actually their own fault.
What US has to offer is not the top of the line weapon systems but more often the same thing that Pakistan already has, with very little or no technology transfer or domestic production offset and with demand for rigorous end user monitoring. In contrast Russians and Europeans are ready to offer everything under the sun. India is actually a bigger customer then their own domestic market. India has a huge leverage there. And its not the actual weaponry that India wants but the technology and domestic production. Its just a simple case of what Russians and Europeans have to offer as against what US has to offer....which is very little and with too many strings.