On Thursday, India and Russia inked a bilateral agreement to jointly develop a 5th generation advanced stealth fighter on a parity basis. Secretary, Defence Production, K P Singh and Vyacheslav Dzirkali from the Russian side signed the deal at the conclusion of the 7th meeting of the Indo-Russian Inter-Governmental Commission on Military-Technical Cooperation (IRIGC-MTC) in Moscow.

The Defence Minister A K Antony and Russian Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov witnessed the signing ceremony between both the countries. Both ministers had co-chaired the two-day meeting of IRIGC-MTC. During the two-day meeting, the two defence ministers also agreed to take initiative of a protocol reinforcing the defence ties between India and Russia in coming days.

After the meeting, Indian defence minister Antony said:

This will mark the start of a new strategic relationship based on greater interaction at various levels. The agreement on joint development of the fighter aircraft marks the start of cooperation in development of state-of-the-art weapon systems.

According to the report, the officials from both the countries have also discussed some other important projects including the supply and licensed production of T-90 tanks, SU-30 MKI aircraft, repair and refurbishment of heavy aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov, the supply of deck-based fighter aircraft MiG-29-K.

Antony called the deal as major breakthrough and said that the project to develop 5th generation advanced stealth fighter will be carried out on a 50-50 basis. He further said that experts from the two sides will work out the technical details of the project later.

The report said further that the Sukhoi Aviation Holding Company (AHK) has bagged the government tender to develop and manufacture Russia’s fifth-generation fighter aircraft. India is likely to order a hundred such aircraft in future.

The estimated cost of the deal is not yet finalized but the report says that proposed deal would be cost about $6 billion. The agreement is also silent over the question of the ownership of the intellectual property rights when the aircraft will be developed jointly.

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