India’s Defense Acquisition Council (DAC), headed by Defense Minister Rajnath Singh, yesterday approved extensive procurement for an overall $8.7 billion.
Among the many arms included in the deal are SPICE 1000 guidance kits (SPICE 1000/Light Hail) manufactured by Israeli company Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, according to reports in the Indian media.
SPICE is a family of precise and autonomous air-to-ground weapon systems, with a range of up to 100 kilometers, with three types of bombs of different weights. SPICE 1000 weighs about 500 kilograms, and the entire system, developed by Rafael, has won the Israel Defense Prize.
The uniqueness of the SPICE family is the ability to navigate and home in on the target autonomously, independently of GPS, using an electro-optical homing head that incorporates an innovative mathematical algorithm, which compares the target image to what it sees in real time and thus achieves extremely high hit accuracy of less than three meters.
India’s fighting with Pakistan in May highlighted the country’s need for arms in diverse systems in general and from Israel in particular. This was clearly reflected in early November when the Director General of the Defense Ministry, Maj. Gen. (res.) Amir Baram, signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to strengthen security cooperation with his Indian counterpart, Rajesh Kumar Singh.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), India is the biggest customer of Israeli defense industries, accounting for about 34% of all exports between 2020 and 2024.
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