SRINAGAR, India, Feb 15, (AP): There was guarded optimism among military experts in India as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump outlined plans to ramp up sales of defense systems to New Delhi, including F-35 stealth fighter jets, to deepen the US-India strategic relationship. "Defense sector is a big money, and India happens to be one of the top buyers in the world,” said Lt Gen Vinod Bhatia, India’s director-general for military operations from 2012 to 2014.

"As long as we buy, Trump will be happy but it’s surely going to expand our conventional deterrence.” The meeting signaled that "defense diplomacy is the core of diplomacy these days," Bhatia said. In a joint statement at the White House, the two leaders announced plans to sign a new 10-year framework later this year for the US-India Major Defense Partnership. Modi and Trump "pledged to elevate military cooperation across all domains - air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace - through enhanced training, exercises, and operations, incorporating the latest technologies,” the statement said.

The leaders also "committed to break new ground to support and sustain the overseas deployments of the US and Indian militaries in the Indo-Pacific, including enhanced logistics and intelligence sharing," the statement said. While Indian military experts have long sought to diversify national defense procurements, analysts say it will take years to reduce New Delhi’s dependency on Russian arms, even with expanded defense cooperation with the US Raja Mohan, an analyst at the Institute of South Asian Studies in Singapore, said expansion in defense cooperation would take time.

"What India wants is coproduction and more research and development in India. It’s a long-term project,” he said. It is difficult for India to remain dependent on Russia for defense equipment owing to difficulties obtaining parts and upgrades. However, a deal with the US for F-35 stealth fighter jets will not fill India's immediate need for more than 100 aircraft, said Rahul Bedi, an independent defense analyst based in India.

"They are not going to come tomorrow,” Bedi said. "It’s going to take several years to start arriving,” he added. As its geostrategic competition with China has grown manifold in recent years, India has diversified defense acquisitions from the US, Israel and France while seeking to move toward self-reliance in this sector. But New Delhi is still far from getting over its dependence on supplies and spare parts from Russia that makes up to 60% of Indian defense equipment.