Paris, July 07, 2005 (PTI)

Undeterred by recent US efforts to muscle into the lucrative Indian arms market, French defence majors like Thales are offering across the board state-of-the-art technology transfer and setting up of joint ventures in India.

Though US efforts at political level to enter the Indian defence market in a major way has caused some ripples, the French defence Industry which is India's third largest arms trading partner has been stirred into action and is preparing to offer the cutting edge technology to New Delhi.

The French defence industry's case is likely to be put across by President Jacques Chirac during his meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the G-8 summit in Scotland.

The French leader may also invite Singh for a stop-over in France on his way back home after the summit, according to diplomatic sources here.

"French companies will not shy away from competition, we want a level playing field and our systems and weapons platforms speak for ourselves," chief executive of Thales Jean Paul Perrier told visiting Indian journalists here.

The company is now offering India its latest Herakles three dimension multi-function radars for Navy's ambitious up-gradation programme Project 15 and 17 frigates. The state-of-the-art radar has the capability to hit multi-targets including incoming missiles, aircraft and low level UAV's.

The Herkles MFR-30 can perform in any weather conditions and has back-scanning capability enabling it to release missiles to intercept incoming missiles threats, a capability, which Indian Armed Forces lack so far.

Asked about a move by the new government to re-tender the purchase of low level transportable radar beams, Perrier insisted that Thales' offer was the best and included a total technology transfer to Bharat Electronics Ltd including marketing rights to third countries. He asserted that his company would participate in any re-tendering process as Thales' system on offer to India could out-match any bids of any other country.

The company, he said, had recently set-up an Indian subsidiary Thales-International India to explore setting up of Joint Ventures in the country.

The Company has recently supplied Indian Army with 600 Hand Held Thermals for anti-insurgency night operations in Jammu and Kashmir. The thermals called sophie cameras are also under evaluation by the Home Ministry and the Border Security Force for electronic surveillance of frontiers.

Thales is also involved in a major way in installing night fighting visions for frontline Indian T-90 tanks and is bidding to retro-fit similar sights for over 1000 T-72 tanks under two major projects, he said.

Thales has also provided expertise and specialist equipment to the Indian army to break into terrorist radio networks operating across the line of control in Jammu and Kashmir.

Perrier said the company was also bidding for Indian army's major global communication retrofit programme that should start in 2007. "We have already put in our bids for major Sub systems for the project including line of sight microwave high data links," he said.