New Delhi. Raytheon, the leading US arms technology company, is looking forward to supplying the sophisticated Patriot Anti Missile Missile System to a dozen countries, including India.

According to Sanjay Kapoor, the newly-appointed Vice President of the company’s Patriot Program, the system is “Tried, Tested and Trusted” by 10 countries already and that “there was considerable interest in another dozen countries for the simple reason that this was the only system available today which had been fi red extensively both in trials and war.”

In a telephone interview from Boston, he told India Strategic that Raytheon was set to respond to the Indian Army’s requirement for a Medium Range Surface to Air Missile (MR-SAM), an RfP for which had been issued recently.

Reliable sources here said that India had issued two RfPs, or tenders, in April for an operational Quick Reaction Surface to Air Missile (QRSAM) system as well as the MR-SAM to meet the threats from hostile cruise and ballistic missiles.

The RfP has been given to four countries, US, France, Israel and Russia for both these systems. The range of QR-SAM required by India is reportedly 25 km and that of the MR-SAM 50 km.

Patriot comes in the MR-SAM category, Kapoor said adding that for the QR-SAM also, Raytheon would field some of its systems like the Hawk (new version).

India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) itself has some excellent successes in missiles, but it would be a few years before the systems developed by it are produced and operational. Till then, strategic assets in the country cannot be naked.

Kapoor said that there was a resurgence of interest in the Patriot system, and because of that, Raytheon had created an independent unit to respond to queries from various countries and help them in missile defence.

Lockheed Martin, which supplied the PAC-3 direct hit missile for the system, was in the loop and both the companies were coordinating their efforts to meet customer requirements.

“One has to know and understand that the US government has invested a lot of money and effort in making it the main anti-missile defence system for the US itself, and that there is no other system which has been fired so extensively in both development trials and war as the Patriot.”

Kapoor said that missile threats were always serious, particularly if they were suspected to be nuclear, and that a country needed a combination of missile systems in a layered structure to protect itself.

The time to engage is little, and computers onboard the Patriot system would calculate the direction of an oncoming threat within fractions of a second, and also where to engage it, and then attack it. There is PAC-2 with proximity fuse and PAC-3 for direct hit.

Patriot’s radar and computers are really super in this regard, he observed.

He said that he expected that Patriot would best meet the Indian Army’s requirements but every country has to decide for itself its missile defence structure. There are different weapons for different ranges and there are different requirements over land and sea. “But Patriot is a terminal system, designed to neutralize a threat in its final stages.”

It can attack cruise and ballistic missiles as well as aircraft and other air-breathing systems.

He pointed out that last year, the Japanese had wanted some tests, and Patriot was successful in all 22 of them. “We do multiple tests routinely for mission systems enhancements” and the resulting benefits would be available to the partner countries.

Asked if Raytheon would be able to do transfer of technology (ToT), he said that his company was studying the Indian requirements and that ToT was a matter between the governments of the US and India. A US company could not sell technology by itself to any country.

But Raytheon would provide the training and other support, and integration with some local systems if needed. Raytheon had already tied with companies like the Tatas and L&T for industrial partnership in India.