comment: >
  
  Israel also makes some military deals with India.
context: Pondicherry: looks sideways briefly >
  
  French defense alignment means closer ties to the west. There's no way around it really. Your systems will use more NATO standards if you use a NATO nation as a partner >
  
  India is in an interesting position regarding national defense. On one hand the US is the obvious partner, but US arms are expensive and come loaded with a lot of requirements and ‘strings’ attached. If you can afford it and you’re more or less US-aligned then it’s the no-brained, the premium product.
  But India doesn’t really have either of those things, historically they’re aligned with Russia in terms of arms, but of course Russia has just shown itself to be comically incompetent and their arms mediocre at best. India therefore has to seriously consider investing more and more in a domestic defense industry, and France has a lot of experience in that regard, it’s cheaper, and it expects a lot less in terms of compliance and alignment than the US. 
  Granted the result will be below the US military standard, but what is India’s threat model exactly? Mostly India is worried about Pakistan and China, and for the former any Western arms will do. For the latter there’s no going it alone, but also there’s a limit to what China can be expected to bring to bear against an even more populous nation with a terrain advantage. In the end France is probably a decent mix of cheap and available.