By IOL South Asia Correspondent

New Delhi, June 15 (IslamOnline) - India is looking for 'U.S. made" sensors to detect infiltration because the ones the Israelis supplied with great fanfare simply don't work.

Israeli-made sensors lie embedded, abandoned and dysfunctional, along several stretches on the Indo-Pak border, said a report in the Indian Express published Saturday, June 15.

Israeli vendors, who have been holding negotiations with New Delhi for bulk supplies, have now been told that their equipment is unsuitable for Indian conditions, the paper said.

It added that evidence for this failure lies in bulky files in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and the Border Security Force (BSF) which contain results of trials conducted with Magal, the Israeli manufacturer, in 1999-2000. According to these files, after tests along 400-metre border stretches in Gurdaspur, Punjab and Samba, Jammu sector, the use of sensors was rejected as an unfeasible and exorbitant option.

The feedback given to the MHA after the trials ended in July-August 2001 said that due to grass and movement of large numbers of wild animals the system gives false alarms and gets defective mainly during monsoons. The report added that the equipment has not been found of "much use" and so far, only one detection was made!

The sensors offered by Magal covered 5 kms of the border during the trial period. According the Indian Express report, the following reasons were cited for the equipment’s unsuitability:

* Processor monitors which are connected to the ground sensors via cables are too bulky.

* Sensors, once dug 23 cm deep into the ground, could not be relocated or shifted.

* Even four feet of water, which sometimes collects in the monsoon season, makes the sensor systems dysfunctional.

Besides technical experts from the Border Security Force, officials from Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) had been called in during the Magal trials and they too reported the same problems: that the sensors emitted false alarms whenever a large animal crossed the border and that they developed defects during heavy rains or extreme heat.

Officials say that the Israeli teams were asked to do some modifications based on the weight of the intruders but that, too, failed to deliver the desired results.

This may end Israel's grand attempts to replace Russia as India's No. one arms supplier.

Parts of the Indian spy plane downed by Pakistan Friday, June 7, were made in Israel, Pakistani officials found out.

The transmitter assembly of the plane had “Israel Aircraft Industry" (IAI) printed on it, Pakistani newspaper, News International reported.

India obtained such planes from Israel two years ago and used them for spying purpose.

India and Israel established diplomatic relations in 1992 and have a warming relationship, to the dismay of many Arab and Islamic countries.

Both India and Israel have denied media reports that Israeli experts are helping India combat a 12-year-old Islamic insurgency in Kashmir, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

In July 2001, Israel's Haaretz daily newspaper reported that the Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) signed an estimated two-billion-dollar weapons contract with India's defense ministry.

Under the terms of the agreement, the IAI, which works in cooperation with Israel's Defense Ministry, will deliver aircraft, radar systems and surface-to-surface missiles, via India's largest defense contractor, Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL), the paper said.

The agreement, signed between IAI officials and the Indian Defense Ministry, would guarantee an Israeli supply of sophisticated radar systems, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and an upgrading of Indian aircraft with avionics systems, the Indian spokesman said. IAI, which specializes in high tech weaponry, will transfer Israeli technology to Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd.

The sale of three Phalcon early warning aircraft systems is also understood to be the part of the upcoming cooperation between India and Israel, and sources say that Israel has shown keen interest in a pilotless target aircraft, the Lakshya, made by India.