After a long period of negotiations, spanning over a decade,recently India and the United States have signed the logistics pact.
LEMOA stands for Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA), a tweaked India-specific version of the Logistics Support Agreement (LSA), which the U.S. has with several countries it has close military to military cooperation.
It includes 3 foundational agreements in its ambit:
- Logistics Support Agreement (LSA)
- Communications Interoperability and Security Memorandum of Agreement (CISMOA)
- Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geo-spatial Cooperation (BECA)
They are meant to build basic ground work and promote interoperability between militaries by creating common standards and systems. They also guide sale and transfer of high-end technologies.
Advantage of signing LEMOA:
- LEMOA gives access, to both countries, to designated military facilities on either side for the purpose of refuelling and replenishment.
- India and the U.S. already hold large number of joint exercises during which payments are done each time, which is a long and tedious process. Under the new agreement, a mechanism will be instituted for book-keeping and payments and officials, who will act as nodal points of contact, will be designated on both sides.
Note: The above point on simplifying the payment and book keeping hassles are put to place in the scheduled joint military training exercise – Yudh Abhyas, to be held at at Chaubattia in Uttarakhand ( Sep/2016) and is the first military exercise after the two countries signed LEMOA. Therefore inline with the said objectives of the pact , accounting and book-keeping for the exercise will be done in a way which does away with the need for settling bills and payments every time. They will be recorded and cleared every three months to simplify the process.
( Flows from the second point ).
Areas to be covered under the pact:
- Joint exercises
- Port calls
- Disaster Relief
- Training and Humanitarian Assistance.
Any other requirement has to be agreed upon by both sides on a case-by-case basis.
Note: The agreement is NOT a basing agreement i.e. it does not cover stationing of US troops in India. This is completely logistical agreement.
