Tremendous Opportunities To Bolster US-India Defence Cooperation: Pentagon

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The Pentagon believes that its relationship with India offers tremendous opportunities for cooperation in the defence sector, a senior official said on Tuesday as Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in the country for talks with US President Joe Biden to bolster the military-to-military ties between the two strategic partners.

India and the US are poised to unveil a roadmap for industries in the defence sector to partner closely in co-production, co-development and maintaining supply chain during Prime Minister Modi’s state visit to the US, Foreign Secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra said on Monday.

“We think this is a transformational moment in the US-India Defense Partnership. I know that some people may say, maybe this is not the moment to be ambitious, maybe this is not the relationship where you should be ambitious. And are you making the right bet? When it comes to the US-India partnership? We think we are,” the senior defence official said.

Talking to a group of reporters, the official said that this is a relationship that is full of tremendous opportunity. That is two of the world’s largest democracies, with some of the most innovative workers and companies working more closely together on strategic technologies and how we can leverage them for security is a natural next step in this relationship,” the official, who did not want to be identified, said.

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In the last 20 years, the United States and India are doing things together now, in terms of a defence partnership that people would have said was never possible 20 years ago. Twenty ago, there were no US defence sales to India at all, the official noted.

“And now we’re talking about co-producing and developing major systems together. The United States and India now do a tri-service joint exercise together on an annual basis, which is something that would have seemed impossible in the past,” the official said.

India-US defence relationship is now focused on three things, the official said. First is looking for ways that we can support India’s own military modernisation and enable it to play a larger role in leading as a security provider in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond.

Defence-industrial cooperation is certainly a big part of that. During the recent India visit of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, the two countries concluded a new defence industrial cooperation roadmap that lays out a pretty ambitious path ahead in terms of what the two countries are able to do in bringing the defence industrial bases more closely together and really taking advantage of what is fairly substantial US investment in India’s modernisation that that’s already taken place.

“The second thing we’re focused on is looking at ways that we can really strengthen US-India interoperability going forward because it’s not just about what we have the ambition to make together, but how we’re going to operate together in the future. You can see some significant achievements this past year,” the official said.

“The recent … air exercise, we had some of our most modern bombers and fighters participating in that exercise. We’ve had two visits by the US Navy to India’s shipyards, looking at ways that we can do more ship repair and logistics in India,” the official said.

In May, India and the US launched a new advanced defence domains dialogue that is talking about how the two nations can work together in emerging areas such as space, cyberspace, additive manufacturing, and artificial intelligence. India and the United States are looking at how they can strengthen multilateral cooperation.

“As two of the world’s largest democracies, we think there’s an increasing role for our partnership in looking at how we come together with other like-minded partners in the region,” the official said.

The QUAD grouping, comprising the US, India, Japan and Australia, is obviously a significant part of that multilateral cooperation. All Quad partners are going to be participating again at the end of this summer in the exercise Malabar.

“We are also working together on the Indo-Pacific maritime domain awareness initiative, which India is playing a key role in leading as we bring new cutting-edge satellite technologies together to build a common maritime operating picture in the Indo-Pacific,” the official said.

“We are also very pleased that India just for the first time this past year concluded its first maritime multilateral exercise with ASEAN and so we’re working with India together on the kinds of capacity building that we can do in the defence space in the Indian Ocean region, and more broadly into the Indo Pacific,” the official said.

Observing that defence is an important part of the Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET) dialogue launched early this year, the official said the defence industrial roadmap signed early this month identifies a handful of priority areas where they are looking to fast track or co-production and co-development relationship going forward.

Air Combat, ISR mobility, meaning logistics systems, undersea domain awareness, and munitions are the handful of priority areas where they are looking to bring forward important new project proposals in the coming months and years.

“Secondly, identifying specific ways that we can knock down red tape on both sides that will allow our respective defence industrial bases to be more competitive in working together. “And then finally, it commits us to long-term supply chain integration and specifically to beginning negotiations on a security of supply arrangement and reciprocal defence procurement arrangement,” the official said.

“These will be transformational agreements when they are concluded that will do a tremendous amount for actually bringing the Indian and defence industrial bases more closely together in the future,” said the official.

The launch of INDUS-X brings private sectors together. The two countries are looking at ways wherein they can go beyond the routine government-to-government cooperation, and really bring some of the cutting-edge commercial and dual-use technology that is being developed on both sides more rapidly into the respective systems.