India and the United States on Monday chalked out a roadmap for defence-industrial cooperation which shall guide the policy direction for the two countries over the next few years.
Visiting US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin this morning held wide-ranging talks with Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on bilateral defence matters. The visit of the US defence minister comes a fortnight before Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s trip to the US during which defence accords are expected to be signed between the two countries.
The two ministers explored ways of building resilient supply chains. Both sides will identify opportunities for the co-development of new technologies and co-production of existing and new systems and facilitate increased collaboration between defence start-up ecosystems of the two countries.
Both sides reviewed the robust and multifaceted bilateral defence cooperation activities and agreed to maintain the momentum of engagement. They welcomed the inaugural dialogues held recently focusing on defence artificial intelligence and defence space. They also discussed the regional security issues given their shared interest in maintaining peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region.
”Great to meet again with my friend @rajnathsingh and thank him for his unwavering commitment to U.S.-India defence relations. His leadership has helped paved the way for deeper collaboration, joint exercises, and technology sharing between our two countries,” Secretary Austin tweeted after the meeting.
”Delighted to meet my friend, @SecDef Austin in New Delhi. Our talks revolved around enhancing defence cooperation in several areas including convergence of strategic interests and enhanced security cooperation,” Rajnath tweeted.
In another tweet, he said: ”India-US partnership is critical for ensuring a free, open and rules-bound Indo-Pacific region. We look forward to closely working with the US across the domains for capacity building and further consolidating our strategic partnership.”