India and the UK are set to enhance defence industrial cooperation and work together in co-development and co-production of military platforms. In a telephonic conversation on Tuesday defence Minister Rajnath Singh and UK Secretary of State for Defence Ben Wallace talked about deepening of bilateral defence relationship, the Indo-Pacific and other defence and security related issues.
Singh invited the UK companies to become part of India’s growth story and to also participate in co-development and co-production in India. Both sides reviewed the ongoing bilateral defence cooperation and identified a few potential areas of cooperation and discussed ways of further enhancing defence industrial cooperation.
Both countries last October had the inaugural meeting of the newly formed Joint Working Group in an effort to further defence cooperation. This has been set up to strengthen security and defence partnership through industrial cooperation. And as reported earlier the UK has issued its first Open General Export License in the Indo-Pacific region to India. This will help in shortening delivery times for defence procurement.
In 2022 Alex Ellis, British High Commissioner to India has stated that a stronger UK-India defence relationship is an essential element of the governments of both sides’ Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.
Both countries are working towards establishing a portfolio of projects that can be done collaboratively, as these will help to support the development of new technologies and capabilities as has been agreed in the UK-India 2030 Roadmap released by the British government.
In critical defence technologies the UK is considered to be a world leader especially in jet engines development and electric propulsion technology and the UK has expressed its readiness to share this expertise with India supported by respective industries.
In 2022 the UK has offered advanced core technologies to India – capable of creating an indigenous, ITAR-free jet engine. These will be manufactured, owned and exported by India.
Both countries have established an Electric Propulsion Capability Partnership – and with the JWG in place this will help to set up a strong partnership between the navies of India and the UK for development of Electric Propulsion capability here in India.
The roadmap has also committed to partner on India’s indigenous combat air programmes – the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA)-MkII and Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA).
