The US and India have agreed on a road map for military-industrial cooperation, at a time when New Delhi seeks to reduce its dependence on Russian weapons and amid tensions with Beijing.

The US Secretary of Defence, Lloyd Austin, concluding his visit to the Indian capital, said that they worked out a new ambitious road map for industrial cooperation in the defence sector, which will allow priority co-development and co-production programs to be accelerated.

The visit is part of a tour of Asia to address the rising influence of China and an increasingly bellicose North Korea, which had previously taken Austin to Japan and Singapore.

However, analysts warn that these promises must be backed up with concrete actions. New Delhi and Moscow have been allies for decades and Russia is by far India’s largest arms supplier.

Today India, which has never condemned Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, is seeking to end this reliance on the military sector, both expanding its sources of arms imports and increasing its domestic production.

Western countries, including the United States and France, are negotiating deals worth billions of dollars, and diplomats say India attaches great importance to technology transfer as part of any deal.

The agreement with Washington will thus allow technological cooperation and co-production to be accelerated, particularly in air combat systems and land mobility systems, the underwater sector and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, according to the US Department of Defence.

The Indian Ministry of Defence clarified that the talks focused on finding means to strengthen industrial cooperation with Washington, mainly the co-development of new technologies and the co-production of both existing and new systems.

Source: CNN Greece

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