India, US to establish roadmap for defence industrial cooperation

India and the US have decided to establish an ambitious roadmap for defence industrial cooperation, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Monday after wide-ranging talks with his Indian counterpart Rajnath Singh. At a media briefing, Austin also described the India-US global strategic partnership as the "cornerstone" of a free and open Indo-Pacific.The US defence secretary said he held productive talks with Defence Minister Singh and NSA Ajit Doval. The meeting between the two leaders revolved around enhancing defence cooperation in several areas including convergence of strategic interests and enhanced security cooperation.
Singh emphasised that the India-US partnership is critical for ensuring a free, open and rules-bound Indo-Pacific region. He said India is looking forward to closely working with the US across the domains for capacity building and further consolidating their strategic partnership. The two Ministers also explored ways of building resilient supply chains. Both sides will identify opportunities for the co-development of new technologies and the co-production of existing and new systems and facilitate increased collaboration between the defence start-up ecosystems of the two countries. Towards these objectives, they concluded a roadmap for US-India Defence Industrial Cooperation which shall guide the policy direction for the next few years.