India and UK on Thursday agreed to further strengthen their Defence partnership in the fields of manufacturing as per the ‘Make in India’ policy besides more joint exercises and co-ordinate policies to fight terrorism. The two countries also recognised the need for stronger R&D cooperation to enable new and vibrant technology partnerships across the Defence domain.
These crucial issues were discussed here in the delegation-level talks between the visiting UK Defence Minister Michael Fallon and his Indian counterpart Arun Jaitley as part of the India-UK Strategic Defence Dialogue.
Besides enhancing co-operation in the field of Defence manufacturing, the two sides also decided to place capability and technology development at its core and seek to harness the complementary strengths of both nations. This synergy will enable to use the combined strengths of their respective private and public sectors to develop Defence solutions for use in both home and shared export markets, a joint statement issues after the meeting said.
The two Ministers agreed to further strengthen their naval and maritime interactions, including enhanced Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) through the bilateral technical agreement to exchange information to track terrorist and pirate vessels.
India and the UK will endeavour to build a range of capability partnerships focusing on varied aspects of military effectiveness such as specialised training interactions and exchange of best practices in the following areas — Counter Terrorism (CT), Counter Improvised Explosive Devices (CIED), Air Force Training, Air Total Safety, Aircraft Carriers, Maritime Safety, Shipbuilding and UN Peacekeeping.
Jaitley welcomed UK’s interest in manufacturing in India as evidenced through recent announcements including the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Bharat Dynamics ltd. and Thales UK on technology transfer opportunities for missile systems and efforts to develop an Advanced Hawk jet trainer jointly by the BAE Systems and Hindustan Aeronautics limited (HAl).