Sitharaman and Mattis discuss technology initiative
India and the United States need to expand on the progress already made by encouraging co-production and co-development efforts in the defence industry, Defence Minister Nirmal Sitharaman said on 26 September 2017.
“I reiterated India’s deep interest in enhancing defence manufacturing in India under Prime Minister’s Make in India initiative,” she said after meeting visiting Defence Secretary James Mattis.
“We agreed that the full implementation of the understanding reached following the announcement by the US last year recognizing India as a Major Defence Partner will provide further energy and momentum to our collaboration on defence technology and manufacturing,” said Sitharaman.
India and the United States is to refocus and re-energize Defence Technology and Trade Initiative (DTTI) as a mechanism to promote technology sharing as well as codevelopment and co-production efforts for manufacturing defence equipment.
Cooperation in defence equipment has grown steadily over the past years.
“The US is now a leading supplier of state-of-the-art defence equipment to India.
“I appreciated Secretary Mattis’ willingness to share further cutting-edge platforms which would enhance India’s defence preparedness to meet current and emerging threats,” said Sitharaman.
Defence cooperation between India and the US has grown significantly in recent years and emerged as a key pillar of our strategic partnership.
“Our military-to-military engagement continues to grow. We recently concluded the trilateral Malabar Naval Exercise in the Bay of Bengal along with Japan.
“This edition of Malabar demonstrated the progress made in operational synergies between our Navies. As we speak, our Armies are conducting their Exercise Yudh Abhyas. In our talks today, we agreed to explore additional, specialized exercises,” said the Indian minister in a statement. fii-news.com
