Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman likely to visit Dassault plant in France

While defence cooperation between India France has touched new heights, New Delhi wants to strengthen defence manufacturing partnership.

Updated on: Oct 11, 2018, 07:41:31 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

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Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will hold the first defence minister level dialogue with her French counterpart Florence Parly today and is expected to visit Dassault’s Rafale fighter jet manufacturing facility outside Paris on Friday during her three-day visit to France. She may also meet President Emmanuel Macron, although there is no confirmation on this.

Nirmala Sitharaman is expected to visit Dassault’s Rafale fighter jet manufacturing facility on Friday. (Sonu Mehta/HT PHOTO)

Government officials familiar with the matter said on condition of anonymity that Sitharaman’s visit to the Rafale facility comes from her desire to have a firsthand experience of its flying capabilities and to discuss with the plane’s maker Dassault Aviation, the delivery status of the 36 fighters ordered in fly away condition by India from France in a government to government deal. The first fighter is expected to land in India in September 2019.

According to the officials, the decision to hold an annual dialogue between the two countries at the defence minister level was decided during pMacron’s visit to India last March with an aim to deepen military cooperation between two strategic partners and expand it from air to space.

While defence cooperation between India and France has touched new heights, New Delhi wants to strengthen the on-going defence manufacturing partnership with more role for the Indian industry in cases involving the transfer of technology such as the Scorpene submarines. India’s Mazagaon Dock Shipbuilders Limited has a partnership with French Naval Group for manufacturing of the Scorpene submarine through the transfer of technology route. The two Defence Ministers will also talking about expanding the scope of joint exercises with advanced military training in Persian Gulf and near Reunion Islands in the far Pacific. Sitharaman and Parly will also discuss the supply of French Safran M88 military jet engine for Tejas Light Combat Aircraft.

Sitharaman travels to Singapore next week for the ASEAN Defence Minister Meeting plus and is expected to travel to the newly named Indo-Pacific Command in Hawai during her December visit to United States at the invitation of Secretary of Defence James Mattis.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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