India-US to deepen cooperation in top defence technologies

Ajit Doval and Lloyd Austin discussed the cooperation in specific niche technologies in maritime, military, and aerospace domains to boost capabilities.

Published on: Jun 5, 2023, 16:12:30 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval and US secretary of defence Lloyd Austin met in New Delhi on Monday and exchanged ideas on several issues of mutual interest. The two leaders highlighted the cooperation in specific niche technologies in maritime, military, and aerospace domains to boost capabilities.

NSA Ajit Doval and US secretary of defence Lloyd Austin in New Delhi on Monday.

The two also discussed the greater transfer of technology, to India from the US, co-production, and building indigenous capacities between the two nations in line with India’s Make in India and Aatmanirbhar Bharat initiatives.

Another point of discussion between them was ensuring that countries in different regions - Middle East, South Asia and South East Asia and Indo-Pacific retain their freedom of action in line with their national priorities and are not coerced into poor choices.

During the meeting, Doval and Austin maintained India and the US focus on trusted sources of supply, resilient supply chains, and greater industry-to-industry partnerships. They decided to take a strategic approach to global challenges through whole government efforts including through people-to-people and societal relations.

The US defence secretary, who is on a two-day tour to New Delhi, also held wide-ranging talks with his Indian counterpart Rajnath Singh.

At a media briefing, Austin said India and the US have decided to establish an ambitious roadmap for defence-industrial cooperation. He also described the India-US global strategic partnership as the "cornerstone" of a free and open Indo-Pacific.

“Our partnership is continuing to grow rapidly and we are looking at expanding the defence industrial cooperation,” Austin said.

The US Defence Secretary arrived in New Delhi on Sunday, ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's state visit to Washington.

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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