For Strategic Reasons, India Must Deepen Defence Ties With the US
With India hoping to meet most of its defence needs locally, as part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan, the US and its companies are ideally positioned to be the best partners and allies for India in that campaign
Editorial Staff
For Strategic Reasons, India Must Deepen Defence Ties With the US
Over the past 15 years, ties between India and the United States (US) have scaled new heights in almost every imaginable area. The annual bilateral trade in goods and services today is in the region of $150 billion. The two countries are now natural allies. And they conduct a fair number of joint military exercises annually.
But despite this deepening partnership, trade in defence is a weak spot. As India celebrated the arrival of the first five of 36 Dassault Rafale jets from France late last month, in the middle of a border standoff with China in Ladakh, Washington’s strategic community and stakeholders in the defence industrial base watched with a mixture of dismay and disappointment. Also Read: China pushing to double nuclear warhead arsenal: Pentagon
For the US government and the country’s defence industry, the Rafale induction at once offered a glimpse into the potential of the Indian defence market and the challenges they face in getting a foothold in the same market.
India was…
