Top 10 points on defence talks between India and UK; focus on Make in India, military engagement

NEW DELHI: The UK Secretary of State for Defence Sir Michael Fallon is on a four-day visit to India, which began from April 11. The India-UK delegation level talks were held here today.

The UK side was led by Sir Michael Fallon while the Indian delegation was headed by Defence Minister Arun Jaitley.

Here are the main points of the joint statement issued after the talks:

1.Jaitley and Fallon set out a shared vision for the India-UK Defence Partnership. The visit consolidates India-UK defence cooperation in the framework of the Defence and International Security Partnership (DISP), agreed in November 2015.

2. The defence partnership will encompass cooperation in the defence industry, stronger military to military engagement, including training and joint exercises.

3. The renewed engagement will place capability and technology development at its core and use the private and public sectors to develop defence solutions for use in home and shared export markets.

4. The Defence ministers will continue to coordinate policies across a range of global security challenges, especially those intended to eliminate international terrorism.

5. The ministers agreed to further strengthen their naval interactions, including enhanced Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) to exchange information to track terrorists and pirate vessels. This is key to the DISP.

6. The two nations will endeavour to build capability partnerships focussing on best practices in Counter Terrorism, Counter Improvised Explosive Devices, air force training, aircraft carriers, maritime safety, shipbuilding and UN peacekeeping.

7. The two ministers recognised the potential for further cooperation in defence manufacturing between the UK and Indian companies under ‘Make in India’.

8. Recent announcements were made including the MOU between Bharat Dynamics and Thales UK on technology transfer opportunities for missile systems. And to develop an Advanced Hawk jet trainer jointly by the BAE Systems and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL).

9. Both nations will explore establishing a secure communications method to share classified material.

10. The two ministers recognised the need for stronger R&D cooperation, including access to Defence R&D training.