US is helping India develop its own defence industrial base
At a US Congressional hearing on Indo-Pacific by the House Armed Services Committee, the Biden administration said it is looking to “deepen our military-technical cooperation” including “providing them arms and equipment so we can build interoperable forces and capabilities and work with India.”
During a hearing at a Congressional hearing on Indo-Pacific by the House Armed Services Committee Congressman Doug Lamborn asked for the Biden administration’s “plan to build a stronger partnership with India both economically and militarily” so “India can be a “counterweight to China.” USA Acting Assistant Secretary of Defence for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs David Helvey said that Washington is looking to “deepen our military-technical cooperation with India” including “providing them arms and equipment so we can build interoperable forces and capabilities and work with India.” Giving India a “unique designation” as a “major defence partner,” he said his country is also looking to develop India’s “own defence industrial base” so New Delhi can “produce equipment to service their needs and to be able to work with us and others around the region.”
He said that the US is “looking at ways to operationalise this defence partnership” so the two countries “can work together in the defence space in pursuit of common interests based on our converging strategic interest.” In recent years, India and the US have built some “foundational agreements” like “information security or logistics arrangements” that has facilitated the US to “share more information” to build a “common strategic understanding of the types of threats.” The two countries he says, have amply demonstrated that the two countries’ forces have worked together “in maritime domain awareness or maritime security or humanitarian assistance and disaster response.”
India and the US have been holding multiple military exercises
Admiral Phil Davidson, Commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command added that information sharing and cold-weather gear product sharing across the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China has “gone a long way to deepening our relationship and really presents a key strategic opportunity.” Helvey said that with these foundations, the US feels the partnership is now “poised to accelerate” to build interoperability through increasingly complex exercises, growing defence trade, expand information sharing, and secure communications. The US, he said, is also “pursuing emerging partnerships with Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, and the Maldives.”
Admiral Phil Davidson, Commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command said China has one million propoganda army
As the first high-level visit by the newly inducted Biden Administration, US Secretary of Defence, General Lloyd J Austin is visiting India March 19-21 to “strengthen bilateral defence cooperation and exchange views on regional security challenges and common interests in maintaining a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific region.” Significantly, this is the first time India is included in the maiden trip by a US Defence Secretary.
Apart from meeting his counterpart Raksha Mantri (Defence Minister) Rajnath Singh, the two leaders will have the first ever virtual Quad summit between the heads of governments of India, the US, Japan, and Australia. US Defence Attaché in India, Rear Admiral Eileen Laubacher said that the Quad countries are increasingly worried about “an increasingly provocative set of behaviour throughout the Indo-Pacific, from the Taiwan Strait to the South China Sea, to India’s borders” threatening “the norms of international conduct” that both countries “uphold resolutely.”
Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh with US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin