There was guarded optimism among military experts in India as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and U.S. President Donald Trump outlined plans to ramp up sales of defense systems to New Delhi.
There was guarded optimism among military experts in India as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and U.S. President Donald Trump outlined plans to ramp up sales of defense systems to New Delhi, including F-35 stealth fighter jets, to deepen the U.S.-India strategic relationship.
“Defense sector is a big money, and India happens to be one of the top buyers in the world,” said Lt. Gen. Vinod Bhatia, India’s director-general for military operations from 2012 to 2014. “As long as we buy, Trump will be happy but it’s surely going to expand our conventional deterrence.”
The meeting signaled that “defense diplomacy is the core of diplomacy these days,” Bhatia said.
In a joint statement at the White House, the two leaders announced plans to sign a new 10-year framework later this year for the U.S.-India Major Defense Partnership.
Modi and Trump “pledged to elevate military cooperation across all domains — air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace — through enhanced training, exercises, and operations, incorporating the latest technologies,” the statement said.
The leaders also “committed to break new ground to support and sustain the overseas deployments of the U.S. and Indian militaries in the Indo-Pacific, including enhanced logistics and intelligence sharing,” the statement said.
While Indian military experts have long sought to diversify national defense procurements, analysts say it will take years to reduce New Delhi’s dependency on Russian arms, even with expanded defense cooperation with the U.
