Israel key contributor to India's defence preparedness:Official

Israel is a key contributor to India's readiness to face security challenges, a senior defence ministry official said here Wednesday.

"Israel is the largest contributor to India's preparedness against adversaries and has always been forthcoming to share high-end technology," Director General (Acquisition) and Additional Secretary (Defence) Apurva Chandra said.

He was speaking at a programme, 'India-Israel Opportunities in Defence Cooperation: Future Vectors of the Digital Battlefield', organised by FICCI jointly with SIBAT (Israel Ministry of Defence) and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) at the DefExpo 2020.

Chandra expressed confidence on maintaining partnership with Israel as all the MoD contracts so far have been concluded on time and the overall experience with Israel has been highly satisfying.

He listed unmanned vehicles, UAVs, border management and after-sales support as the new focus areas of cooperation between India and Israel at the seminar that brought together stakeholders from the two nations to deliberate upon the opportunities for cooperation.

Brig Gen (retd) Yair Kulas, Director, SIBAT, Ministry of Defence, Israel, said his country looks forward to sharing its deep knowledge and technology expertise in the future vectors of the digital battlefield.

He said cooperation and collaboration are the key to a strong India-Israel defence partnership.

Israeli Ambassador Dr Ron Malka said the India-Israel partnership is steadily growing on the foundation of mutual respect, trust, values, interest, tradition and culture.

Seeking more joint ventures, he hoped for transforming the cooperation from the buyer-seller relationship to a strategic partnership.

He said India and Israel were world leaders in science and technology and the scope of cooperation between the two countries was tremendous.

Senior officials from industry and armed forces of India and Israel gave presentations during the seminar.