In a joint statement on July 18, 2005, India and the United States (US) had announced their intention to resume civil nuclear cooperation. The formal agreement was concluded in 2008. The promise of significant civil nuclear cooperation between the two countries, including the sale of US nuclear reactors to India, has not materialised, though the recent Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India (SHANTI) Bill, passed by Parliament, may lead to India sourcing advanced US nuclear technology, especially in the category of small modular reactors (SMRs). But there was another equally consequential agreement concluded with the US before the more highly publicised nuclear deal. This was the 10-year “New Framework for the India-US Defence Relationship”, announced on June 28 the same year. While the civil nuclear agreement has yet to deliver on its promise, the defence agreement has been a remarkable success story, providing the bedrock of the expanding strategic partnership between the two countries. The defence agreement has been renewed twice, most recently on October 31 last year. This renewal, under the administration of US President Donald Trump, has imparted a degree of predictability and stability to a key component of the bilateral relations at a time when political relations are under strain and economic and commercial relations even more so. The two sides have also developed, over the past two decades and more, significant cooperation in high-tech sectors, including defence technology. These include the Defence Technology and Trade Initiative (DTTI), concluded in 2012, which focuses on collaborative co-development and co-production and technology transfer. This has been followed by the Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET), announced in May 2022 and officially launched in January 2023. This is aimed at collaborative advancement in artificial intelligence (AI), semiconductors, space exploration, and quantum computing. The bilateral collaboration is complemented by plurilateral collaboration envisaged in critical and emerging technologies among the Quadilateral (Quad) countries — Australia, Japan, India and the US. One should also mention the India-US Defense Acceleration Ecosystem (INDUS-X), launched on June 21, 2023. This aims to build a defence innovation bridge to foster joint research on advanced technologies, and their development and production among startups, investors and universities in both countries. This enables the implementation of the iCET, providing an institutionalised and networked platform for technological collaboration. This too has remained relatively unaffected despite Trump’s whimsical and transactional policies.
How have India-US defence and technology relations evolved over the past two decades and have these served to enhance India’s own capabilities or created dependencies that increase the country’s vulnerabilities? How long before some of these sensitive areas of collaboration are affected by the changing geopolitics in Asia and the world? Would improving relations between the US and China on the one hand, and the US and Pakistan on the other, create new challenges for India’s security?
Defence
Let’s take defence relations first. The signing of the New Framework of India-US Defence Relationship in 2005 was followed by a rapid increase in activities on defence hardware and defence cooperation, including regular joint military exercises. The revival of the Quad in 2017 and its subsequent upgrade to summit level, enabled a significant expansion in bilateral and US-led plurilateral maritime activities, with the annual Malabar maritime exercises (among India, US, Japan and Australia) taking pride of place. The armies and the air forces of the two countries also hold regular exercises to promote
inter operability. India and the US in 2017 established a 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue between their respective foreign and defence ministers, with the first meeting taking place in September 2018. This Dialogue was held annually thereafter but has not met since its last session in November 2023. This hiatus is a cause for concern.
Defence cooperation is underpinned by the four foundational agreements concluded between the two countries. The first of these, the General Security of Military Information agreement (GSOMIA), concluded in 2002, involves the protection and secure transfer of classified military protocols and intelligence.
Next is the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (Lemoa), concluded in 2016, after several years of difficult negotiations. This agreement establishes terms of reciprocal logistic support, allowing the militaries of both the countries to use each other’s bases for refuelling, accessing supplies, and to maintain military assets.
The third is the Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (Comcasa), signed in 2018, which facilitates the transfer of high-end encrypted communication equipment, allowing real-time data sharing between the US and Indian military platforms.
The fourth, and the last, in the series is the Basic Exchange and Cooperation agreement (Beca), concluded in 2020. It permits the sharing of geospatial intelligence. This is important because it gives India access to high-resolution topographical, nautical and aeronautical data from US satellites. That enables greater accuracy of missile and drone targeting.
Taken together, these foundational agreements provide a high degree of interoperability between Indian and US military forces and, by extension, among the Indian, Australian and Japanese forces, our partners in Quad, since these two countries (Japan and Australia) are also party to the same agreements as US allies.
However, the template used for these foundational agreements with US allies is different from that used for India. The language is couched in strictly reciprocal terms, even though in practice India will have less to offer than an advanced country like the US. More importantly, the application of these agreements is strictly limited to the following contingencies only: Port visits, joint exercises, humanitarian and disaster relief operations (HADR); and search and rescue operations.
For any contingency beyond the designated areas, if support is requested, a case-by-case approach is applied.
India has set up a parallel communication system for information and data-sharing with non-US platforms. This is walled off and works on its own dedicated channel with Indian proprietary encryption software. This creates a more complex command and control system but appears to have worked reasonably well so far.
A more successful recent project has been the launch of the joint Synthetic Aperture Radar mission (NISAR), by the Indian Space Research Organisation and National Aeronautics and Space Administration, on July 30, 2025. This is billed as a most complex and high-value collaboration in space. The satellite is now operational and is providing quality data for agriculture and soil mapping and for global monitoring of forest cover.
If one looks at the scope of defence and technological cooperation between India and the US, built in a sustained fashion over two decades, the progress achieved is remarkable and has been a valuable support to pursuing India’s economic aspirations. One should welcome the fact that despite political turbulence, functional cooperation in defence and technology continues. The US has included India in its global partnerships to ensure reliable and secure supply chains in critical minerals and materials. India is part of the Minerals Security Partnership and, more recently, has been invited to the Pax Silica, which is aimed at creating secure supply chains among trusted partners in the domain of rare earths and metals, which are indispensable to a range of advanced industries such as semiconductors, electric cars, renewable energy systems, and a range of defence hardware. The Quad has a parallel collaborative system in place. India must take full advantage of these opportunities to build its own capabilities.
The dependencies on the US need to be reduced over time and alternatives should be consciously planned and pursued, both in seeking other partners and developing indigenous capabilities. India has yet to build an efficient ecosystem whereby acquisition of foreign technology is geared to its assimilation through learning and eventually creating the capacity, through research & development, to emerge as a knowledge creator. This is China’s story. India is mostly locked into licensed production with each generation, when obsolete, leading to the next round of licensed production of a newer model. This is the root cause of dependency.
India cannot pursue an autarkic policy on defence and high technology. It will need partnerships well into the future. There are willing partners like Europe, Japan, Australia and the United Kingdom. We have assets we can bring to the table, such as a competitive supply of highly skilled manpower and niche areas of excellence such as space, the Digital India Stack, and a software industry which may finally be waking up to the AI age. One hopes that India’s policymakers make a careful assessment of our assets and liabilities and draw up a plan which ensures India’s emergence as a truly Viksit Bharat by 2047.
 "Trump fallout on India-US defence ties")
Premium ContentPremium ContentSubscription ExpiredSubscription Expired
