INDUS-X: Two-day Indo-US bilateral defence summit kicks off in Delhi

A two-day bilateral defence cooperation meeting, called the India-US Defence Accelerator Ecosystem (INDUS-X), kicked off in Delhi on Tuesday marking a significant milestone in collaboration between the two countries in defence innovation.

Launched in June 2023 during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state visit to the US, INDUS-X has driven the expansion of bilateral ties in defence innovation.

While being initially greeted with little fanfare, this US-India defence technology initiative could prove crucial for developing ways of deterring China.

For the two-day INDUS-X Summit, stakeholders from both nations have converged in New Delhi to explore emerging opportunities and chart the future trajectory of defence relations.

Organised by Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX) under the Ministry of Defence (MoD), and the US Department of Defence (DoD), in conjunction with the US-India Business Council (USIBC) and Society of Indian Defence Manufacturers (SIDM), the summit aims to drive strategic technology partnerships and defence industrial cooperation between India and the US.

There is much in common between the INDUS-X and a similar US-India cooperation initiative called the Defence Trade and Technology Initiative (DTTI) that was put in place during the presidencies of George W Bush and Barack Obama.

Like the DTTI, the INDUS-X is breaking information silos, building networks of cooperation and reducing bureaucratic and regulatory friction between the two defence ministries.

Two Washington-based scholars of US-India relations, Sameer Lalwani and Vikram J Singh, wrote last week that INDUS-X could become one of the most consequential US-India cooperation frameworks in the days ahead.