Calling on India and the United States to quickly look at co-development of military hardware and not just co-production, U.S. Ambassador Eric Garcetti on Tuesday outlined how India can be a “great market place and producer” for countries that might not always be able to afford top-shelf equipment. This can be done to dissuade countries from going to “mutual adversaries” to get their weaponry, he added.
“We can deter, we can defend, we can also de-escalate together, because the goal... is not to wage war but is to protect peace,” Mr. Garcetti said, speaking at the second India-U.S. Defence Acceleration Ecosystem (INDUS-X) summit. “Co-production is not the same thing as co-development. We need to make sure we are looking at co-development not just for the sake of that but something that India needs in its military and that America needs it... and quickly we can look at co-development...”
The INDUS-X was launched in June 2023 during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s State visit to the U.S., and is meant to expand strategic technology partnerships and defence industrial cooperation between the Indian and U.S. governments, businesses, and academic institutions. INDUS X will be a defence innovation bridge which would include joint challenges, a joint innovation fund, academia engagement, industry-startup connections, investment by private entities in defence projects, mentoring by experts, and niche technology projects, the Defence Ministry had stated.
On similar lines, stating that the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal set a “new echelon of trust” between the two governments and helped get over a lot of past historical apprehensions between the two countries, USIBC president Atul Keshap emphasised on the power of private sectors of the two countries to collaborate and innovate together, to design, develop and produce together. “I think both governments need to really expand that flame of the private sector to private sector partnership. And if they do that, it’s going to greatly add to our shared deterrence,” he said.
‘War is not the goal’, Garcetti quotes Rig Veda, Mahabharata
Mr. Garcetti referred to Indian epics to stress that the goal was “not to wage war”. He noted that the Rig Veda refers to Indra as the most powerful God, the God of thunder, and in many ways the God of war too. However, there are two traditions in India, he said, one that is in the Mahabharata, where war is treated as something kind of exciting, grim, but a sport, and even a religious duty.
“We know that well. And when we were not as hopefully civilized as we are today, every culture embraced the necessity of war as places were conquered, as people suffered, histories that were never written,” he said. “But there is a second of thought, [in the Arthashastra, which, long before [Prussian general Carl von] Clausewitz, literally said that war was a continuation of politics by other means, over 2,000 years before we studied it in our war colleges. Like so much we discover in India, it was actually written here first.”
Driving strategic partnerships
Organised by Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX) under the Department of Defence Production, the Ministry of Defence, and the U.S. Department of Defence, in conjunction with the U.S.-India Business Council and the Society of Indian Defence Manufacturers, the summit aims to be a “pivotal event driving strategic technology partnerships and defence industrial cooperation” between India and the U.S., the Defence Ministry said in a statement.
Two defence innovation challenges related to the maritime domain — underwater communications for the Indian Navy, and oil spill detection for the Coast Guard — have since been launched under INDUS-X, for which the selection of companies from both sides is underway.
