Lloyd Austin, the United States (US) secretary of defence, will visit India in early June to advance discussions on bilateral defence cooperation, Ely Ratner, the assistant secretary for Indo-Pacific security affairs in the department of defense said on Thursday.
Ratner, a key architect of the administration’s defence posture in the region, also said that India and the US are now more strategically aligned than ever before and there is a clear directive from the top political leadership in the American system that the defence relationship with India was top priority and could not continue in “business-as-usual” mode.
He hinted at major announcements during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state visit to the US on June 22, and expressed categorical support for co-production and co-development of defence systems to strengthen India’s indigenous capabilities.
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This will be Austin’s second trip to India and his seventh visit to the Indo-Pacific since taking office in January 2021. Austin is travelling to Tokyo and then Singapore, where he will address the Shangrila dialogue before heading to New Delhi on June 4.
The secretary’s visit comes in the run-up to Modi’s state visit, where defence cooperation is expected to figure prominently among the outcomes. Austin is the fourth US cabinet-level secretary to visit India this year. Secretary of State Antony J Blinken, treasury secretary Janet Yellen and commerce secretary Gina Raimondo visited India in February and March.
Speaking at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a prominent Washington DC think tank, in response to a question from HT, Ratner said Austin’s visit comes amidst a “historic period in building out, deepening, modernising, advancing the US-India major defence partnership”.
He referred to the launch of the initiative on critical and emerging technologies (ICET) this January which has a major component on defence industrial cooperation, a recent visit by Indian defence secretary for bilateral consultations with top Pentagon officials, Austin’s upcoming visit, and Modi’s visit, which Ratner said, will be “very rich”.
Acknowledging that there have been “fits and starts” in the domain of bilateral defence industrial cooperation, Ratner said, “What we are seeing is closer than ever strategic alignment including on this question of what we have as a shared priority of deepening co-development and co-production and strengthening India’s indigenous military capabilities as it is looking to strengthen its own military, as it is looking to be a net security provider in the region, and as it is looking to diversify away from Russian systems.”
Ratner said these were all areas that the US supported. “This not only allows us to deepen our engagement from a technology and a systems perspective but also operate together and deploy these systems more than we have previously. We are very excited.”
Ratner said that success in this area would require not operating in a “business-as-usual” mode. “Our leaders from the president, national security adviser (NSA) to the secretary of defence downwards have said in the case of India, it is not business-as-usual. This is a major priority. In this particular area of co-production and co-development, with ICET as the foundational institution for that, we want to see results.”
The White House factsheet on ICET, released at the end of the NSA-level talks in January, had said that the US would conduct an “expeditious review” of an application from General Electric (GE) “to jointly produce jet engines that could power jet aircraft operated and produced indigenously by India”. Both sides believe that a green signal to GE would be an important symbol of the deepening strategic relationship and of the US commitment to the Make in India initiative and India’s quest for self-reliance.
Ratner said that work is progressing in the area. “On the questions of GE engines or other type of capabilities under defence capabilities under the ICET rubric, we are spending enormous amount of time on all this. We will be discussing all of this when the Secretary is in Delhi and are aiming to make major announcements when PM comes. Watch this space and you will know in a month’s time whether we succeed.”
Ratner served as deputy NSA to Joe Biden when he was vice president during the Barack Obama administration and is an influential figure in Pentagon. He has played a key role in supporting Japan’s quest for military modernisation, operationalising the Australia-United Kingdom-US (AUKUS) nuclear submarine deal, and deepening US defence cooperation with South Korea, Philippines and the Pacific Island countries in the past two years.