Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday held wide-ranging talks along with his American counterpart Lloyd Austin specializing in numerous key elements of India-US defence ties and the regional safety state of affairs together with within the Indo-Pacific.

The US Defence Secretary arrived in New Delhi on Sunday on a two-day tour that comes over two weeks forward of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state go to to Washington.

Ahead of the talks, folks acquainted with Austin’s go to mentioned his discussions with Singh will deal with a variety of vital areas of cooperation, together with switch of vital applied sciences for co-development of army {hardware}.

Secretary Austin was accorded a guard of honour forward of the talks on the Manekshaw Centre.

”I’m returning to India to satisfy with key leaders for discussions about strengthening our Major Defense Partnership. Together, we’re advancing a shared imaginative and prescient for a free and open Indo-Pacific,” the US defence secretary tweeted on Sunday.

The folks cited above mentioned Singh and Austin are set to debate the General Electric’s proposal to share expertise with India for fighter jet engines and New Delhi’s plan to acquire 30 MQ-9B armed drones at a price of over USD 3 billion from US defence main General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc apart from different points.

India has been searching for manufacture of jet engines in India underneath the framework of expertise switch to energy its fighter plane.

In June 2016, the US designated India a ”Major Defence Partner” paving approach for sharing of vital army gear and expertise. It is Secretary Austin’s second go to to India. His earlier journey to India was in March, 2021.

In his handle on the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on Friday, the US Defence secretary mentioned, ”Our Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology with India lets us discover new methods to co-develop key defence platforms.” In a significant transfer, President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Modi introduced in May final 12 months the US-India initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET) to raise and broaden the strategic expertise partnership and defence industrial cooperation between the 2 nations.

The iCET is predicted to forge nearer linkages between the federal government, academia and business of the 2 nations in areas equivalent to synthetic intelligence, quantum computing, 5G and 6G, biotech, house and semiconductors.

The two nations have inked key defence and safety pacts over the previous few years, together with the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) in 2016 that enables their militaries to make use of one another’s bases for restore and replenishment of provides.

India and the US additionally signed COMCASA (Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement) in 2018 which supplies for interoperability between the 2 militaries and supplies for the sale of high-end expertise from the US to India.

In October 2020, India and the US sealed the BECA (Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement) settlement to additional enhance bilateral defence ties.

The pact supplies for sharing of high-end army expertise, logistics and geospatial maps between the 2 nations.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse employees and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)