2030 Roadmap for India-UK future relations – Defence & Security
By Richard McCallum
The bilateral defence relationship featured prominently in the Roadmap for India-UK future relations published on May 4th by Prime Ministers Modi and Johnson. The intent is both geopolitically strategic and bilaterally commercial. At a multilateral level, the roadmap reaffirms the UK’s support for India’s permanent membership of a reformed UN Security Council and inclusion in the Nuclear Suppliers Group.
The deepening of defence and security cooperation has several facets: expanding the Defence & International Security Partnership agreed in 2015 and the MoU on Defence Technology & Industrial Capability Cooperation (DTICC), signed in 2019; Logistic and Training MoUs; agreements to enable smoother information exchange between the armed forces on either side; more joint exercises; further focus on military education collaboration; and ambitions to set global rules on cyber and space. Underpinning all of this is the UK’s recently announced ‘tilt’ to the Indo-Pacific Region, with both sides agreeing to keep IPR sea lanes open, free, and secure.
What does this all mean for business?
Long-term opportunities are emerging in three broad areas: combat aircraft development, maritime propulsion, and space and cyber. In the short term, the maiden deployment of Britain’s Carrier Strike Group to the Indian Ocean Region later this year provides a different kind of opportunity; to bring together strategic and trade imperatives in a unique series of engagements with India.
To address these in turn: complex air systems including combat aircraft deployment will see a framework emerge through which UK industry can work more closely with India on its next-generation aerospace programmes. Look out for follow up activity to bring India’s Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) and UK industry together to collaborate on LCA Mk2, and eventually AMCA, under the banner of the UK-India Defence Technology and Industrial Capability Cooperation (DTICC) MoU, which, after a slow start, is quickly becoming a critical enabler of business opportunity for UK industry in India. Now more than ever co-creation, co-development and government-to-government stewardship is the key to success in the Indian defence sector.
Collaboration in the maritime domain, especially in India’s indigenous carrier programme and electric propulsion for its next-generation warships, is a key area of opportunity for the UK defence sector, given UK Plc’s world leading integrated electric propulsion technology: there is already a bilateral working group in this field. This comes on top of the huge opportunity presented by India’s intention to construct six AIP submarines indigenously – the ‘P-75I programme’ – from which UK industry stands to benefit. In addition to the sale of equipment, there is potential involvement in the provision of services for capability development, training, and long-term life-cycle support.
It is perhaps too early to say what an India-UK Cyber Dialogue (which is due by April 2023) will mean for business, but given the UK is Europe’s largest cyber security market and India’s own cyber market is growing at about 15% per year, we see broad and deep opportunities emerging for players in both markets. This is an area, alongside homeland security, which UKIBC is currently developing with a number of State Governments in India at the request of our members and the British Government.
We are particularly interested that the roadmap devotes time to Space. Following last month’s publication of the Integrated Review[1] which provided an outline of Britain’s ambitions in the Space sector, the roadmap included some interesting ideas, including an ambition to create an India-UK Space cooperation framework. Like much in the Integrated Review, the roadmap’s clauses on Space interweave strategic and commercial considerations: Space is a £14Bn industry in the UK (including £5.5Bn of exports) while India, which accounts for 3% of the global space sector, is likely to become one of the world’s key Space hubs. Recently, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) begun encouraging greater private participation in India’s Space activities to boost the domestic Space economy and better diffuse Space technology.
UKIBC’s Aerospace & Defence Industry Group, whose 15 members represent $60Bn in global turnover and span large OEMs to systems operators to niche SMEs, will continue to play a central role in Team UK’s approach to India, and to supporting UK firms who seek to explore, enter and expand in the world’s 3rd largest defence market.
[1] The Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy
