Defence Minister Rajnath Singh to visit US from August 23-27

Ajay Banerjee

New Delhi, August 16

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will visit the US from August 23-27. His visit comes at a time when India’s most ambitious indigenous programme—manufacturing of the Tejas fighter jet—has been held up due to delays in contracted supplies of engines to be supplied by a US firm.

Rajnath’s visit to the US will the first by a top Indian Cabinet Minister since Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Moscow (July 8-9) that caused a diplomatic ‘irritant’, with US and its allies questioning the timing of the visit. They asked India to use its relationship with Moscow to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The Indian Defence Minister will meet his American counterpart Llyod Austin and is expected to take up the delayed engine supplies, and push for several high technology-related items.  

The Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) awaits the supplies of the engine—of the F404 series—from General Electric. It has flagged the matter to the Ministry of Defence (MoD). HAL is public sector company with the MoD holding majority stakes. At present, the lack of engines is hampering deliveries of the 83 Tejas Mark-1A jets ordered by the MoD to HAL in February 2021 under a Rs 48,000 crore order. Deliveries were to commence three years after signing of the contract, or by March this year. 

Apart from the engine, among other things, India and the US are looking at cutting-edge military technology, including military-grade semi-conductors to guide long-range missiles and new artificial intelligence-backed situational awareness equipment that would be jointly developed by a US company with an India partner.

The two sides are exploring co-production of the Javelin anti-tank guided missile and the armoured personal carrier, the Stryker. These are in addition to procurement of the long-range armed drones, the MQ9B and the joint production of the General Electric’s F414 jet engine for the Tejas Mark2 jets, an upgrade from the Tejas Mark1A. India has expressed an interest in the coproduction of the Stryker.  

In the last week of June, US State Department’s Deputy Secretary Kurt Campbell had mentioned about the US-India initiative for Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET) and said “We are also launching a new strategic semiconductor partnership between General Atomics and 3^rd ITECH to co-develop semiconductor design and manufacturing for precision-guided ammunition and other national security-focused electronics platforms”.

India and the US are working to expand defence industrial partnerships and the launch of an AI multi-domain situational awareness product jointly developed by General Atomics and 114AI to support joint all-domain command and control.  

The two sides also have a $90 million fund created for the US-India Global Challenges Institute. Also, the United States Space Force and the Indian startups are working on advancing space situational awareness, data fusion technologies and infrared sensor manufacturing.

US Department of Defense Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh, while addressing a media briefing on Thursday, said: “We are looking forward to a visit (of Rajnath Singh)”.

Singh mentioned “the relationship with India remains one of great importance. It’s one of great importance to the Indo-Pacific as well”.

“We still have great military relationship between our two countries,” Singh added.