Mr Salazar was joined in the discussion by Mr Michael Vaccaro, the DoD acting Executive Director for International Cooperation, and senior executives from US and Indian companies, Ms Maxwell added. As India and the US strengthen their strategic cooperation, DTTI has assumed an important role, which was reiterated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Joe Biden at their Washington summit in September.

In their joint statement after their meeting, they called upon the government and private stakeholders “to use the existing ecosystems of innovation and entrepreneurship in defence industries for co-development, co-production and expanding mutual defence trade”. PM Modi and President Biden mentioned the recent project to co-develop air-launched unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) under the DTTI and said they “encouraged more such efforts”. Mr Modi has said that under the ‘Atma Nirbhar Bharat’ initiative of boosting domestic industries he wants to make India a hub of defence manufacturing and export. For this, US collaboration could play a key role. To facilitate deeper cooperation in the defence industry, the two countries held a “summit” starting in late September on the Industrial Security Agreement (ISA) summit.

Mr Bajpai and Mr David Paul Bagnati, the Assistant Director for Defence Technology Security Administration, led the meeting to develop a protocol for the exchange of classified information between the defence industries of both nations.