India, UK hold defence equipment cooperation meet
India-UK Defence Equipment Sub-Group and Industry Oversight Working Group meetings were held on Tuesday in the national capital.
The Defence Equipment Sub-Group meeting was co-chaired by Anurag Bajpai, the Additional Secretary of the Department of Defence, India Ministry of Defence and Shimon Fhima, the Director of Strategic Programmes, UK Ministry of Defence.
The Industry Oversight Working Group meeting was co-chaired by Air Vice Marshal Tarun Chaudhry ACAS (Projects), Indian Air Force and Frank Clifford OBE, Deputy Director of UK Security and Defence Export, UK Government, the spokesperson of Defence Ministry, A Bharat Bhushan Babu, said in a statement.
Recently, the Littoral Response Group (LRG) arrived in Chennai on March 26 as the first engagement of the UK's deployment to the Indian Ocean region. Littoral Response Group is a UK Royal Navy task group.
The Littoral Response Group (South) is a multi-functional amphibious task force equipped to undertake a wide spectrum of activity in the littoral environment. It consists of the ships Royal Fleet Auxiliary and RFA Lyme Bay with embarked forces centred on a Royal Marines strike force.
Notably, this was the first time a Royal Navy vessel underwent maintenance at an Indian shipyard - a direct result of the logistics-sharing agreement signed between the UK and India in 2022.
Earlier, during Defence Minister Rajnath Singh's UK visit, India and UK agreed that the latter would send its naval groups -- Littoral Response Group and Carrier Strike Group -- to the Indian Ocean Region, in addition to holding multiple joint military exercises and expanding defence cooperation with India.
In the coming years, the UK and India will also embark on more complex exercises between their respective militaries, building up to a landmark joint exercise to be conducted before the end of 2030, supporting shared goals of protecting critical trade routes and upholding the international rules-based system, the UK government informed in a release.
(ANI)