Agree To Develop Bilateral Defense Technology, India And Israel Work On Drones To Robots

Indian warplanes during a military exercise in Israel (Source: IDF Spokesperson's Unit via The Jerusalem Post)

JAKARTA - A few weeks after agreeing to identify new areas of defense cooperation, Israel and India signed a bilateral technology development agreement, such as drones, artificial intelligence and others.

The Bilateral Innovation Agreement (BIA) was signed by the chairman of India's Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) G Satheesh Reddy and the head of Israel's Directorate of Defense Research and Development (DDR&D) Danny Gold.

"Under the agreement, the two countries' startups and industries will work together to deliver next-generation technologies and products in areas such as drones, robotics, artificial intelligence, quantum technology, photonics, biosensing, brain-machine interfaces, energy storage, wearables." , natural language processing and others," the Indian Ministry of Defense said in a statement, citing The Jerusalem Post November 11.

The development will be co-funded by DRDO and DDR&D, and will be tailored to 'meet the unique requirements' of both countries and available to Israel and India.

The two countries agreed two weeks ago to set up a task force that would build on a 10-year cooperation plan to identify new areas of defense cooperation.

The plan, which will cover defense procurement, production, as well as research and development, was agreed last week during a visit by India's Ministry of Defense Director General Ajay Kumar.

Kumar met with his Israeli counterpart Director General of the Ministry of Defense Major General (ret.) Amir Eshel at Kirya Military Headquarters in Tel Aviv, for the 15th meeting of the Joint Working Group (JWG) on defense cooperation.

According to The Times of India, the two officials discussed bilateral military technology cooperation, as well as strategic challenges in the Middle East and Indo-Pacific region.

"Both sides reviewed the progress made in military-to-military engagement, including exercises and industrial cooperation," an Indian official was quoted by the report as saying, adding "it was also decided to establish a new working sub-group on defense industry cooperation.

To note, Israel has supplied India with various weapons systems, missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles over the past few years, making India one of the largest buyers of Israeli military hardware.

A 2020 report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute found that Israel's arms exports over the past four years have been the highest, accounting for 3 percent of the global total.

According to the report, the top three customers of Israeli weapons are India (45 percent of the total), Azerbaijan (17 percent) and Vietnam (8.5 percent). Meanwhile, arms sales to India consistently reach more than 1 billion US dollars per year.