India and Britain have “closed an application” to strengthen their military forces “to fight hostile forces everywhere,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said during the 75th anniversary of the independence of the East Asian countries. South Asia.
Specifically, the UK will approve a special export order to India only, reducing the time to complete military contracts between the two countries. According to The Independent, this decision is intended to encourage India to reduce arms imports from Russia, its longtime military partner.
However, the strengthening of cooperation between the UK and India will hardly affect the military cooperation between Russia and India. Recently, one of the British ministers said that they realized that the Russia-India relationship is different from the UK-India relationship, thereby confirming that the Russia-India relationship will have its direction. India is intentionally looking to buy military equipment, especially technology-convertible equipment, in line with its ‘Atamnirbhar’ (independent) and ‘Made in India’ direction. Unlike Russia, Britain is not a major source of military equipment for India. Because, Russia and India have had a long-standing military cooperation relationship, including technology transfer and research and development cooperation.
India appreciates the offer of cooperation with the UK, but only if this cooperation helps India move towards the goal of independent production through technology transfer. Currently, Russia is dominant in this respect, and will most likely continue to hold its position for the foreseeable future.
Even the recent British efforts have not had any effect on the military relations between India and other countries. Over the past two to three decades, the UK has remained absent from the list of countries that supply the majority of military equipment to India such as Russia, the US, Israel, and France.