India- Israel Technology Cooperation and New Defensive Technolgies

These development efforts will be funded by the DRDO and DDR&D Israel. The dual-use technology is a new way of doing business, the term dual-use technology refers to the technology that can be used for both military and peaceful purposes. This is a way of achieving multiple goals at the same time. Israel is a hub for high tech startups and it is often referred to as the “Silicon Valley” of the region. Israel is one of the few nations with its satellite launch capability. A countries technological advancement is always dependent on the research and development in the defence field and the technology gets trickled down to the general population by making it cheaper and adding more real-time applications to the technology. Eg: Bluetooth, GPS. Israel also supplies 10% of Military equipment to the United States and EU Nations. In military might, Israel is currently in 11^th place, in the Middle East Israel has the most powerful military. This Dual-use Agreement is beneficial to both countries due to the shared innovation and easy technology transfer. India and Israel trade around $ 5 Billion annually and $ 1 Billion in defence trade according to various estimates.

Under the agreement, startups and industries of both countries will work together to bring out next-generation technologies and products in the areas such as Drones, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Quantum technology, Photonics, Biosensing, Brain-Machine Interface, Energy Storage, Wearable Devices, Natural Language Processing, etc Israel is well known for their defence technology programs. India is the largest buyer of Israeli military hardware accounting for 45% of arms exports of Israel, India has been buying various weapons systems, missiles, Unmanned areal vehicles. Israel accounts for 3 per cent of total global arms exports according to the 2020 report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. And this is the highest ever exports done by Israel till now. India has consistently bought weapons worth over $ 1billion per year from Israel. Israel is one of the most technologically advanced and innovative countries when it comes to defence technology, robotics and AI, they have been doing transformative work in every sector in defence technologies from autonomous drones to missiles. Even though Israel is innovative, having ties with a country like India with a big economy and tolerant views towards its religion, long-standing friendship is beneficial to Israel. Indian Research and development sector is not as strong as the other world leaders, technology innovation ties like this with a country like Israel will contribute towards the advancement in the specific sectors.

This agreement is referred to “As a tangible demonstration of the growing Indo–Israeli technological cooperation,”[1] The agreement was signed between and Secretary, Department of Defence, R&D & Chairman DRDO Dr G Satheesh Reddy and Head of DDR&D, Israel BG (Retd) Dr Daniel Gold in New Delhi on November 09, 2021.

Products and technologies will be customised to meet the unique requirements of both countries. The technologies which are developed under BIA will be available to both countries for their domestic applications. Israel only shared bilateral technological cooperation which includes Defence and artificial intelligence with the United States, it developed some of the advanced missile defence systems like the “Arrow” and “David Sling” with joint development and cooperation agreements like this. it also has bilateral technological cooperation with Australia but it is mainly focused on biotechnology and IT research and cyber security. India is the third country to share a bilateral innovation agreement with Israel and the second country to share a bilateral innovative agreement that includes defence technologies and Artificial intelligence and Quantum computer research. Israel is trying to develop the first quantum computer with real-life applications. India also launched Qsim (Quantum simulations) project to help in quantum computing research, the technological cooperation can cut down the cost of research and development in both countries with increased possibilities of positive outcomes. Not only defence equipment but the other industries included in this agreement are going to aid the future dependency of India for advanced technologies, with the growing use of AI and electric vehicles the cooperation into the AI and energy storage is going to give an advantage to India in terms of domestic manufacturing, cut down its imports and be self-sufficient. This reduces the time required to develop a system, increases the rate at which the technology advances and is incorporated into military systems. This also reduces the cost of acquiring cutting edge technologies. This agreement included the sector of drone development as well. Indian Air Force currently operates more than 180 Israeli made unmanned aerial vehicles including Israeli aerospace industries made searchers and 68 Heron 1s surveillance and intelligence gathering and Indian airforce also have a fleet of Harpy UAVs which carry high explosive warheads. 60% of the drones are manufactured in Israel. In September 2020 India has purchased four Herron MK which costs around $ 200 million II unmanned aerial vehicles from the Israel aerospace industry to upgrade the military to deal with the current border strife. The cooperation in the defence sector can lead to cheaper manufacturing of equipment and support the Indian government's goal of manufacturing most of the defence equipment domestically. India and Israel also discussed carrying out joint research and development in the field of big data and artificial intelligence last year.  

To enhance these bilateral relationships between the two countries, recently India and Israel also agreed to form a task force to formulate a comprehensive ten-year cooperation plan to identify new areas of independence cooperation between India and Israel. This agreement was done during the 15th meeting of the Joint Working Group on defence cooperation, the meeting took place at the Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv, between Ajay Kumar, the director-general of the Indian ministry of defence and his Israeli counterpart, director-general of the defence ministry Maj.-Gen. (ret.) Amir Eshel. “The two sides reviewed the progress made in military-to-military engagements including exercises and industry cooperation. The co-chairs were apprised of the progress made by the sub-working groups (SWGs) on defence procurement and production and research and development,” [2] according to the Indian Defence Ministry statement.

The impact of these agreements won't be immediate but the countries will become more dependent on each other and give a boost to both countries economies in certain sectors. The cooperation in science and technology industries between the two countries has been going since 1993, the ties between India and Israel grew steadily from 1992 when the two countries started their diplomatic relations. Prime minister Narendra Modi’s comment “as technological partners, both Israel and India can transform the world” on his visit to Israel in 2017 shows the current government intentions to tighten the ties that are grown through the years. The Israeli President Isaac Herzog said that “We must expand the circle of Israelis and Indians who are working together” and noted there is “great potential to expand cooperation in a range of fields, including health, trade, defence, environment and combating the COVID-19 pandemic.” These actions will deepen the countries ties and India’s foreign affairs with Israel will continue to grow. This shows the mutual trust of the countries to make some sectors of their economies depend on one other. This agreement came after two high-level visits to Israel from India. India’s foreign minister S Jaishankar and India’s defence secretary Ajay Kumar travelled to Israel recently.

Notes

[1] DRDO & Directorate of Defence R&D, Israel sign Bilateral Innovation Agreement for development of dual use technologies Posted On: 09 NOV 2021 5:12PM by PIB Delhi https://pib.gov.in/PressReleseDetail.aspx?PRID=1767593

[2] India, Israel to work on 10-year roadmap for defence cooperation https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/india-israel-to-work-on-10-year-roadmap-for-defence-cooperation-101635521274759.html

Pic Courtsey-Federico Beccari at unsplash.com

(The views expressed are those of the author and do not represent views of CESCUBE.)