Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter yesterday unveiled several new initiatives to boost technology co-production and co-development rather than just simple sales.
Top on Carter’s list of new initiatives is an invitation to work on a new anti-tank missile together.
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| Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said the United States’ and Indian militaries would work together to develop a number of new projects, including a follow-on to the Javelin anti-tank missile, above. Photo courtesy of U. S. Army. |
“We identified and put forward to the Indians a truly groundbreaking and entirely new collaborative proposal to co-develop with India a next-generation Javelin anti-tank capability,” Carter said at the Center for American Progress regarding his recent trip to Asia. He said both countries need an advanced capability for their armies, and the offer was made solely to India and no other country.
Javelin was produced for the Army and Marine Corps by a Lockheed Martin [LMT]-Raytheon [RTN] joint venture.
He also noted another rare opportunity presented to India: to boost research and development collaboration, “I would be incentivizing U.S. researchers who seek and find Indian partners in the key research areas we identified previously,” including autonomy and other important research areas with broad application. “Said differently, we’ll ensure that those innovative projects receive priority funding. This is an approach we’ve only ever taken with the United Kingdom and Australia, and now India will join that company.”
During his trip to India, Carter also put forward a “quite a large number” of project ideas, which he declined to name, that U.S. defense companies identified as areas in which they’d want to collaborate with their Indian counterparts. Carter said that during his trip he asked Indian business leaders what they wanted to work on with American companies and would try to facilitate those partnerships as well.
This most recent effort follows a similar outreach about 15 months ago. Carter said the first round of collaboration set up “DTI” – which the United States views as a Defense Trade Initiative and India tends to view as a Defense Technology Initiative, highlighting Indian interest in being involved in tech development from the ground up instead of just buying finished products.
With the launch of DTI, DoD proposed to the Indian military an initial list of project ideas that U.S. industry wanted to work on with Indian industry, including a maritime helicopter, a naval gun, a surface-to-air missile system and an anti-tank system.
As was the case with the DTI launch last year, Carter said this trip also unveiled some efforts to reduce bureaucratic barriers to collaboration. In dealing with American companies competing for Indian contracts, for example, “we are taking aggressive, concrete actions to curb the kind of delays that impede timely responses by US bidders. For example, I’ve directed the department to conduct expedited anticipatory reviews of certain projects in anticipation of upcoming Indian [requests for proposals],” he said.
In many cases, American companies cannot legally enter a bid in an Indian military competition without first receiving a tech transfer license from DoD, which can be a lengthy process. Carter said the department would focus on better anticipating upcoming contracting opportunities with India and prioritize those license applications.
Carter said this would not be the end of this cooperation and expects yet another round of ideas to put forward to the Indian military.
“In the first round, I think we got a lot of very good proposals, but they were typically from companies that had done some business in India, figured out how to work with India,” Carter said. “We also want to draw in companies that haven’t tried India, who have been afraid.”