Sir Michael Fallon, Secretary of State for Defence, United Kingdom discusses the India-UK Defence Partnership

Mumbai, April 17, 2017: Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations, Mumbai, in collaboration with the British Deputy High Commission hosted a roundtable discussion on 11 April with Sir Michael Fallon, Secretary of State for Defence, United Kingdom.

The meeting at Gateway House titled “India-UK Defence Partnership: Synergising “Make in India”

Sir Michael was accompanied by Stephen Lovegrove, Permanent Under Secretary, Ministry of Defence, Stephen Phipson, Head of the Defence and Security Organisation and Lt. Gen. Mark William Poffley, Deputy Chief of Defence Staff. Sir Dominic Asquith, British High Commissioner, to India was also present.

Gateway House conducted a short interview with Sir Michael Fallon, please find below a transcript of the same.

Virpratap Vikram Singh (GH): Sir Michael Fallon, welcome to Gateway House. How is the UK looking to leverage its strengths to contribute to improving India’s defence industry?

Sir Michael Fallon: India is one of our oldest friends, back in Britain. We’ve always had a good relationship, our companies trade here, our militaries exercise and train together and work very closely. But we now want to use our leaving the European Union to capitalise on the experience we have with our defence companies and their products, to match that with India’s investment in new technology, Indian brain power, and put these two things together – the research and brainpower from India, alongside some British experience and to start developing the new military technologies, that will keep us ahead of our adversaries, but also which commercially, we can then sell together into third markets.

GH: What are some of the technologies and partnerships that the UK is looking at in order to combat emerging issues such as cyber threats and hybrid warfare?

Sir Michael Fallon: We have cyber capabilities, some of our companies that we’re now going to develop through the defence and international security partnership. We hope our companies that have cyber capabilities can help work with India. We all face cyber threats now, to our governments, to our national infrastructure, and indeed to our commercial sectors, so we all have an interest in working more closely on that. Cyber isn’t the only example, there are security technologies that can help us meet these new threats where we have expertise in both India and in Britain and we want to marry that up, and move forward together in more joint partnerships.

Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations:

Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations is a foreign policy think tank in Mumbai, India, established to engage India’s leading corporations and individuals in debate and scholarship on India’s foreign policy and the nation’s role in global affairs. Gateway House is independent, non-partisan and membership-based.