Lucknow, 5 February 2020: Mr Apurva Chandra, Director General (Acquisition) and Additional Secretary, Department of Defence, Govt of India, today said that Israel is the key contributor to India’s readiness to face challenges.
Speaking at ‘India-Israel Opportunities in Defence Cooperation: Future Vectors of the Digital Battlefield’, organised by FICCI, jointly with SIBAT (Israel Ministry of Defence) and Indian Ministry of Defence (MoD) at DefExpo 2020, Mr. Chandra said that Israel is the largest contributor to India’s preparedness of any adversaries and has been always forthcoming to share high-end technology.
He expressed his confidence on a continued partnership with Israel as all the MoD contracts so far have been concluded on time and the overall experience with Israel has been highly satisfying.
Mr. Chandra listed out unmanned vehicles, UAVs, border management and after-sales support/ MRO as the new focus areas of cooperation between India and Israel at the seminar that brought together stakeholders from the two nations to deliberate upon the opportunities for cooperation.
Brig Gen (Retd) Yair Kulas, Director, SIBAT, Ministry of Defence, Government of Israel, said that Israel looks forward to sharing its deep knowledge and technology expertise in the Future Vectors of the Digital Battlefield. He said that cooperation and collaboration are the key to a strong India-Israel defence partnership.
Dr Ron Malka, Ambassador of Israel to India, in his opening remarks said that India-Israel partnership is steadily growing on the foundation of mutual respect, trust, values, interest, tradition and culture. Seeking more joint ventures, he hoped for transforming the cooperation from buyer-seller relationship to strategic partnership.
He also added that India and Israel are world leaders in science and technology, and that the scope of cooperation between the two countries is tremendous and across multiple domains.
Mr SP Shukla, Chair FICCI Defence Committee and Group President – Aerospace & Defence, Member – Group Executive Board, Mahindra Group, said that future battlefield will be highly digital centric and a cooperation between India and Israel on Digital Battlefield technologies are critical to our future partnership.
Mr Arun T Ramchandani, Co-chair, FICCI Defence Committee and VP & Head, Weapon and Engineering Systems, L&T Defence, complimented FICCI and SIBAT for the initiative and expressed his confidence on a meaningful deliberations and outcome from the seminar.
Senior officials from industry and armed forces of India and Israel gave presentations during the seminar.
