The UK and India have vowed to continue strengthening ties during the first visit of an Indian Defence Minister to the UK in more than 20 years.
The Ministry of Defence says here that the move “signals the growing importance of the strategic relationship between the UK and India”.
Defence Secretary Grant Shapps welcomed the Honourable Raksha Mantri Shri Rajnath Singh to the UK to agree unprecedented levels of UK-India defence cooperation.
“The Defence Secretary announced the UK’s plans to send its Littoral Response Group to Indian Ocean Region later this year, with plans for the Carrier Strike Group to visit in 2025. Both will operate and train with Indian forces. The two nations also discussed future cooperation in defence from joint exercises to knowledge sharing and instructor exchanges. These steps build on the comprehensive strategic partnership envisaged in the 2030 India-UK roadmap, announced in 2021.
In the coming years, the UK and India will also embark on more complex exercises between their respective militaries, building up to a landmark joint exercise to be conducted before the end of 2030, supporting shared goals of protecting critical trade routes and upholding the international rules-based system.”
Defence Secretary, Grant Shapps, said:
“There is absolutely no question that the world is becoming increasingly contested, so it’s vital that we continue to build on our strategic relationships with key partners like India. Together we share the same security challenges and are steadfast on our commitment to maintaining a free and prosperous Indo-Pacific. It is clear that this relationship is going from strength-to-strength, but we must continue to work hand-in-hand to uphold global security in light of threats and challenges that seek to destabilise and damage us.”
Anyone thinking there is a bit too much emphasis on round the world cruises for CSG and not enough for being ready to deploy to situations like Yemen.
We use to do one of these Asian trips every decade.
It’s what a true Blue Water Navy is designed to do , I’m pretty sure that If the need arose, a CSG could be deployed to the Arabian sea, not too sure if it is actually required yet though.
Agreed, not yet. Remember the Bira patrol. (Bira bucket).
Or Biera patrol (spelling, doh)
👍
Another example of global reach and rightly so. The light of peace is rapidly dwindling as more regional conflicts and tensions test the West’s resolve to keep a steady hand on the tiller. Keeping a lid on the current raft of crises will demand that all available fleets combine efforts to face off those who only wish to block World trade. Sadly, the theatre is far and wide and combined force exercises with India is a significant step forward.
Global reach, global spleach. Utter waste of time
👎We need to keep all our trade routes open, Now allow hostile actors to interfere with them!
Need to keep the Suez, Red Sea, Indian Ocean trade channels open so Africa, Middle East and the Subcontinent and far east world doesn’t get disconnected from the north and Western influence by a Russia-Iran-China wedge. India is a bit both sides and in BRICS but good to see the UK actively engaging with India. Wonder if T26/T31s, CAMM and even SSNR might be possibilities for India here?
Some commercial carriers have already decided to abandon use of the Red Sea and Suez Canal, due to security concerns, notwithstanding that it adds $1m to the cost of sending a container ship around the Cape of Good Hope.
Western naval efforts seem to need strengthening.
The operators don’t care.
Prices rise fast. And so do margins as per Covid when in spite of record rates per container: ships were aggressively scrapped!
If that doesn’t tell you that a highly manipulative cartel is controlling shopping prices nothing else will!
It would take 40 AAW destroyers to defend the entire Yemeni coast.
All the navy’s of the world combined can’t keep that kind of force there indefinitely.
Shouldn’t need to. This terrorist group, like a few others should have been dealt with long before today.
Jim, ‘The West’ don’t need to defend the entire Yemeni coast. Rather, we need to defend (as best we can) international shipping transiting through the Red Sea against pirates and Houthi missiles.
Against pirates – assuming that there is no appetite for grouping commercial ships into convoys and then escorting those convoys, then the West’s navies needs to be highly reactive to reported incidents.
As far as Houthi missiles/drones – the best form of defence is attack – we need to continue to attack Houthi military sites especially missile launch sites, by air and ship-delivered precision weapons & munitions. I am somewhat incredulous that UK forces only went into action on one evening then stopped.
MBDA selling full range of aircraft missiles to them now. I can’t image they are interested in surface ship designs from foreign builders now.
T26 is probably a bit much for them.
India has a healthy ship building program of their own, including a third Carrier with Emals in the pipeline together with some pretty impressive Destroyers, Frigates and Subs, can’t see them ordering any Foreign built vessels in the forseable…. Vishal is of a similar size as a QE.
India won’t be buying any ships from us, they have a healthy ship building program of their own….. take a look at what they are building mate, it’s pretty impressive.
And they’ve got more yards to do it in.
It’s about trade and money, nothing else
India is profoundly key in the future geopolitical picture of the world. There is a big question around India.
will it move towards the anti western axis ( china, Russia, Iran..and a selection of African and South American countries) ?
will it become the leading nation of a large neutral faction ( India, a number of South American nations and gulf states..I think Africa nations by their nature will not be able to be neutral)?
or will it move towards the west and cement the hegemony of liberal democracies?
A decade ago I would have said that I think India would either slip towards the anti western block or stay very neutral..it’s relationship with Russia being the the driver for this.
But the tension with china and and it’s view that china is now existential threat has balanced that out and I think the west has an opportunity to bring India in as a strategic ally. India is profoundly worried about chinas potential ability to isolate it and move into its area of influence..china has moved into Bangladesh, Maldives and Sri Lanka…with the elections and potential move of Bhutan into Chinese influence India is feeling the heat geopolitically in its region..geo strategically India is worried that china is getting into a position that it can exert pressure on sea lane and pincer India..with its navel bases in Djibouti and Cambodia and a base build in the UAE and possibly in Sri Lanka with the PLANS very large blue water navy ( profoundly overwhelming India’s navy) means that India has to worry about sea lane closure ( china has the power to isolate India that it did not have a decade ago).
All this means that India may be getting to the point it may be thinking glorious neutrality does not work with a hugely powerful aggressive communist totalitarian state sitting next door….it would be a profound change in the balance of power in our new bipolar world if India did shift to the west..but for that the west may also need to shift towards India ( and accept its less than western religions and social views as well as relationship with Pakistan..which I think is a nation lost to the western power block anyway).
I think India care much more about China than Russia. There is bad blood there, so we can, if not rely on, then expect Indian support in keeping the Indian ocean clear of Chinese carriers. Much has been made of Indian Brahmos ASMs, so it is clear where their priorities lie.
On Russia, it is obvious that India are not willing to move away from Russian cheap oil. However, they do want to distance themselves from Russian supplies of kit
Couple of interesting U-tubes.
Task & Purpose and PERUN have looked at India – no common assault rifle and a multitude of kit from various nations mean the Indian armed forces can be quite dysfunctional.
Proceedings from the USNI had a US marine on, deputy commandant USMC, formal naval aviator and he mentioned something no else does: mine the harbours and SLOCs, at another session, they were dismissive of current efforts wrt USVs, branding them a waste of money.
Should the Chinese assert hegemony over Sri Lanka, and their hold out on debt relief is concerning, Colombo Port City will be the nail in the coffin of the debt hold on Sri Lanka and PLAN sallying from Hambantota mine laying both coasts of India would seal the Indian Navy up. Game over.
The British need to return tovSri Lanka and invest in that country to bring the population back on board and wean them away from Chinese influence, together with India as a brother, we could do this; will we?
Maldives have to be next.
Indeed, we have to really focus on India as a friend. It’s one of the key ways to counter china in the Indian occean and India being on the side of the west would go a very very long way to convincing china it could not win a war against the west and so prevent a catastrophic global conflict..it’s a key bit of political warfare the west must win.
Its gonna cost us a hell of a lot of ‘Student’ visas though.
Indeed it will…but a world War will potentially cost us everything…it’s always a balance…what you give to what you get and having India in the wests camp is a huge deterrent to any future war.
Too late. It’s not doing anything to go to India unless it’s trade gaining stunt
Littoral? What has India done to us? Millions in uniform in both Worlds Wars, huge creditor Country in WW2, we owed them a fortune. What are we trying to display here?
Mutual Cooperation….. Respect 🤔
I am not sure if this is going to be a jolly or part of an effort to protect democratic nations under threat in South East Asia. By the time this happens Mr Xi’s 3rd carrier will be fully in service as too his 4th LPH and 30th or so new DDG. They will have dozens more LCACs and hundreds of their copy of the UH-60.
He has ordered “reunification” with Taiwan before the next CCP conference.
He has everything in place other than a good amphibious assault dress rehearsal. They have even stockpiled huge food reserves.
Anyway my tea leaves reckon he will do his best to distract the world and go for it before the unpredictable Trumpeter gets back into the White House.
At that point our lack of significant power projection is going to become very important. We did nothing when the people of Hong Kong were betrayed. How many more democracies will he be allowed to swallow.
Brilliant, another holiday cruise showing off our carrier equipped with a few jets ..meanwhile nothing operational gets done does it.
Press reports claim that the Yanks have asked if the UK can deploy a carrier to the Red Sea to replace Ike. If deemed practical (and it’s a big IF), it’s safe to say that CSG25 will have to be postponed – CSG26?