Strategic partners India and France have agreed to form a joint working group to examine the operational, military logistics, and political lessons learned from Ukraine’s ongoing conflict. Members of the working group will come from both countries national security and foreign ministries.
On November 28, French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu met with Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval to deepen the two countries seabed-to-space cooperation, with a focus on joint design, development, and manufacturing of hardware platforms in India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Aatmanirbhar Bharat” project.
In terms of technology sharing and the exchange of futuristic implementable ideas, India and France have also decided to synergize and cooperate in the fields of cyber-security and space. The India-France alliance, led by Prime Minister Modi and French President Emmanuel Macron, is now discussing joint research and development of aircraft engines, fighter planes, long-range submarines, and other hardware critical to winning future wars. During the meeting with NSA Doval, it was agreed that both parties would prioritize hardware projects and then co-develop them under the “Aatmanirbhar Bharat” initiative. To cut through the bureaucratic red tape within the Indian military-civilian babudom, specific timelines will be set for each design, development, and manufacturing of military products. Platforms for subsurface awareness to maritime time awareness on the surface and in the skies are among the products.
With Indian and French leaders broadly agreeing on how to end the Ukraine war, expert groups from the two countries will try to draw lessons from the ongoing conflict, which has entered a winter hibernation and will erupt once the snow hardens in Ukraine. This will allow both sides to regroup and obtain much-needed supplies before the fighting resumes on the ground. Due to low morale, poor logistics supply lines, a scarcity of spares, and an inability to dominate the airspace over Ukraine, the Ukraine war is turning out to be a quagmire for Russian troops. The US-funded and supplied Ukraine war effort is in much better shape, with American Stinger and Javelin missiles wreaking havoc on the Russian air force and armor on the ground. Long-range artillery and rockets are also causing havoc on the Russian frontline in the Luhansk-Donbas region.
The fact is that the Ukraine war demonstrated the effectiveness of stand-off weapons and the inadequacy of nuclear power with demonstrative weapons to win a ground war. The India-France dialogue will deepen further when Emmanuel Bonne, French President Macron’s diplomatic advisor, visits India in January 2023 for strategic dialogue with NSA Ajit Doval.
