India UAE army cooperation in focus as UAE Land Forces deputy commander calls on Gen Upendra Dwivedi

India UAE army cooperation moved another notch forward in New Delhi this week, with the deputy commander of the UAE Land Forces calling on Chief of Army Staff Gen Upendra Dwivedi at Army Headquarters. The call was confirmed by the Indian Army through its information service, ADG PI.

Brigadier General Staff Mohamed Khamees Mohamed Al-Hassani led the visiting side. The two officers took stock of the India UAE military relationship and where it could head next.

What the two armies discussed

Talks ran along three lines. The two sides looked at deepening bilateral military cooperation, widening the professional exchanges that already run between their officer corps, and pinning down fresh areas where the armies can work together.

Both delegations also spoke about putting the relationship on a firmer institutional footing rather than leaving it to occasional contact. Building trust between the two forces, and a common reading of regional security across the Gulf and the wider Indian Ocean, sat at the centre of the conversation between the officers.

ADG PI carried the meeting on its official handle.



India UAE army cooperation on a widening track

The call did not come out of nowhere. India and the UAE have spent the past few years turning a largely economic partnership into one with a real defence strand, and the two armies are part of that shift. They run a bilateral exercise, Desert Cyclone, which has put Indian and Emirati soldiers in the field together on Indian soil.

That army channel sits inside a broader push. New Delhi and Abu Dhabi have been holding India UAE defence cooperation talks at the official level, and the Gulf has become a live customer conversation for Indian platforms, including the BrahMos export discussions now under way. The wider partnership is steered on the Indian side through the Ministry of External Affairs and the defence establishment, which together set the pace for these army-level contacts.

The visiting delegation

Brig Gen Al-Hassani is deputy commander of the UAE Land Forces, the ground arm of the Emirati military. He brought a delegation that joined the Army Chief and senior Indian officers for the call. Photographs released by ADG PI showed the two sides in talks and a group portrait at Army Headquarters.

A late engagement in this Chief's tenure

The meeting lands in Gen Dwivedi's closing weeks in the chair. He hands over on 30 June, with Lt Gen Dhiraj Seth taking charge as the next COAS. Foreign military callers have featured steadily across his two years, and the UAE visit adds to that run. Gen Dwivedi was felicitated at a retiring officers' seminar earlier this month ahead of the handover.

Where the army channel goes next

No agreement was signed. This was a courtesy call, not a negotiating round, and it produced no contract or memorandum. What it does is keep the two armies talking at the top before a change of command in New Delhi, and set markers for the exchanges and joint activity both sides have said they want to grow. The defence track itself runs through the Ministry of Defence.

ADG PI tagged the Ministry of External Affairs, the Ministry of Defence and the Indian and Emirati missions in its post on the meeting.