The India UK DCG meeting held its 25th round in New Delhi on Friday, with Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh co-chairing the session alongside Jeremy Pocklington, the Permanent Under Secretary for Defence of the United Kingdom. The two sides used the sitting to take stock of a decade of defence industrial engagement and to chart the next stretch of it.

Inside the India UK DCG meeting agenda

Defence sources said the two countries reviewed ongoing defence industrial cooperation, with emphasis on research and development carried forward through the India UK Vision 2035 framework and the Ten Year Defence Industrial Roadmap. Both documents have functioned since their signing as the reference points against which each Defence Consultative Group round measures progress.

This was Pocklington's first outing to India in his current capacity.


Vision 2035 and the roadmap it sits inside

According to the ministry, the two Secretaries reaffirmed their commitment to mutual security and strategic autonomy, and reiterated that the wider India-UK Strategic Partnership rests on shared values of peace, stability, freedom and mutual respect. That framing has held steady across successive rounds of the India UK DCG meeting even as the specific deliverables under it have changed.

The industrial roadmap agenda now runs alongside a separate track of hardware deals. In June, a related steering group process between the two militaries produced a package of missile and maritime propulsion agreements, and Friday's sitting sits on the same trajectory of turning framework language into named programmes.

Joint exercises and expanded military exchanges

Both sides agreed to expand bilateral exchanges between the two armed forces through joint exercises, training and capacity building.

Officials framed this as a continuation of an exchange calendar that has grown steadier over recent years rather than a fresh initiative announced at the sitting.

Maritime security and the Indo-Pacific

The two sides also acknowledged what the ministry called robust maritime security collaboration in the Indo-Pacific, including the establishment of the Regional Maritime Security Centre of Excellence under the Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative. That is a wider habit of India's, not a one-off. The tendency to convert service-to-service dialogue into a standing, named framework is the same pattern India has followed with other partners, including the strategic partnership framework it built with the UAE.

A wreath, a museum visit and a call on the CDS

Pocklington's programme in Delhi ran wider than the Consultative Group room. Ahead of the DCG sitting, the UK Defence Secretary, as the ministry's release styled him, laid a wreath at the National War Memorial and paid homage to those who gave their lives in service of the nation. He also visited the Gandhi Smriti Museum and the National Defence College.

During the visit, Pocklington held a bilateral interaction with Gen NS Raja Subramani, the Chief of Defence Staff. Gen NS Raja Subramani has kept a steady visit schedule of his own this year, including a recent review of operational readiness at South Western Air Command and the C-295 line at Vadodara.

The ministry described the visit as underlining the longstanding defence cooperation between the two countries and the regular exchange of views on issues of mutual interest. It also confirmed the release with a link back to the original statement.