India and US establish INDUS-X Defense Acceleration Ecosystem

The US Department of Defense (DoD) and the Indian Ministry of Defence (MoD) have launched the India-US Defense Acceleration Ecosystem (INDUS-X) to expand the strategic technology partnership and defence industrial cooperation between the two countries’ governments, businesses, and academic institutions.

This initiative builds on a commitment by the US and Indian National Security Advisors in January 2023 to launch an “Innovation Bridge” to connect US and Indian defence start-ups as part of the US-India initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET). India’s Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX) and the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) are leading INDUS-X activities for the MoD and DoD, respectively.

Earlier in June, the two countries established a joint roadmap that identifies five high-priority opportunities for cooperation – air combat, ISR, logistics, undersea domain awareness and munitions. As part of that roadmap, leaders agreed to work together to address policy and industrial base concerns “of mutual interest” and to seek to make India a logistics hub for the U.S. and other partners in the Indo-Pacific region.

The collaboration agenda for prospective actions for INDUS-X stakeholders provides timelines and metrics to measure progress in implementing collaboration initiatives envisioned under INDUS-X:

BILATERAL COOPERATION MECHANISM

• Advisory Oversight: A Senior Advisor Group (SAG) will assess the progress of the collaboration agenda and make recommendations to the defence establishments and other INDUS-X stakeholders for future work

INDUSTRY AND ACADEMIA-LED INITIATIVES

• Mentor-Protégé Partnerships for Start-ups.
• Accelerator Program for Defence Start-ups
• Academic & Start-up Programming Partnerships with Universities and Accelerators
• Collaboration of Start-ups with Defence Majors’ Supply Chains

PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS

• Joint (Prize) Challenges
• Innovation, Testing, and Certification Labs & Centers for Defence Start-ups
• Indo-US.Joint Innovation Fund: IndiaSpora, IndUS Tech Council, Forge/Coimbatore, and T-Hub/ Hyderabad will engage private investors to garner support for investment in defence and dual-use start- ups
• Easing regulations for cross-border development & trade
• Standardization of Indo-US certifications for technology start-ups