The following excerpt is from a piece that originally appeared in the Lowy Institute’s The Interpreter on July 14, 2026.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit last week to Australia was headlined by a massive stadium event for members of the Indian diaspora in Melbourne, but also included substantive progress on India–Australia cooperation on investment, energy, sports, education, and defence. The announcement of a wide-ranging India–Australia Joint Declaration on Defence and Security Cooperation tended to be undervalued in Australian commentary with the focus on domestic debates around AUKUS, China’s growing military capabilities, and the implications of the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine.
Yet over the past decade, security cooperation between India and Australia has broadened and deepened more than many appreciate.
The two countries issued a Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation in 2009 and have built out bilateral coordination mechanisms including a 2+2 Foreign and Defence Ministerial Dialogue as well as working-level defence, diplomatic, and intelligence engagement. The two countries’ militaries participate in regular bilateral Austrahind army exercises and AUSINDEX naval exercises, as well as multilateral exercises such as MALABAR (with Quad partners), KAKADU, and TALISMAN SABRE. In practical terms, the air forces and navies now engage in air-to-air refuelling, submarine rescue, and naval replenishment. Multilateral cooperation has broadened within the Quad and through bodies including the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) and Pacific Islands Forum (PIF).
The new joint defence declaration is more ambitious. It commits to increasing the complexity of military exercises, accelerating interoperability, broadening professional military education and workforce development, and “expanding aircraft deployments from each other’s territories”. The two countries have pledged to conclude a Maritime Security Collaboration Roadmap — which will presumably build on ongoing cooperation on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR), logistics, evacuation operations, and undersea domain awareness. They also included a heavy defence and cybersecurity component (under Pillars 3 and 5) to their new Partnership on Cyber, Critical Technologies and Supply Chains (PACTS). A new space tracking terminal has been commissioned on Australia’s Cocos (Keeling) Islands for India’s human spaceflight program.
But the two countries also articulated a more ambitious objective of defence industrial cooperation, including to “develop arrangements for advanced defence science and technology collaboration.” This may appear challenging, but India has made remarkable developments in its defence industrial capabilities over the past five years. These offer little-appreciated opportunities for many of its partners, including Australia.
Read the full article here.