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Photo: Seahawk helicopter 'Scarecrow' on HMAS Stuart, deployed on Exercise Malabar in India (LSIS Rikki-Lea Phillips/Australian Government Defence Imagery)
Research|India-Australia defence ties: Advancing a vital Indo-Pacific partnership
India-Australia defence ties: Advancing a vital Indo-Pacific partnership
The India–Australia defence partnership has advanced considerably since 2020 in response to their threat environments, and now involves high-level political consultations, sophisticated military exercises, and intelligence and technological cooperation.
Challenges remain, including a lack of compatible secure communications systems, export control restrictions, and different defence industrial requirements and capabilities.
3.The two countries can take steps to overcome these obstacles, increase access and support for maritime patrol aircraft and naval vessels in each other’s territories, and prioritise defence co-production projects that meet both their requirements.
Introduction
During Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Australia in July 2026 — his third in 12 years as India’s leader — he signed a Joint Declaration on Defence and Security Cooperation with his Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese. The two prime ministers also agreed to a classified Joint Maritime Security Collaboration Roadmap; an Australia–India Partnership on Cyber, Critical Technologies and Supply Chains (PACTS) that included a defence pillar; and a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Australia’s Maritime Border Command and the Indian Coast Guard. A month earlier, the two countries’ defence ministers also agreed to work towards an MoU on the Provision of Defence Articles and Defence Services. These agreements received relatively little attention in Australia, where the prime ministers’ joint event for 25,000 members of the Indian diaspora in Melbourne dominated news coverage. But the growing convergence on security and defence between India and Australia represents an important strategic development, one driven by similar concerns about China’s assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific and the prospect of more mercurial US policy towards the region.
The strengthening partnership between India and Australia builds upon two decades of rapidly developing ties. In recent years, their relations have been primarily shaped by migration and commerce. There are now one million people of Indian origin in Australia, and bilateral trade has grown to over $50 billion following the Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement (ECTA) concluded in 2022. Increasingly, however, the relationship has acquired a security dimension. Their defence engagement now encompasses structured political-military dialogues; regular ground, air, and naval military exercises; intelligence and technological cooperation; and regular military-to-military exchanges and training programs. Within the Quad — along with the United States and Japan — the two countries are involved in expanding maritime domain awareness (MDA) in the Indo-Pacific, improving shared logistics capabilities, coordinating on economic and technological security, and collaborating on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief efforts.
While challenges persist — including inadequate communications systems and restrictive export controls — there is today scope for more ambitious security cooperation between Canberra and New Delhi. This could take the form of more frequent and meaningful joint operations, particularly of P-8 maritime surveillance aircraft to each other’s island territories, as well as greater defence industrial co-production. Achieving this intended level of security cooperation requires understanding the two countries’ strategic environments, assessing recent developments in security cooperation, and identifying practical pathways to joint operations and defence industrial co-production. Near-term steps could include: concluding an agreement on the Provision of Defence Articles and Defence Services; resolving obstacles to secure communications and maintenance; identifying and pursuing specific defence co-production projects; and enabling reciprocal access for P-8 aircraft to each other’s island territories.
I. The strategic context
India–Australia strategic relations were traditionally constrained by four major factors. One was the political logic of the Cold War (1945–1991), during which Australia allied closely with Britain and the United States, and India remained non-aligned before tilting to the Soviet Union after 1971. This resulted in, among other things, Australia enjoying closer security relations with India’s strategic rival Pakistan during the late Cold War and the immediate post-Cold War periods. The legacy of this era endures. Australia remains embedded in US alliance networks, while India continues to stand apart from many formal structures — an asymmetry that complicates bilateral security cooperation to this day.
A second factor was India’s nuclear weapons program, which contributed to US-led export controls against the country, particularly after its Peaceful Nuclear Explosion (PNE) of 1974. The resulting export control regime long constrained strategic cooperation between New Delhi and US allies, including Australia. Certain export control-related constraints that continue to bedevil India–Australia defence industrial cooperation are sometimes a consequence of earlier restrictions.
Third, the economic and commercial relationship between India and Australia was thin, with Canberra prioritising Asia-Pacific economic partners in Northeast and Southeast Asia in the 1990s and early 2000s. And fourth, people-to-people relations were traditionally weak, a problem exacerbated by the White Australia policy until the 1970s. Defence contacts during these early years were infrequent but included Australian participation in India’s professional military education institutions, such as the Defence Services Staff College, and a one-off multilateral air force exercise in India in 1963, a year after the 1962 Sino-Indian border war.
Following India’s 1998 nuclear tests, which initially led to restrictive international sanctions against the country, the United States led efforts to re-engage India and lower barriers to strategic technology commerce. Australian Prime Minister John Howard’s visit to India in 2000 helped to re-establish normal ties between Canberra and New Delhi. Bilateral defence talks were initiated earlier that year, and 2001 saw the first strategic dialogue between the Indian and Australian governments. Security cooperation grew in fits and starts over the following two decades. In 2004, the two countries’ militaries coordinated humanitarian assistance, along with the United States and Japan, following the Indian Ocean tsunami. In 2006, India and Australia signed an MoU on defence cooperation. The next year witnessed the first Quad dialogue and multilateral Malabar naval exercises in the Indian Ocean. In 2008, Australia withdrew from the Quad. The immediate aftermath represented a low point in bilateral ties, when attacks against Indian students in Australia defined perceptions of the relationship.
Nonetheless, both governments sought to rebuild cooperation in the years that followed, motivated in part by changing threat perceptions. China’s more forceful claims in the South China Sea, its rare-earth restrictions on Japan, incidents of Chinese hacking and interference, and the Doklam standoff between the Indian and Chinese armies in 2017 contributed to these trends. As early as November 2009, India and Australia signed their first Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation. In 2011, negotiations began on a trade agreement, and the Julia Gillard government agreed to export uranium to India. The first visit to Australia by an Indian defence minister occurred in 2013, and a framework for security cooperation was signed during Modi’s first visit to Australia as prime minister in 2014. The next years saw the first major bilateral naval exercise between the two countries in the Bay of Bengal, followed by army exercises in 2016. In 2017, the Quad was revived along with a secretary-level 2+2 foreign and defence ministry dialogue and defence policy talks. A year later, the Indian Air Force took part in Exercise Pitch Black in Darwin for the first time, and the Australian government released its India Economic Strategy.
The two countries’ closer cooperation accelerated along with their changing threat perceptions, especially after 2019. For Australia, concerns about China’s coercive activities and military assertiveness grew. These were fuelled by various developments including a cyberattack on Australia’s Parliament House network in 2019, widely attributed to China; Chinese tariffs and restrictions on Australian barley, coal, beef, wine, and other exports; a list of 14 grievances against Australia issued by the Chinese Embassy in 2020; Beijing’s security pact with Solomon Islands in 2022; and a naval circumnavigation of Australia by a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy task force and live-fire drills in the Tasman Sea in 2025. For India, the 2020 border clashes, which followed a large-scale PLA mobilisation and killed 20 Indian soldiers and an unknown number of Chinese troops, contributed to deteriorating relations with Beijing. China’s security activities in the Indian Ocean region, its military and economic support for Pakistan, and the large trade surplus in China’s favour contributed further to India–China rivalry. New Delhi retaliated in 2020 with economic measures including banning Chinese apps, screening investment, blocking Chinese companies from its telecommunications network, and excluding Chinese bids from public procurement.
In addition to these concerns, Australia and India have had to contend with a more mercurial United States. In part, the resurrection of the Quad in 2017 was motivated by a desire to keep the United States engaged in the Indo-Pacific. Both countries pursued deepening security cooperation with the United States during Joe Biden’s presidency (2021–2025). For Australia, this included the announcement of AUKUS, an arrangement to acquire nuclear-powered submarines and emerging military technologies. For India, it included the Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET), covering semiconductors, space, defence, telecommunications, and other emerging technologies; collaboration on jet engine production, human spaceflight, and critical minerals; and a security-of-supply arrangement for defence articles. Although the second Trump administration has continued many of these initiatives from 2025, in some cases after rebranding, uncertainty over US trade and tariff policy, defence priorities, and engagement with China has pushed India and Australia (as well as other US allies and partners) to diversify their security and trade relationships.
Geography also plays an important role. Australia and India sit at opposite ends of the Indian Ocean, a vast and increasingly contested body of water with few capable resident powers. For both trading economies, securing the Indian Ocean’s sea lines of communication (SLOCs) is vital — from the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab-el-Mandeb, and the Cape of Good Hope in the west to the Straits of Malacca, Lombok, and Sunda in the east. The eastern straits, the gateway to East Asian markets, are especially important to them. Closer maritime cooperation can help the two countries secure their vast coastlines and give each operational access to a critical region: the Middle East for Australia and the South and West Pacific for India.
II. Strategic cooperation after 2020
In 2019, with prime ministers Narendra Modi and Scott Morrison re-elected, security cooperation between New Delhi and Canberra accelerated significantly. The next year saw the two countries unveil a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, framework agreements on maritime and cybersecurity, a Mutual Logistics Support Arrangement, and a ministerial 2+2 dialogue involving foreign and defence ministers. Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh’s engagement with his Australian counterpart began in earnest during the Covid pandemic in May 2020, followed by phone discussions and a bilateral meeting in September 2021. At the concurrent 2+2 dialogue, the two sides agreed that India would join Exercise Talisman Sabre and initiated agreements or dialogues on cybersecurity, emerging technology, critical minerals, and space. In 2024, the first discussions around a Joint Maritime Security Collaboration Roadmap began. That year, on the sidelines of the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus in Laos, the two sides exchanged an implementation arrangement on air-to-air refuelling. During a visit by Rajnath Singh to Australia in October 2025, an annual Defence Ministers’ Dialogue was established to be held more frequently than the 2+2.
Military-to-military contacts grew in parallel. Between January 2020 and July 2026, the two armed forces took part in 14 bilateral and 64 trilateral or multilateral exercises (see Figure 1). In August 2021, the two navies signed a Joint Guidance for the Australia–India Navy to Navy Relationship, and a month later the terms of reference for navy-to-navy talks were agreed. Among bilateral exercises, the AUSINDEX naval series has focused on anti-submarine warfare (ASW) and included fighter aircraft. The AUSTRAHIND army exercises have increasingly involved other services and, in recent years, concentrated on drones and counter-drone measures; the 2026 edition is expected to emphasise amphibious combat and littoral manoeuvre.
Multilateral military exercises involving India and Australia also indicated broadening military-to-military ties, with each series advancing cooperation in specific activities and domains. For example, Malabar — officially a US–India bilateral naval initiative in which Japan and Australia are regular participants — is a large annual exercise covering ASW along with air defence and counter-drone capabilities. The longer-term intent is to work towards combined task forces at sea across multiple domains. La Pérouse, which brings in France and other Indo-Pacific partners, has practised replenishment at sea. Kakadu has helped to refine standard operating procedures for P-8 maritime reconnaissance aircraft operations between the two countries. Pitch Black has included air-to-air refuelling for combat-enabling roles as well as preparations for air force operations over extended distances. The Tarang Shakti air force exercise starting in 2024 witnessed the first deployment of Australian combat aircraft to India, including electronic attack jets. Talisman Sabre, co-led by Australia and the United States, has been used to test multi-domain capabilities. India was also invited to join Black Carillon, an annual submarine search and rescue exercise, and Indian observers took part in Exercise Pukpuk in Papua New Guinea in 2025. That same year, the Quad held its first Coast Guard Quad-at-Sea Ship Observer Mission. Together, these exercises demonstrate a clear transition from basic engagement to interoperability through greater frequency, complexity, and operational utility.
These activities have been supplemented by more frequent and more structured engagement between military leaders. For example, Australia’s navy chief, Vice Admiral Michael Noonan, visited India’s Eastern Naval Command in February 2022 for Exercise Milan, followed the next month by Australia’s army chief. In April 2022, navy staff talks were held, with Australian hydrographers in attendance. India’s navy chief, Admiral R. Hari Kumar, reciprocated with a visit to Australia in September 2022. The following year saw the first all-service participation in a defence officers’ exchange program. Australia’s navy chief visited India in 2023 and 2024, while India’s army chiefs travelled to Australia in 2023 and 2026, as did India’s Chief of Defence Staff and the head of its Defence Intelligence Agency in 2025. In 2026, Joint Staff Talks were established, creating a formal channel for military-to-military engagement.
Operational ties have also gradually strengthened. For example, in early 2020 the Royal Australian Navy’s HMAS Toowoomba made a port visit to Mumbai as part of its Combined Task Force 150 deployment in the Middle East. In April 2022, an Indian Navy P-8I aircraft used Darwin for an operational turnaround, and a Royal Australian Air Force P-8A visited Goa that June. In 2023, an Indian submarine conducted its first deployment to Western Australia. Bilateral cooperation has also drawn in partners beyond the United States and Japan. For instance, Australia, India, and Indonesia held a trilateral maritime security workshop in May 2024 that covered information sharing, including through India’s Information Fusion Centre – Indian Ocean Region (IFC–IOR).
Defence industrial cooperation has been slower and more tentative, with discussions beginning in 2020. At the 2+2 dialogue in September 2021, the two sides flagged unmanned vehicles and niche technologies as areas to explore. In June 2022, defence ministers Rajnath Singh and Richard Marles agreed to reinvigorate the existing Joint Working Group on Defence Research and Materiel Cooperation. The November 2023 edition of the 2+2 dialogue identified potential cooperation between India’s Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX) and Australia’s Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator (ASCA). In 2024, Indian defence firms exhibited at the Indian Ocean Defence and Security conference in Perth and the Land Forces exposition in Melbourne. India has also offered maintenance, repair, and overhaul services for Australian vessels in its shipyards.
In sum, the India–Australia defence partnership now involves a wide variety of political and military engagements. The two militaries increasingly cooperate on intelligence, professional education and training, hydrography, and logistics in ways that facilitate Australian vessels’ operations in the Middle East and the Indian military’s operations in the South Pacific. These ties extend to areas both countries once considered sensitive or difficult, including ASW, air-to-air refuelling, submarine rescue, and replenishment at sea. Strategic cooperation has even extended to third countries and regions. In 2026, for example, Australia gifted the Maldives a Guardian-class patrol boat and coordinated its maintenance and sustainment with India. In turn, India’s military presence, investment, and technology could help advance Australian strategic objectives in the Pacific Islands region.
III. Towards co-production and joint operations
Despite the broadening and deepening security partnership between India and Australia, challenges remain. One involves secure communications. Australia’s integration in US alliance networks has implications for logistics, geospatial intelligence, and communications. This matters little in multilateral settings involving the United States, but bilateral India–Australia activities have sometimes been complicated by the lack of compatible systems. Finding workable solutions for both sides will be necessary if cooperation is to be sustained. Similarly, cooperation on equipment sustainment and maintenance is often constrained by US export controls, specifically the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). This makes it unnecessarily complicated for either country to maintain or supply spares for the other’s aircraft and naval vessels during military exercises and deployments. A further, if lesser, irritant is the absence of expedited visas for military personnel, which creates additional frustrations during port visits, exercises, and operations. Negotiating a Reciprocal Access Agreement akin to the one Australia and Japan signed in 2022 might prove legally difficult in the near term, requiring facilities for enabling short-term tenures for military personnel in each other’s countries.
Two areas could take India–Australia defence cooperation to a qualitatively higher level. The first is realising the leaders’ stated ambition of “expanding aircraft deployments from each other’s territories”. Allowing India’s P-8I aircraft to operate from the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, and Australia’s P-8A from India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands, would significantly improve both countries’ maritime surveillance and ASW capabilities around critical Indo-Pacific chokepoints. The P-8, based on a Boeing 737 but with a longer wingspan, is among the world’s most sophisticated maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft. Equipped with sonobuoys, torpedoes, and anti-ship missiles, it can hunt submarines and surface ships and conduct intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. The Indian variant (P-8I) has different radar, communications, magnetic anomaly detection, and combat identification systems. Indian and Australian P-8s have already flown to each other’s mainland bases; temporary reciprocal access to island territories would extend their loitering time over critical sea lines of communication. In addition to communication and export control constraints, the Cocos (Keeling) Islands Airfield Upgrade Project — which will strengthen and extend the runway and is forecast for completion by 2029 — must be finished before large aircraft such as the P-8 can operate from the islands. This, in turn, would help facilitate reciprocal access to island territories on the Indian side.
In the meantime, other forms of operational cooperation should proceed. These might include more regular Royal Australian Navy port visits, refuelling and replenishment, and maintenance, repair, and overhaul at Indian facilities during wider Indian Ocean deployments. India, too, can do more to leverage Australia’s geographical advantages for patrols and other missions — including humanitarian assistance, search and rescue, and evacuations — in the southeast Indian Ocean and the South and West Pacific. Australia has also commissioned a temporary space tracking terminal in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands to support India’s Gaganyaan Human Spaceflight Program, although this is not strictly defence-oriented.
The second area is defence industrial cooperation, specifically co-production. Bilateral discussions on the issue have taken place since 2020, but with little tangible progress to date. Obstacles have included the two countries’ asymmetric scales and requirements, Australia’s limited defence industrial base, US export controls, and Australian concerns about India’s defence industrial relations with Russia. Nonetheless, recent developments have created new openings. Pillar 5 of PACTS covers defence research collaboration and is meant to be led by the two countries’ defence ministries. While the emphasis of PACTS is on foundational scientific collaboration, near-term opportunities can be sought in co-production, particularly given growing Indian and Australian requirements and concerns about supply chain disruptions.
Cooperation on specific platforms has been explored in recent years. After Operation Sindoor in 2025, India evinced interest in Australian counter-unmanned aerial systems. Shared concerns about the underwater domain have led to discussions on sonobuoy production for P-8s, undersea surveillance, and subsea cable security. Armoured vehicles are another possibility: both countries already export them, in the form of Australia’s Bushmaster and India’s Wheeled Armoured Platform (WhAP). In 2025, Anduril — whose Australian arm builds the Ghost Shark for the Royal Australian Navy — and India’s Mahindra Group announced a partnership to co-develop and co-produce autonomous maritime systems, including underwater vehicles. Co-production could also extend to components and raw materials, including defence-critical minerals such as gallium, which is essential for electronics supply chains, advanced weapons, and satellites, and for which Australia has significant extraction potential.
IV. Recommendations
India and Australia continue to enjoy significant complementarities in addition to similar threat perceptions in the Indo-Pacific. Australia offers geographical access, advanced capabilities in certain niche technologies, and close integration with the United States and its allies. India brings scale, geographical centrality in the Indian Ocean, industrial capabilities, and a wide variety of maritime partners. To accelerate India–Australia defence cooperation, the two countries should prioritise five near-term objectives, while continuing to widen and deepen their security cooperation across multiple fronts:
Early conclusion of the planned MoU on the Provision of Defence Articles and Defence Services, as the next step in advancing defence industrial cooperation.
A workable solution for secure bilateral communications between the two countries’ armed services. Options include a bilateral communications arrangement, encryption gateways, US third-party authorisation, or a combination depending on operational circumstances.
Reciprocal access for P-8 aircraft to each other’s island territories, including by expediting runway upgrades on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, alongside reciprocal maintenance, repair, and supply for each other’s surface and submarine vessels. Questions of Indonesian transit will also need to be addressed, including through sustained working-level India–Australia–Indonesia dialogue.
Identification, in coordination with the United States, of the key ITAR restrictions on P-8 spares, maintenance, and sustainment. Differences between the P-8I and P-8A should inform negotiations on exceptions or licensing routes.
Identification of priority defence co-production projects under Pillar 5 of PACTS, potentially including counter-unmanned aerial systems, sonobuoys, armoured vehicles, unmanned underwater vehicles, and defence-related critical minerals. Projects should be assessed for feasibility based on strategic importance, technological capabilities, industrial complementarity, export control constraints, and contributions to bilateral interoperability.
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