Honesty, Respect, and Strategic Clarity

Colby’s Visit and India-US Defence Ties

Authors

US Undersecretary of War for Policy, Elbridge Colby, made a visit to India from 24 to 27 March, 2026, to discuss the present and future of New Delhi-Washington ties, especially in the defence domain. In my contribution to a story by Maria Siow for South China Morning Post, I shared my views on two questions pertaining to the visit:

Here is what I had to say:

The stated purpose of the visit is to advance the defence framework signed by US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh in October 2025. To that end, Colby has already signalled that the US wants to expand military sales to India, and that Trump’s administration sees great potential for co-production and co-development of military technologies. This likely particularly applies to the deal on jointly manufacturing F414 fighter jet engines for India’s Tejas Mark 2 and AMCA programmes, which has been a long-pending endeavour. Further discussions could cover pending defence acquisitions or even the revival of INDUS-X, which previously helped partner American and Indian defence firms.

That said, there are reasons to temper expectations.

The broader India-US relationship is under considerable strain because tensions are being fuelled not just by trade disputes and India’s procurement of Russian energy, but also by the war in West Asia. That war is consuming enormous bandwidth on both sides, and the spillover effects have reached India’s doorstep. There is also the issue of the Quad, which India remains enthusiastic about, but Colby didn’t mention. In fact, tensions were at such a high point last year that, likely due to US pressure, the Leaders’ Summit that New Delhi expected to host seems indefinitely postponed – especially now, with the war in play. Beyond that, historically, India-US defence cooperation has been plagued by slow bureaucratic processes and restrictions on technology transfer.

So in that sense, Colby’s visit is symbolically valuable and mitigates some tensions between New Delhi and Washington, but it definitely can’t solve for structural faultlines. What the visit can realistically achieve is re-establishing high-level political signalling that the defence partnership with India remains a priority for the US. If an announcement on F414 co-production timelines, or a concrete INDUS-X revival date emerges, for example, that could count as a tangible deliverable. The areas of defence cooperation Colby has already spoken about – long-range precision fires, resilient logistics, maritime domain awareness, anti-submarine warfare, and advanced technologies – are all-encompassing or previously alluded to.

Secondly, the sinking of IRIS Dena and what it represents is arguably a source of concern in India-US Ties.

Two things are evident from this decision of the US to attack a vessel that was only in the Indian Ocean waters because it participated in the India-organised naval exercise MILAN-2025. One is, that perhaps the glue of shared values holding some parts of the India-US partnership together, is actually not that sticky, because it takes a certain trust and a sense of security when a country’s naval vessel sets sail in farther seas from home, especially for a joint exercise. That the attack happened not even in hostile theaters from the US’s perspective, like the Red Sea or the Taiwan Strait, but in the IOR, further speaks to why Colby’s idea of aligning “America First” and “Bharat First” is tokenistic at best.

In fact, his specific reference in his March 24 remarks to how India “sits astride” the IOR and to this region as the “connective tissue” of the Indo-Pacific comes across as either appeasement or mockery. In that sense, New Delhi’s “humanitarian approach” to the sinking on March 4, 2026, wherein it sent two INS vessels for search and rescue operations, perhaps says a little about New Delhi not wanting to let this go so easily, when it could have easily kept its resources tied to its shores in a bid to not irk the US, or let the war and its casualties continue.

That said, in Colby’s meetings with his Indian counterpart during this visit, there are unlikely to be any public discussions on India’s firm concerns over such incidents close to home. But it would be interesting and appreciable if the message is sent across through Colby to Washington behind closed doors, especially since the theme of defence partnership is fitting within the broader agenda of ensuring peace and security in the Indo-Pacific, and within what Colby himself referred to as “honesty, respect, and strategic clarity” in “strong partnerships.”

Please check out the full SCMP story here.