German and Indian companies signed an agreement Wednesday that envisions the possible building of six military submarines for India, the AP reported. The memorandum of understanding was signed in the presence of German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, who is in India on a visit.
Germany’s embassy in India released picture of the signing of MOU on twitter. It said, “Signing of the MoU between @MazagonDockLtd & @thyssenkrupp_en Marine Systems on cooperation on submarine production in Mumbai in the presence of German Minister of Defence Boris Pistorius.”
The agreement calls for Germany’s Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems to engineer and design six non-nuclear submarines that would be built and delivered by India’s Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders with “significant local content.”
The German company said the agreement lays the foundation for possible cooperation with Mazagon to compete in an Indian navy tender. Pistorius called it “an important signal, one could say a milestone, for a flagship project in a key technology.”
Earlier India’s Defence Minister Rajnath Singh held a bilateral meeting with German Federal Minister of Defence Boris Pistorius in New Delhi on June 06, 2023. Both Ministers reviewed the ongoing bilateral defence cooperation activities and explored ways to enhance the collaboration, particularly defence industrial partnership.
Rajnath Singh highlighted new investment opportunities for German companies in the two new defence industrial corridors in Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, to his German counterpart Boris Pistorius.
The Indian defence industry could participate in the supply chains of German defence industry and add value to the ecosystem, besides contributing to supply chain resilience.
Rajnath Singh stressed that India and Germany could build a more symbiotic relationship based on shared goals and complementarity of strength, namely skilled workforce & competitive costs from India and high technologies & investment from Germany.
India and Germany have a Strategic Partnership since 2000, which is being strengthened through Inter-Governmental Consultations since 2011 at the level of Heads of Government.
The German Defence Minister Pistorius is on a four-day visit to India to enhance bilateral defence cooperation.
The German minister called for deepening strategic ties with the region. He met his Indian counterpart in New Delhi on Tuesday, and said he advocated the potential deal during that meeting.
Pistorius, the first German defense minister to visit India since 2015, advocates enhancing defense cooperation and weapons deals with India by treating it as a strategic partner like Australia or Japan.
He pointed Wednesday to the importance of cooperating with partners that are like-minded in advocating a rules-based order and the security of sea routes.
“With India, we have a democracy, with its weaknesses, one doesn’t need to hide that, but a strong democracy, a stable country in the region, just as we do with Indonesia,” Pistorius told reporters.
“Both are partners with which we should cooperate closely, which we should trust, and whose trust we rely on,” he added.
Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems said it delivered four submarines to the Indian navy in the 1980s in cooperation with Mazagon and that the vessels are still in service today.
“We are ready when India calls,” the company’s CEO, Oliver Burkhard, said.
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