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New Delhi: Away from the headlines surrounding aero engines, fighter aircraft, advanced unmanned aerial vehicles, missile systems and sundry other materiel, India and the US are currently engaged in what could prove to be one of the most consequential defence-industrial agreements ever contemplated between the two sides. 

Little publicised and scarcely debated outside official circles, the proposed Reciprocal Defence Procurement Agreement (RDPA) seeks to integrate the defence industrial bases of both countries by lowering procurement barriers and granting companies on either side greater access to each other’s military markets and acquisition programmes. The agreement, which is also believed to feature in the ongoing India-US trade negotiations, would represent a significant departure from Washington’s longstanding defence procurement policy towards India.

But beneath the RDPA’s promise of closer defence cooperation lies a fundamental asymmetry, for despite its description as a “reciprocal” arrangement, the competitive balance, once concluded, would be anything but equal. It would simply pit India’s still-maturing defence sector against the world’s largest and most technologically advanced military-industrial base, where American conglomerates enjoy an overwhelming advantage in capital, know-how, artificial intelligence (AI), research and development, intellectual property, manufacturing scale and global market reach.

The central issue, therefore, is not whether the RDPA will create opportunities for Indian companies, but whether they can ever compete on equal terms with their American counterparts, both in the US and at home.

In the US market, they would be up against established manufacturers with decades of technological leadership, vastly greater financial resources and privileged access to the Pentagon. And, locally, they could increasingly find themselves competing against these very same companies for major defence contracts, leaving the competitive odds heavily stacked against them on both fronts, raising obvious doubts over whether “reciprocity” would ever translate into genuine equality of opportunity.

Negotiations over the RDPA formally began in June 2023 following US defence secretary Lloyd Austin’s visit to New Delhi and were........

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