Rajnath Singh heads to Germany to deepen defence industrial and strategic ties
New Delhi, April 19. India’s Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will travel to Germany from April 21 to 23 for an official visit aimed at advancing the growing defence and security partnership between New Delhi and Berlin.
The trip, the first by an Indian Defence Minister to Germany in seven years, is expected to inject fresh momentum into bilateral defence industrial cooperation and military engagement.
According to a statement issued by the Ministry of Defence, during the visit, Singh is scheduled to hold bilateral talks with his German counterpart Boris Pistorius and other senior members of the German government. The discussions will centre on expanding defence industrial collaboration, intensifying military-to-military exchanges, and identifying cooperation opportunities in emerging areas such as cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and unmanned systems.
A key outcome anticipated from the visit is the signing of a Defence Industrial Cooperation Roadmap, along with an Implementing Arrangement on cooperation in training for UN Peacekeeping Operations, in the presence of both ministers. These frameworks are intended to provide structured direction to future collaboration between the two sides.
Singh is also expected to engage with leading representatives of the German defence industry to explore prospects for joint development and co-production in line with India’s ‘Make in India’ push in the defence sector. The outreach to industry underscores New Delhi’s emphasis on technology partnerships and manufacturing linkages with trusted partners.
The visit follows German Defence Minister Pistorius’s trip to India in June 2023, where he held extensive talks with Singh, and comes after the previous visit by an Indian Defence Minister to Germany by Nirmala Sitharaman in February 2019.
India and Germany share a broad-based strategic partnership grounded in democratic values and a shared commitment to a rules-based international order. In recent years, defence and security cooperation has emerged as an increasingly important pillar of this relationship. The visit aims to review ongoing initiatives, chart new areas of cooperation between the defence industries of both countries, and contribute to wider regional and global stability.
