Beyond a Trade Deal: the India-UK Strategic Partnership

On 24 June 2025, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his counterpart, the UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, secured a historic trade deal that is expected to boost employment creation, propel the UK’s faltering economy and leverage the reduction in tariffs to increase bilateral trade by nearly 39%. The occasion was accompanied by the parallel signing of a ‘renewed’ Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (CSP), reinforcing ‘closer collaboration’ in areas such as security, defence, technology, climate and others.

While India and the UK recently concluded a historic trade agreement, they have also accelerated security cooperation, both in scope and form, to achieve similar levels of parity as demonstrated in the economic aspect of the bilateral relationship.

Both countries are now converging to counter China and aligning to ensure a ‘free and open’ Indo-Pacific region. Their military exercises have become more complex, contingency-centric and operationally integrated; however, periodic iterations of these exercises are necessary. Additionally, both countries have policies that enhance maritime domain awareness (MDA) and empower small island nations, notably through India’s MAHASAGAR policy and the UK’s ‘East of Suez’ tilt. This provides opportunities for both states to explore collaboration in enhancing MDA.

Alignment of Security Interests in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR)

The convergence between India and the UK’s security and defence priorities only solidified in 2018 when both countries embraced for the first time the common strategic lexicon of the ‘Indo-Pacific’ and proclaimed to realise ‘A secure, free, open, inclusive, and prosperous’ region. That strategic alignment privileged the defence and security aspect of the relationship, which had been overshadowed by economic relations.

The alignment of interests in shaping the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific region, especially the IOR, further crystallised after the launch of the 2030 roadmap for India-UK relations in 2021, which elevated the relationship between the UK and India to a CSP. Keeping in mind the objective of securing the Indo-Pacific, the roadmap structured their bilateral defence relations to achieve operational-level complexity in military exercises, collaborate in enhancing maritime security and joint production in military technologies such as maritime propulsion systems and combat aircraft.

The intent of the CSP became clearer in the UK’s Integrated Review report 2022-2023 that followed. The report outlined a shared interest between the two countries in countering China’s ‘aggressive instincts’ in the Indo-Pacific by building cooperation towards ‘joint training, counter-trafficking, enhanced maritime security or protecting freedom of movement in international waters.’

Complexity in Joint Military Exercises: A Pathway to Multilateral Collaboration

The elevation of the relationship to a CSP was followed by an increase in the complexity of military exercises. The 2021 tri-service-led Konkan Shakti exercise saw, for the first time, the participation of the UK Carrier Strike Group, including the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, destroyers, stealth guided missile vessels, fighter aircraft and submarines. The exercises achieved operational level integration by concluding sea control operations, air drills, anti-submarine warfare operations, sea replenishment practices, deck landings on vessels and strike operations amongst fighter jets. Far from just a display of combat vessels, the exercise was aimed at reaching ‘military effectiveness’ through interoperability, joint planning and operations across multiple domains such as harbour and sea phase activities. Deployments of aircraft and destroyers signalled readiness for conflict scenarios in the western IOR, a response to the upsurge of China’s naval presence in the region, while bolstering cooperation for dissuading piracy, illegal fishing and armed robbery induced by a spike in Somali-based pirate attacks.

Since 2021, the India-UK joint military exercises have become integrated at each service level, but no exercise has matched the complexity of the Konkan Shakti such as cross fire drills, air operations, deck landings and jointness. More editions of this exercise should take place in the future.

Outside of military exercises, India and the UK engage in regular port calls. India’s INS Tabar visited the UK in 2021 and 2023, and in response, the UK Littoral Response Group visited India in 2024. The INS Tabar’s activities, although carrying only symbolic value also, nonetheless include knowledge sharing on electric propulsion systems, unmanned surface vessels and navigational instruments powered by electric current.

There is reason for India to explore other forms of trilateral/quadrilateral military engagements. Like, India’s military exercises with the UK in the western IOR, New Delhi engages annually with France at a comparable level through Exercise Varuna, which involves submarine warfare, tactical coordination and the deployment of submarines, destroyers and aircraft carriers. This operational parity creates a credible basis for trilateral exercises between the UK, France and India. This is possible given the existing mechanism between the UK and France to operationally coordinate the deployment of aircraft carriers and maritime assets in the IOR, with the objective of a more ‘persistent’ European presence by 2025, a point stressed in a research briefing to the UK Parliament. The UK, France and India have already partnered together in India’s multilateral military exercise Tarang Shakti, in which 51 countries participate. The most recent edition of this exercise saw the UK Royal Air Force deploy ‘130 personnel, six Typhoons, two Voyagers and an A400M transport aircraft’, as highlighted in the press release from the UK’s Ministry of Defence.

Building on this momentum, policymakers could also explore a more focused, contingency driven trilateral or quadrilateral format involving both India and the UK, even institutionalizing a structure alongside the lines of the Quad tailored for the IOR. Similar to what the Quad does in the eastern Indo-Pacific, this group could be dedicated to ensuring maritime security, safeguarding Sea Lanes of Communications (SLOCS) and tackling piracy in the IOR.

Convergences and Overlaps in Policies: MDA and Maritime Security

Since the last decade, the UK has stepped up its footprint in the IOR through its return to the ‘East of Suez’ strategy. The UK has constructed a military facility in Bahrain to support operations related to maritime security, including countering piracy, counter terrorism and ensuring the unhindered flow of trade and commerce. The UK also deploys its military personnel to the Duqm facility in Oman twice a year, reinforcing its commitments in the region.

Such newfound priorities complement India’s MAHASAGAR policy – a framework for its maritime vision in the region. For 20 years, the UK Maritime Trade Operations have countered piracy in the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden and IOR by monitoring and informing commercial shipping vessels of any potential piracy attacks or areas that are susceptible to illegal interdiction and should be avoided. Indian vessels have benefited from this, alongside reported contributions from the Indian Navy to register successful anti-piracy missions, as indicated in the weekly reports from the centre. Such maritime awareness is further enhanced by the conclusion of the White Shipping Agreement, which facilitates the exchange of transponder data of commercial vessels operating in the western IOR, thereby augmenting surveillance by tracking and detecting these vessels, as well as identifying sources of maritime threats.

India and the UK maritime security efforts support capacity-building in small island nations and can supplement each other’s initiatives. India’s Coastal Surveillance Radar System Chains (CSRS) spread across small island nations such as Seychelles, Mauritius, Maldives and Sri Lanka, established in the aftermath of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, collect data on dark vessels – those engaged in maritime crimes – with little electronic and digital footprints. In turn, UK’s recent launch of the Amber-2 MDA satellite uses radio frequency to monitor such illegal vessels. Credible and reliable data can be acquired if data inputs from CSRS and the MDA satellite can be integrated for better monitoring of maritime space in the IOR.

To share maritime data, the UK has also stationed a permanent liaison officer at the Indian Fusion Centre-Indian Ocean, a key initiative fulfilling objectives outlined in the CSP. Beyond this, India should consider deputing a liaison officer at the UK Maritime Component Command in Bahrain, replicating its existing institutional structure with the US under the assignment of liaison officers that has deployed an Indian officer in US Central Command in Bahrain and US Special Operations Command in Florida.

Existing Institutional Structures and a Way Forward

All these developments in the India-UK security relationship have been facilitated by the presence of institutional mechanisms. However, the frequency of leader and ministerial level meetings can be enhanced for periodic stock taking and policy appraisals. The planned annual summits, which follow the declaration of a Strategic Partnership between the two countries in 2005, were reduced or downgraded in 2015 to a biennial timeline.

Currently, there is no format for bringing the UK and India’s foreign ministers together, except for their meetings on the side-lines of multilateral forums like the G20 and UN General Assembly. A rather low key engagement was instituted when the foreign ministers of both countries were entrusted with monitoring the performance of the CSP. In contrast, the India-UK Joint Economic and Trade Committee, a forum convened by the Indian Commerce Minister and the UK’s International Trade Minister, played a key role in kickstarting FTA negotiations in 2022 and ultimately resulted in a historic trade deal.

Replicating this mechanism in the security and defence architecture of the relationship may be desirable. For coordinating defence and security policy, India and Britain should consider elevating the existing ‘2+2 Foreign and Defence Secretaries’ meetings to the ministerial level, which results in policy coordination – as evident through the recent success of India’s 2+2 meetings with the US and Australia. India was able to conclude two (Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement; Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement) out of the four foundational defence arrangements with US in these meetings and India-Australia instituted their annual summits after the success of the inaugural 2+2 dialogue in 2021.

Overall, the bilateral relations have achieved considerable development despite global upheavals such as the Covid 19 pandemic, US President Donald Trump’s return to office and pushback against the liberal international order. Both governments have reached a trade deal amidst Trump’s tariffs and they are also moving closer in security and defence partnership, although more improvements are possible and desirable to policymakers. The IOR provides a common maritime space where India and the UK can work together alongside other like-minded states to address both non-traditional security threats, including piracy, open SLOCs and Humanitarian and Disaster Relief challenges, while also being tightly knit and integrated to manage the strategic threat of China. Such efforts can only be sustained if newer avenues are explored and cooperation is deepened at both bilateral and multilateral levels.

© Rahul Jaybhay, 2025, published by RUSI with permission of the author.

The views expressed in this Commentary are the author's, and do not represent those of RUSI or any other institution.

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