India and the United States on Friday signed a 10-year framework for “major defence partnership”.

While the details of the framework were not immediately known, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said that the agreement will “usher in a new era in our already strong defence partnership”.

“This defence framework will provide policy direction to the entire spectrum of the India-US defence relationship,” Singh said on social media. “It is a signal of our growing strategic convergence and will herald a new decade of partnership.”

He added that defence will remain a “major pillar” of the India-US relationship. “Our partnership is critical for ensuring a free, open and rules-based Indo-Pacific region,” he added.

US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, who signed the document alongside Singh in Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur, said that the framework “advances our defence partnership, a cornerstone for regional stability and deterrence”.

“We’re enhancing our coordination, info sharing and tech cooperation,” Hegseth said on social media. “Our defence ties have never been stronger.”

The US had designated India as its “major defence partner” in 2016. In 2018, India was elevated to tier one of the Strategic Trade Authorisation, which allows New Delhi to receive license-free access to a range of US military and dual-use technologies.

The defence partnership had strengthened amid a bipartisan view in Washington in recent decades that India was a potential counterweight to China’s growing influence in the Indo-Pacific region.

However, diplomatic ties between New Delhi and Washington have strained in recent months, mainly because US President Donald Trump imposed so-called reciprocal tariffs on Indian goods and punitive levies for purchasing Russian oil amid the Ukraine war.

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