Answer in about 150 words: Discuss the three areas of security co-operation between India and Israel. (2026, 10 Marks)
Security is the load-bearing pillar of the India–Israel relationship. Its founding moment was the Kargil conflict of 1999, when Israel supplied precision munitions and surveillance drones without preconditions, not the exchange of embassies in 1992. On SIPRI’s 2021–25 data, Israel supplied about 15% of India’s arms imports (third, after Russia and France), while India took 29% of Israel’s arms exports and was its largest customer. Cooperation runs along three tracks.
1. Defence supply, co-development and co-production
- Niche platforms: Phalcon airborne early-warning radars (contracted 2004), Heron and Searcher drones, SPYDER air defence, Spike anti-tank missiles and the Harop loitering munition, used, on wide reporting, in Operation Sindoor (May 2025).
- Joint design: the Barak-8/MRSAM family, co-developed by DRDO and Israel Aerospace Industries, and a 2021 DRDO agreement with Israel’s defence R&D directorate to share costs and results in drones, robotics, AI and quantum.
- Production in India: Kalyani-Rafael (Spike) and Adani-Elbit (Hermes drones) in Hyderabad, which turn imports into an Indian industrial base and potential exports.
- Institutions: the 17th Joint Working Group (Tel Aviv, 4 November 2025) signed an MoU on Defence Cooperation giving a unified policy direction, which the February 2026 joint statement welcomed.
2. Counter-terrorism, intelligence and homeland security
- Intelligence liaison dates from the 1960s, older than diplomatic relations, and survived the decades of public distance.
- A Joint Working Group on Counter-Terrorism and three February 2014 agreements (mutual legal assistance, homeland security, classified information) let shared intelligence reach courts.
- The targeting of Nariman House in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks made the threat literally shared; in February 2026 the two Prime Ministers jointly condemned cross-border terrorism, the 7 October 2023 attack and the Pahalgam attack (April 2025).
3. Cyber, space and critical technologies
- RISAT-2 (2009), built on an Israeli radar-satellite platform, closed an all-weather surveillance gap exposed by the Mumbai attacks.
- An inaugural Cyber Policy Dialogue (March 2025), then a 2026 Letter of Intent for a Cyber Centre of Excellence with a multi-year roadmap and joint table-top exercises.
- A Critical and Emerging Technologies initiative led by the two National Security Advisers, announced when ties became a Special Strategic Partnership in February 2026; it puts emerging technology under the security apex of both states.
Conclusion
All three tracks reflect realist capability-seeking, not ideological affinity. The ceiling is structural: Israel’s principal adversary is Iran while India’s are Pakistan and China, and much Israeli technology carries American end-use conditions. It is a partnership of capabilities, not of commitments, valued for speed and the absence of political conditions.