On 27^th July, members of AMCHAM Defense Committee convened at the Lockheed Martin office in New Delhi to give a fond farewell to CAPT Michael Farmer, Chief, Office of Defense Cooperation (ODC), U.S Embassy and welcome to CAPT Chad Gagnon, the incoming Chief. Mr. William L. Blair, Co-Chairman – Defense Committee, AMCHAM and Vice President and Regional Executive Asia & India Lockheed Martin welcomed everyone as the host, set the tone for the meeting and turned it over to Ms. Udaya Arun, Director, AMCHAM to make initial comments. Ms. Arun thanked CAPT Farmer for his untiring support from the U.S. Government side to AMCHAM to address challenges and provide guidance as and when required. She welcomed CAPT Gagnon and shared a brief about the committee and its most recent activities. She then requested Mr. Salil Gupte, Vice Chairman, AMCHAM and President, Boeing India for his introduction before requesting all members to make brief introductions to CAPT Gagnon. Committee members in turn provided a brief about their roles and a few pertinent issues and instances where they sought the ODC to intervene. Ms. Arun shared briefly on the outputs from the recent interaction with Joint Secretary Negi at the Ministry of Defence. Members deliberated on the very pertinent point of engaging with SIDM moving forth as the need of working with Indian industry partners was the key to succeed in interactions and results where Government of India was concerned. Agenda for the upcoming interaction with Joint Secretary Anurag Bajpai at the Ministry of Defense was shared and additional thoughts requested. She shared an update on the capability deck status and urged members who had not provided inputs so far to expedite the same. A hybrid interaction with Ernst & Young on the PLI schemes in defense was planned for the first week of August. Lastly, members discussed thoughts on prospective news regarding DefExpo 2024.