AMCHAM hosted Ms. Ellen Lord, Under Secretary of Defense (Acquisition and Sustainment) and her delegation for a closed door interactive session with U.S. defense industry participation during her visit to India for the Defense Technology and Trade Initiative dialogue.

Ms. Lord and Mr. Matthew Warren, Acting Director, International Cooperation had candid conversations with the group on their engagement with her counterpart at the DTTI dialogue, about the restructuring of the DTTI Joint Working Groups into 5 groups down from previously 8 Joint Working Groups, namely Army Working Group, Navy Working Group, Airforce Working Group, Aircraft Working Group and Other Working Group, with specific leads to take up the discussions on behalf of the U.S. Government. DTTI Joint Working Groups were earlier based on projects but with the restructuring they have been streamlined into domain working groups.

They also updated the group on the objectives of the National Defense Strategy, which amongst other items, focuses on strengthening alliances and partnership and formulating business cases. It was mentioned that the Indian Embassy in Washington was considering placing an individual in Washington D.C. to only focus on DTTI and enable facilitation.

They also urged industry to provide inputs on significant business cases that could be adopted and significant road blocks that companies were facing to take matters up for discussions. They also requested for proposals on inputs on behalf of industry that the U.S. Government could provide to the Government of India for better Defence Technology and Trade Initiative dialogues in the future.