Rafale, Scorpene & 6th-gen jet: How India and France are taking defence ties to the next level
When Prime Minister Narendra Modi met French President Emmanuel Macron in Nice on June 14, 2026, it was more than another bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit. In many ways, it marked the culmination of a partnership that has built trust over decades and has now been formally elevated to a Special Global Strategic Partnership.If the flurry of visits, agreements and defence dialogues over the past year is any indication, India and France appear to be only getting started. From the procurement of additional Rafale fighters to India’s potential participation in the sixth-generation Future Combat Air System (FCAS), which is still under development, the two countries are steadily pushing their relationship towards deeper technological and strategic cooperation.
India and France: A relationship built over time
India has been operating French aircraft since the 1950s. All three services the air force with the Ouragans, Mysteres, Jaguar, Mirage-2000 and now the Rafale, the navy with the Alize and the army’s Cheetah have all flown French origin aircraft. France and India have built a trusted military aviation relationship that spans decades.
Air Marshal Anil Chopra (retired), first batch of IAF fighter pilots to train on Mirage-2000 in France
India and France established diplomatic relations soon after India’s independence in 1947. The relationship has remained largely stable and friendly ever since, which, in geopolitics, is itself no small achievement.India began procuring French military hardware as early as the 1950s, acquiring Dassault Ouragan fighters and Mystère jets, along with AMX-13 tanks, Alizé aircraft and Chetak and Cheetah helicopters. Many of these platforms went on to serve in the Indian armed forces for decades, helping establish France’s reputation in New Delhi as a consistent and trusted defence partner.
Military aviation has been central to the Indo-French defence relationship.
That trust was formalised on January 26, 1998, when the two countries established a Strategic Partnership. It was the first such partnership India had entered into with a Western nation and, from France’s perspective, its first with a non-Western country. The agreement was signed by then French President Jacques Chirac and Indian Prime Minister I.K. Gujral.The partnership was built around a relatively simple premise: India and France could strengthen their respective strategic autonomy through close bilateral cooperation. Defence and security, civil nuclear cooperation and space emerged as its three original pillars.Over the years, however, the relationship has expanded well beyond these areas. Artificial intelligence, the blue economy, innovation, renewable energy and trilateral cooperation in the Indo-Pacific have all been added to the agenda.The 25th anniversary of the partnership in 2023 provided another milestone. During Modi’s visit to France as the guest of honour at the country’s Bastille Day celebrations that July, the two sides adopted the Horizon 2047 Roadmap, setting out an ambitious framework for the next 25 years, taking the relationship towards the centenary of India’s independence and the bilateral partnership.The next major inflection point came during Macron’s visit to Mumbai and New Delhi in February 2026 for the Artificial Intelligence Impact Summit. The two leaders agreed to elevate bilateral ties to a Special Global Strategic Partnership and launched the 2026 India-France Year of Innovation.Modi’s subsequent visit to France in June, which included Nice, the G7 summit in Évian and the VivaTech summit in Paris, was the first leaders’ meeting after that elevation. It produced a substantial set of outcomes, including a mechanism aimed at doubling bilateral trade within five years, the Innovation Roadmap 2030, 19 institutional agreements and a new joint working group on artificial intelligence and its global governance.
Defence remains the anchor
Defence, however, remains the bedrock of the relationship, and the numbers underline its importance.The delivery of 36 Rafale fighters in 2022, the commissioning of the sixth and final Scorpene-class submarine in January 2025, and last year’s agreement for 26 Rafale-M aircraft for the Indian Navy, including technology transfer for integrating indigenous weapons, represent some of the most significant recent milestones.The sixth Annual Defence Dialogue, co-chaired by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and his French counterpart Catherine Vautrin, was held in Bengaluru in February this year. The two sides renewed their 10-year defence cooperation agreement and agreed to station officers reciprocally at Indian Army and French Land Forces establishments.It was a small but significant indication of how far the relationship has evolved, moving from a conventional buyer-seller dynamic toward deeper institutional and operational integration.
The strategic relationship between India and France has matured and deepened over time.
From customer to partner
The shift towards co-development and co-production is equally visible on the industrial side.Safran’s Hyderabad-based MRO facility, inaugurated virtually by Modi in November last year, is India’s first deep-level aircraft engine servicing centre established by a global manufacturer. It is designed to handle up to 300 LEAP engines annually and is expected to employ more than 1,000 technicians by 2035. A dedicated facility for the M88 engine that powers the Rafale is also being developed.Safran has also partnered with Bharat Electronics Limited to manufacture the Hammer precision-guided munition in India, a weapon that can be integrated with both the Rafale and Tejas.In February, Modi and Macron also jointly inaugurated, virtually, an Airbus H125 helicopter assembly line in Karnataka.Analysts tracking the relationship have increasingly used the term “co-sovereignty” to describe this evolving model. The idea is that India and France retain their respective strategic autonomy while deliberately building shared industrial and technological capabilities, without entering into the binding mutual-defence commitments associated with a formal alliance.
Diplomacy moves deeper into the strategic realm
The military-to-military relationship tells a similar story of sustained engagement.French Chief of Staff General Pierre Schill visited India twice — in February 2024 and October 2025. India’s Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan travelled to France in April 2024, followed by then Army Chief General Upendra Dwivedi in February 2025.French Navy Chief Admiral Nicolas Vaujour attended the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium in Visakhapatnam this February, while Air Chief Marshal A.P. Singh visited France in June.In July, France’s Chief of Defence Staff General Fabien Mandon travelled to New Delhi, where he met General Raja Subramani and Defence Secretary R.K. Singh, just a month after Modi’s visit to France.Joint military exercises have also expanded in scope. The two countries conduct Shakti between their armies, Garuda between their air forces and Varuna between their navies. They also participate in larger multilateral exercises such as Milan and La Pérouse.India’s growing role in French-led space exercises is another sign of the relationship’s evolution. New Delhi has moved from observer status to full participation in France’s AsterX space exercises, reflecting the growing importance of space security in bilateral strategic cooperation.
The sixth-generation fighter question
Both the consortiums behind the GCAP and the FCAS are wooing India, but what works for France is that we have a trusted relationship with France. We have imbibed French technology and understand how their system works. More importantly we have a well-established relationship with the firms such as Dassault, Thales and Safran, which are involved in the French FCAS project, as Germany has left.
Air Marshal Anil Chopra (retired), first batch of IAF fighter pilots to train on Mirage-2000 in France
What has perhaps drawn the most attention to the partnership, however, is the question of the sixth-generation fighter.France, Germany and Spain have been developing the Future Combat Air System, or FCAS, but differences between Paris and Berlin have reportedly complicated the programme. France’s emphasis on carrier-capable operations and nuclear deterrence requirements does not necessarily align with German priorities.
What makes a sixth generation fighter
India, notably, has requirements that overlap more closely with the French vision. The country operates an aircraft carrier-based fighter fleet and maintains its own nuclear deterrence capability.The Ministry of Defence has informed Parliament’s Standing Committee that discussions are underway on India’s potential participation in FCAS. The programme’s first flight is targeted for 2028-29, broadly overlapping with the timeline being pursued for India’s own Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA).If India eventually joins FCAS, it could represent a fundamental shift in the bilateral defence relationship, from buying advanced platforms to participating in the development of next-generation combat technology.
Rafale deal: The immediate test
The clearest near-term test of the partnership, however, could be the long-pending deal for 114 additional Rafale fighters for the Indian Air Force.The programme has moved closer to reality following Dassault Aviation’s formal submission of its technical and commercial proposal for the approximately Rs 3.25 lakh crore deal.With the IAF’s squadron strength having fallen to around 29 against a sanctioned requirement of 42, the urgency is clear.The proposed arrangement envisages 18 aircraft being delivered in fly-away condition and 96 being manufactured in India. Indigenous content is expected to rise from around 30% initially to more than 60% as production matures.For India, therefore, the programme is about more than adding another fighter type to the IAF’s inventory. It is also about using one of the world’s most advanced combat aircraft programmes to build a deeper domestic aerospace ecosystem.
Not simply about the US
It would be a mistake, however, to view the deepening India-France relationship solely through the prism of changing US reliability under the Trump administration.There is little doubt that uncertainty in Washington has strengthened New Delhi’s desire to diversify its strategic partnerships. But the India-France relationship has its own momentum, built over nearly eight decades of diplomatic engagement and almost three decades of formal strategic partnership.American unpredictability may have accelerated the trend, but it did not create it.The economic relationship is also expanding. Bilateral trade has more than doubled over the past decade, reaching 13.6 billion euros in 2025-26, while France has emerged as India’s 11th-largest foreign investor.Both countries are already looking ahead to 2028, when Namaste France is scheduled to return to mark 30 years of the strategic partnership.By then, if the current trajectory continues, India and France may have moved well beyond the traditional model of a buyer and supplier, towards something more consequential: two strategically autonomous powers building defence, technology and industrial capabilities together.And that may be the real significance of the India-France partnership’s latest evolution. It is no longer simply about what India buys from France. Increasingly, it is about what the two countries can build together.
