India and Israel have agreed to form a task force that will work to identify new areas of defence cooperation, New Delhi said on Friday, after officials of both the countries held the 15th round of Joint Working Group meeting on military ties. The meeting, attended by Defence Secretary Ajay Kumar and Director General of Israel’s Ministry of Defence, Maj Gen (Retd) Amir Eshel was held in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, October 27.

The JWG is the apex body of the defence ministries of both the countries meant to “comprehensively review and guide all aspects of Bilateral Defence Cooperation”, the Indian Defence Ministry said in a statement on Friday.  The statement, issued on Friday, said the JWG “has agreed to form a Task Force to formulate a comprehensive Ten-Year Roadmap to identify new areas of cooperation”.

“The two sides reviewed the progress made in Military to Military engagements including exercises and industry cooperation”, and Kumar and Eshel were “appraised on the progress made by the Sub Working Groups (SWG) on Defence Procurement & Production and Research & Development”.

During the meeting, it was decided to form an SWG on defence industry cooperation, the ministry said, adding that the “formation of this SWG would enable efficient utilisation of bilateral resources, effective flow of technologies and sharing industrial capabilities”.