"We will work with India to accommodate India’s desires"

This is the transcript of an interview conducted with Vice Admiral Barry McCullough during The Gateway of India Geoeconomic Dialogue 2017.

Virpratap Vikram Singh (GH): Vice Admiral McCullough, thank you for joining us. Under the Make in India program, India now insists on a degree of transfer of technology. Many U.S. defense manufacturers prefer a buyer-seller arrangement, how can we overcome this kind of a gap?

Vice Admiral Barry McCullough (BM): First, thank you for the interview. It’s wonderful to be here at The Gateway of India Geoeconomic Dialogue. When I look at how we do technology transfer in industrial participation and partnerships globally, we can enter into a buyer-seller arrangements through foreign military cells path, or direct commercial cells path, or in many cases we work with the nation requiring the capability to actually execute technology transfer, and the creation of jobs that support the local economy. Lockheed Martin understands that this is important to nations such as India and we will work with India to accommodate India’s desires for technology transfer in accordance with U.S. presidential administration and government policies.

GH: There is a new requirement for an aircraft platform in India, what prospects is Lockheed Martin see here?

BM: Well, I think you’re referring you the single engine fighter competition. We look forward to working with India on capability, we view the F-16 aircraft, as the best fighter aircraft to meet India’s tactical aircraft needs and we’ve had discussions with the ministry in both the U.S. and Indian governments on sales of F-16s to India and look forward to the continuing dialogue between the two governments on how this procurement will proceed which we full support.

GH: What opportunities do you foresee in order to strengthen the bilateral cooperation in the private sector given that India and the United States signed a framework on cybersecurity cooperation last year?

BM: Cybersecurities, I heard one of the speakers last night essentially say it’s an all hands on deck evolution and that everybody has to participate in. We’ve got an initiative with an Indian organization, DSCI I believe, for cyber education, which is extremely important, in over all cyber security. Most people will tell you that work in this part of the business, that general housekeeping with respect to passwords and just general network administration, at a really basic level will take care of about 80 percent of cyber threats leaving technology corporations to work on the last 20 percent that’s really high-end cyber security. Our business has a cyber security business in it and we will again work with other nations and we look forward to partnering with India on cyber security efforts.

Vice Admiral (Retd.) Barry McCullough is Vice President of Business Strategy (Mission Systems & Sensors) in Lockheed Martin, Washington D.C. He was on the Defence Dialogue at GOIGD 2017.

Virpratap Vikram Singh is the Content, Digital & Interactive Media Manager at Gateway House.

This interview was exclusively conducted by Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations.

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