New Delhi, Dec. 15 -- Despite a year marked by tariff battles, confusion over Washington's China policy, and the shock of the recent India-Pakistan war, one pillar of the US-India relationship has held firm: defence cooperation. The two governments recently unveiled a new defence framework, are deepening private-sector linkages, and continue to expand military-to-military ties. Political scientist Sameer Lalwani surveyed the state of the defence relationship on last week's episode of Grand Tamasha, the weekly podcast on Indian politics and policy co-produced by Hindustan Times and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Lalwani is a senior advisor with the Special Competitive Studies Project and a non-resident senior fellow with the German Marshall Fund. He previously served as a senior expert at the US Institute of Peace and directed the South Asia Program at the Stimson Center. In conversation with host Milan Vaishnav, Lalwani assessed the significance of the newly signed US-India defence framework, the future of co-production and co-development, India's lessons from Operation Sindoor, and the perennial question of whether the United States and India might ever conduct joint combat operations. On the latter, Lalwani argued that India could play a meaningful role in a future Taiwan contingency if China were to attempt a forcible takeover. "[India] wouldn't ever have to cross the Malacca Strait or deploy troops anywhere. It could simply stay in its own territory, protecting US assets that operate in the Indian Ocean, tracking Chinese submarines, and allowing for overflight," he said. If such a conflict were to drag on - as the Russia-Ukraine war has -- industrial capacity becomes decisive. "In this case, India would become even more essential to any major power conflict in the Indo-Pacific because India has that swing industrial capacity to scale up and tip one side or the other," Lalwani noted. When it comes to US-India collaboration, he added, "merging our defence industrial capabilities will be an essential part of demonstrating our ability to compete and fight in a protracted conflict". Turning to the broader breakdown in trust between Washington and New Delhi, Lalwani observed that the defence sphere has been somewhat insulated from the turbulence. "Many areas of cooperation have been protected and have continued, perhaps because they are somewhat shielded from political choices, or because defence-exercise planning takes place a year in advance, meaning much of the activity was already locked in and allowed to proceed," he explained....