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Chandigarh: The ongoing visit to New Delhi by the US under secretary of defence for policy Elbridge Colby – marked by his public dismissal of the “rules-based international order” as a “gauzy abstraction” – is, somewhat remarkably, being projected in official circles as a reset in India-US ties.

Speaking at the Ananta Centre in New Delhi on Tuesday (March 24), Colby framed Indo-Pacific stability as rooted in “strength” and “hard-nosed collaboration” between Delhi and Washington, echoing the shift in tone under President Donald Trump towards transactional realism. The US official also emphasised that the bilateral relationship between the two sides would be guided by ‘hard-headed, clear-eyed recognition of overlapping interests’ and a ‘results-oriented mindset in foreign policy, rather than on dusty formalities and unchallengeable shibboleths’.

In reality, however, Colby’s declarations amounted to little more than a reiteration of familiar – and largely hollow – promises that have defined Indo-US bilateral defence engagement for nearly two decades. Stripped of rhetoric, his message follows a familiar script: ambitious announcements that rarely translate into meaningful outcomes, followed by iterations of a similar ilk.

Rather, it reflects a longstanding pattern characterised by an ever-expanding, ambitious accumulation of elaborate acronyms representing defence initiatives like DTTI, iCET, INDUS-X, SoSA and RDPA, with each one billed as transformative, but none of which have so far delivered anything tangibly strategic or of significant operational value to the Indian military.

Intended as a grand ecosystem of dialogue, complex frameworks and pilot projects promising the co-development and co-production of assorted materiel over the years, these programmes have rarely – if at all – translated into deliverables of any consequence. Instead, they have all devolved into a cycle of repeated announcements and intense bureaucratic activity – much like Colby’s visit – that preserves the appearance of partnership without delivering progress.

The earliest of these, the Defence Technology and Trade Initiative (DTTI), launched in 2012, was intended to move the US-India defence relationship beyond a transactional buyer-seller dynamic toward joint development of advanced military technologies. In practice, however, DTTI became mired in bureaucratic inertia and mutual suspicion.

DTTIs four early ‘pathfinder’ projects – ranging from Mobile Electric Hybrid Power Systems to protective gear against chemical and biological threats – made limited progress, while others, such as Raven unmanned aerial vehicles and........

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