British Foreign Minister Liz Truss and Secretary of Defence General Nick Carter, who are set to board HMS Queen Elizabeth, will hold high-level discussions with Indian officials on defence technology cooperation.
The UK's Carrier Strike Group led by the 65,000-tonne HMS Queen Elizabeth is now in Indian waters; images reveal that the destroyer is docked at Mumbai Port.
The Konkan Shakti Exercise will take place on 25-27 October. Besides maritime exercises, the UK hopes to partner with the Indian Navy to develop electric warships for its "Fleet of the Future."
"We believe that we can bring great learnings and value to any future programme envisioned by the Indian Navy for developing electric warships," Kishore Jayaraman, Rolls-Royce president – India and South Asia, said ahead of the meeting.
Rolls-Royce is responsible for the design, procurement, manufacture, integration, testing, and delivery of the Queen Elizabeth Carrier ship's power and propulsion system.
As part of the maiden operational deployment, the Carrier Strike Group will sail over 26,000 nautical miles and engage with 40 countries from the Mediterranean to the Indo-Pacific.
The UK will also deploy offshore patrol vessels in the Western Indian Ocean from next year, while a littoral defence group based around amphibious ships will be in the region from 2023.
Officials of the two countries held their inaugural maritime dialogue in a virtual format that involved talks on cooperation in the maritime domain and Indo-Pacific, India's Ministry of External Affairs said on 18 October.