Tatas announce JV with defence major Israel Aerospace Industries

New Delhi: Indian business conglomerate, Tata Group, on Sunday signed a MoU with Israel's largest aerospace and defence company, Israel Aerospace Industries, to establish a joint venture in India for developing and manufacturing wide range of defence products.

The JV company would be set up by Tata Industries' wholly-owned subsidiary Tata Advanced Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI).

The company would develop, manufacture and support a wide range of defence and aerospace products, including missiles, UAVs, radars, electronic warfare systems and homeland security systems.

"We believe the coming together of the Tata and IAI will positively impact the growth of defence industry in India and compliment the efforts of our defence labs, ordnance factory board and defence public sector undertakings," Tata Sons chairman, Ratan Tata, said in a statement.

The joint venture would also perform offset work for IAI and aerospace programmes in India, and would establish local indigenous capabilities to support IAI's Indian customers, it added.

This is the fourth major defence deal the Tatas have announced over the last few days. The other deals announced have been with American aerospace major Boeing, helicopter pioneer Sikorsky and the European Defence and Aerospace Consortium (EADS).