Sri Lanka signs three defence pacts with India and says its soil will not be used against New Delhi

Sri Lanka told India on 9 September that it will never allow its territory to be used against Indian security interests. The assurance came as Defence Minister Rajnath Singh met President Anura Kumara Dissanayake in Colombo on the second day of a three-day visit, the first by an Indian defence minister to the island in 38 years.

Three memorandums were signed the same day. One covers the upgrade of six 40 mm L70 air-defence guns for the Sri Lanka Air Force, paid for as a Government of India grant. The guns were part of a batch of 24 units India supplied between 2000 and 2006. New Delhi has already serviced 18 of them. The remaining six now get the same treatment. The Ministry of Defence in New Delhi said the work would strengthen the air-defence ring around critical sites on the island.

The L70 is not a museum piece in Indian service. The same Swedish-origin gun was used by the Indian Army and the Air Force during Operation Sindoor against Pakistan in May 2025, mainly against drones and low aircraft. Putting six refreshed barrels into Sri Lankan hands is a small hardware story with a larger signalling job: India is still the first armourer Colombo calls, and it is willing to pay for the call.

The second memorandum pairs the National Defence College in New Delhi with its Sri Lankan counterpart. The third formalises the National Cadet Corps youth exchange, which already brings foreign cadets to New Delhi each year. None of the three documents is a basing agreement. Together they fill in the five-year Defence Cooperation MoU signed when Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Colombo on 5 April 2025, the first umbrella defence pact between the two states.

Why the visit is late, and why it is now

Singh landed on 8 September and was received by Deputy Defence Minister Maj Gen Aruna Jayasekara (retd.). He called Sri Lanka a central partner under Neighbourhood First and the MAHASAGAR maritime frame. He also congratulated Dissanayake on two years in office and passed on Modi's greetings. Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath said the visit would push the relationship past a narrow defence file and into training and instructor swaps.

The 2025 umbrella MoU runs five years, with a three-month notice clause and a possible three-year extension. It covers exercises, capacity building, disaster relief, port calls and defence-industry talk. Implementation has been the missing piece. Singh's trip is meant to put dates and units on that paper. India also remains the government that sent the first large rescue package after Cyclone Ditwah in 2025 and that helped during the island's economic collapse.

China is not named in the MoUs and does not need to be. Colombo sits on sea lanes India treats as home water. Chinese ships, docking rights and project debt have been the background noise of every India-Sri Lanka defence conversation for a decade. Dissanayake's sentence about territory not being used against India is the political product Singh came to collect. It does not bar Chinese commercial work. It does set a ceiling New Delhi can quote the next time a dual-use visit is proposed.

What six guns do not settle

Grant-funded maintenance on six ageing anti-aircraft pieces will not shift the naval balance in the Bay of Bengal. It does keep Indian technicians inside Sri Lankan air-defence sheds and keeps those sheds off a rival supplier's list. The NDC and NCC papers do something similar for officers and teenagers: they lock in a pipeline of people who will have trained next to Indians before they sit in staff jobs.

The test after Singh flies home is mechanical. Are the six L70s upgraded on the grant timetable. Do the two colleges swap a first cohort this academic year. Does the cadet exchange actually move beyond a Delhi photo line. And does Colombo's territorial pledge show up the next time a research vessel or a logistics ship asks for a long stay. The documents signed on Wednesday give India a paper trail. They do not yet give it a changed map.