Government officials from the U.S. and India discussed opportunities to advance cooperation in critical technologies and strengthen connectivity across innovation ecosystems during the inaugural meeting of the U.S.-India initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology on Tuesday.

India and the U.S. announced bilateral efforts to expand their technology partnership in the areas of defense innovation, semiconductor supply chains, telecommunications, space and science, technology, engineering and math, the White House said Tuesday.

To strengthen their innovation ecosystems, the two countries signed an implementation arrangement for a research agency that will enable the U.S. National Science Foundation and Indian science agencies to broaden their collaboration in quantum technologies, artificial intelligence and advanced wireless, among other work.

The U.S. and India have moved to advance defense technology collaboration by establishing a bilateral Defense Industrial Cooperation Roadmap to explore development projects related to munition-related technologies and jet engines and introducing an “innovation bridge” between U.S. and Indian defense startups.

When it comes to the space domain, the two countries will create exchanges that will include training for an Indian Space Research Organization at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, advance bilateral commercial space partnership and broaden the U.S.-India Civil Space Joint Working Group’s agenda to include planetary defense.

Indian and U.S. officials discussed collaboration in human space exploration, Earth and space science, spaceflight safety and space situational awareness and global navigation satellite systems as part of the two-day meeting of CSJWG that kicked off on Monday.

The Congressional Budget Office examined and compared the hypersonic weapons being developed by the Army, Air Force and the Navy with potential existing alternatives and found that the U.S. military must overcome technological challenges to deploy hypersonic missiles, including the need for these weapons to withstand extreme temperatures.

“Shielding hypersonic missiles’ sensitive electronics, understanding how various materials perform, and predicting aerodynamics at sustained temperatures as high as 3,000° Fahrenheit require extensive flight testing,” CBO wrote in a report published Tuesday.

According to CBO, ballistic and hypersonic missiles could operate beyond the anti-access and area-denial zones being developed by potential adversaries such as Russia and China.

The report noted that ballistic missiles with maneuverable warheads would be more survivable than hypersonic missiles against midcourse air defenses but could be vulnerable to highly effective long-range defenses.

Procuring 300 ballistic missiles and sustaining them for two decades would cost $13.4 billion in 2023 dollars, the office estimated, while a comparable number of hypersonic weapons would cost a total of $17.9 billion.