Made in India, deployed abroad: The expanding map of India's arms exports

At the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore last month, Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh stated that India has signed a BrahMos supersonic cruise missile deal with Vietnam. A similar agreement with Indonesia, he said, was in its final stages.

These are just a few of many.

Going back a few years, the Philippines had signed India's first-ever BrahMos export contract in January 2022 for $375 million, covering three shore-based coastal defence missile batteries, according to Reuters. The first battery was delivered in April 2024, the second in April 2025, and the third is currently in the pipeline.


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Building on that, Vietnam's contract is valued at approximately $629 million, according to Reuters, and includes coastal defence missile batteries, operator training and long-term logistics support.

Indonesia, which appreciated India's proposal to establish a Joint Defence Industry Cooperation Committee covering technology transfer, joint R&D and supply-chain integration, according to a Ministry of Defence statement, would become the third ASEAN member to field the system if its deal is finalised.

For Lt. Gen. Deependra Singh Hooda (Retd. ), former General Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Indian Army's Northern Command, the expanding buyer list reflects something structural, not accidental. "Today, systems such as BrahMos, Akash, Pinaka, radars, artillery, patrol vessels, and various aerospace and defence components give India a more credible export basket," he says. "Opportunities certainly exist for India to increase its defence exports."

The BrahMos, a joint venture between India's DRDO and Russia's NPO Mashinostroyeniya first developed in 1998, travels at approximately Mach 2.8 and carries a 200 to 300 kilogram warhead with a range progressively extended to around 450 kilometres in its most advanced variants, according to BrahMos Aerospace.

A 56-fold rise in a decade

The scale of the transformation demands context.

In 2013-14, India's total defence exports stood at Rs 686 crore. In FY 2025-26, they hit an all-time high of Rs 38,424 crore, a 62.66 per cent jump over the previous year's Rs 23,622 crore and a roughly 56-fold increase over the decade, according to the Ministry of Defence.

Indian defence products now reach more than 80 countries, with the number of active exporters rising to 145 firms. Defence Public Sector Undertakings drove much of the FY26 surge, with their exports jumping 151 per cent to Rs 21,071 crore, while the private sector contributed Rs 17,353 crore, up 14 per cent, according to the Ministry of Defence.

Major General Sanjeev Khanna (Retd. ), a defence manufacturing and strategic consulting expert, frames the shift clearly, "Policy came first, products followed." The product improvement has been real, he notes, pointing to the 155mm gun as the clearest illustration. For nearly three decades after India's Bofors acquisition in 1986, artillery modernisation remained largely frozen.

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Today, India exports the ATAGS, the Advanced Towed Artillery Gun System, a 155mm/52-calibre howitzer developed by DRDO's Armament Research and Development Establishment with Bharat Forge and Tata Advanced Systems, which recorded a range of 48.07 kilometres with HE-BB ammunition during trials at Pokhran, according to Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).

Armenia has received six units, delivered by Bharat Forge in 2023, alongside Pinaka multi-barrel rocket launchers and Akash-1S surface-to-air missiles, all showcased during Yerevan's military parades in early 2026.

The buyer map and what it tells us

Look at who is buying Indian weapons and the geography becomes hard to ignore. The Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia all have active maritime disputes with China in the South China Sea. Armenia, analysts note, sits at the intersection of a Turkey-Azerbaijan-Pakistan alignment.

Cyprus signed a roadmap for bilateral defence cooperation with India for 2026-2031 during Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides's state visit to New Delhi in May 2026, according to the Ministry of External Affairs.

Now the Middle East is entering the picture. According to Reuters, the UAE is in early but fast-moving talks with India to acquire both the BrahMos missile and the Akashteera Air defence command-and-control system, developed by Bharat Electronics Limited alongside the Indian Army.

"UAE has shown interest in a number of our weapon systems including BrahMos and Akashteer. The talks between India and UAE are at initial stages and are progressing fast," a Reuters report said.

Any BrahMos sale would require Russia's formal approval given the missile's joint development, though sources cited by Reuters say this is unlikely to pose a hurdle given Moscow's close ties with Abu Dhabi.

Is there a deliberate anti-China, anti-Iran doctrine stitching all of this together?

Most experts who spoke to ET Online say no, but they also say calling it coincidental would be misleading. Rahul Rawat, Research Assistant at ORF's Strategic Studies Programme, describes it as "the alignment between demand and supply equations in the global arms bazaar." China has been making deeper inroads in South and Southeast Asia, and states in the region have faced maritime grey-zone coercion.

"India aims to grow its influence in the region and beyond as a credible player, pursuing its strategic interests to shape the regional security order and mitigate any malicious efforts to disrupt India's rise and ambitions in the Indo-Pacific," Rawat says.

Lt. Gen. Hooda offers a similar read: "The pattern does appear striking, but I would not call it a formal anti-China export doctrine. India is responding to demand that happens to come overwhelmingly from countries with China-related security concerns, and these sales advance our commercial and strategic interests."

Major General Khanna adds: "There is a visible China factor in some of India's headline defence export deals, but I would not call it a declared anti-China export doctrine," noting that India's export map spans over 80 countries, including the US and France as supply-chain markets and Guyana under credit-backed outreach.

Battlefield credibility as a sales pitch

One factor that has decisively shifted the conversation is Operation Sindoor, India's precision strikes in May 2025. Multiple experts ET Online spoke to said that before Sindoor, India could point to its systems' specifications; after Sindoor, it could point to their performance.

At a joint services press briefing on May 12, 2025, Air Marshal AK Bharti, Director General of Air Operations, IAF, said the Akash system's performance during the operation was a "stellar" highlight, describing how it neutralised aerial threats including drones and missiles launched by Pakistan. That battlefield validation has since become a direct sales argument.

"Operation Sindoor has certainly improved the credibility of Indian systems," Major General Khanna notes. "Buyers do not judge weapons only by brochures or trials; they look for operational performance."

Prof. Madhav Nalapat, UNESCO Peace Chair at Manipal University and Director of the Department of Geopolitics and International Relations, puts it plainly: "India made weapons have proved their calibre on the battlefield especially during Operation Sindoor, which has enhanced demand among our various friends in Southeast Asia and Africa and even Latin America. Even Europeans are looking at some of the items with envy."

Doctrine, or structured opportunism?

Does India have a clear policy framework for who it sells to and why? The honest answer, according to multiple experts, is: not yet, but it is more deliberate than it used to be. Defence Secretary Singh said at Shangri-La that advanced military technologies are shared only with countries that enjoy strong strategic relations and mutual confidence with India. But that statement, while directionally correct, stops short of what experts consider a genuine doctrine.

India's defence exports are not random, but I would not say we yet have a fully articulated doctrine," Major General Khanna says. "At this stage, it is structured opportunism, moving in the right direction, but still short of a clear strategic framework." Rawat of ORF describes what exists as "an emergent doctrine without any declaratory format," with strategic factors taking priority over a purely commercial model.

Amb. Anil Trigunayat (IFS Retd. ), former Ambassador of India to Jordan, Libya and Malta, sees the diplomatic dimension clearly: "The trade in arms for both defensive and offensive use is a normal given and part of the war doctrines of the countries. India insists on transfer of technology as well as local manufacturing to the extent possible."

As India's products become more capable, that gap becomes more consequential. Major General Khanna has flagged the broader vulnerability: "End-user certification on paper is not enough. India will need stronger end-user validation, serial-number tracking, re-transfer restrictions and credible penalties for violation as its export footprint grows."

The after-sales gap

Lt. Gen. Kamal Jit Singh (Retd. ), former General Officer Commanding-in-Chief of Western Command, is blunt about one of India's most persistent export weaknesses. "This has been a weak area for us," he says, pointing to a concrete example: "ALH Dhruva sold to Ecuador were returned."

Major General Khanna puts the structural stakes in perspective: a gun, helicopter or missile system may remain in service for three to five decades, and over that period spares, maintenance, overhaul and technical support can cost two to four times the original acquisition price. "Honestly, not yet, not at the scale required," he says of India's after-sales infrastructure. "This is probably India's most significant structural gap as a defence exporter."

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Lt. Gen. Hooda flags the scaling challenge: "As exports grow, India will have to scale up substantially in overseas maintenance hubs, spare parts inventories, trained technical teams deployable abroad, and the institutional culture of long-term customer support."

What's next?

The pipeline is substantial. Beyond the Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia, BrahMos interest has been reported from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Thailand, Brazil and Chile, according to multiple defence and government sources cited in Indian and international media. The UAE talks, if they progress, would mark the missile's first entry into the Gulf. The Defence Forces Vision 2047, released by the Ministry of Defence in March 2026, explicitly lists Military Cooperation and Defence Diplomacy as one of seven strategic priorities. The government has set a target of Rs 50,000 crore in defence exports by 2029-30, according to the Ministry of Defence.

What India is still working to build, as the experts ET Online spoke to collectively noted, is the institutional infrastructure to be a serious long-term arms supplier: the doctrine, the lifecycle support systems, the end-use monitoring and the diplomatic bandwidth to manage consequences when the weapons it exports are used in the field.