US, France & Armenia top three buyers of Indian defence exports

NEW DELHI: With India shedding its hesitations in exporting lethal arms to other countries, Armenia has emerged as its biggest client of ‘finished’ weapon systems like Akash air defence missile systems, Pinaka multi-launch rocket systems and 155mm artillery guns, among others.

The US, France and Armenia ranked as the top three destinations for defence exports by India, which chalked up military sales worth Rs 21,083 crore ($2.6 billion) to other countries in 2023-24, official sources said on Sunday.

Indian public and private sector companies are now exporting a wide range of arms, ammunition and fuses to around 100 countries, which also include some complete weapon systems and platforms like BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles, Dornier-228 aircraft, artillery guns, radars, Akash missiles, Pinaka rockets, and armoured vehicles, the sources added.

The exports to the US, however, mainly consist of sub-systems and components, which include global defence majors like Boeing and Lockheed Martin sourcing fuselage, wings, and other parts of aircraft and helicopters from India as part of their global supply chain networks as well as offset commitments.

The Tata Boeing Aerospace venture in Hyderabad, for instance, is making the fuselage and secondary structures for Apache attack helicopters. “France, in turn, is importing a lot of software and electronic equipment,” a source said.

The former Soviet Republic of Armenia, on its part, has inked a flurry of deals with India over the last four years for import of ‘finished products’ like missiles, artillery guns, rocket systems, weapon-locating radars, bullet-proof vests, and night-vision equipment as well as a wide variety of ammunition and artillery shells. Some of these deals were inked even during Armenia’s clash with Azerbaijan — which has close ties with Turkey and Pakistan — over Nagorno-Karabakh, as reported by TOI earlier.

Armenia has become the first foreign customer for the indigenously-developed Akash air defence missiles, which have an interception range of 25 km, while other countries like Brazil are even keen on co-production and co-development of advanced versions of the system. “Brazil wants an inter-governmental agreement on it…talks are underway,” another source said.

Similarly, after India clinched the $375-million contract in Jan 2022 for the export of three BrahMos anti-ship coastal missile batteries to the Philippines, other Asean countries as well as some Gulf nations are increasingly showing interest in acquiring the precision-strike missiles that India has co-developed with Russia.

India, of course, continues to remain in the strategically-vulnerable position of being the world’s largest arms importer, accounting for 9.8% of the total global imports in the 2019-2023 time-frame.

The country, however, is now progressively expanding its domestic defence-industrial base (DIB) and banning import of some weapon systems under the drive for ‘Aatmanirbharta’ (self-reliance) or ‘Make in India’, while aggressively pushing arms exports.

With India’s annual defence production reaching a record high of Rs 1.2 lakh crore in 2023-24, the govt has set an ambitious target for it to touch Rs 3 lakh crore by 2028-29, along with arms exports of Rs 50,000 crore.

India’s defence-industrial base, apart from the 16 defence PSUs, has now expanded to over 430 licenced companies and 16,000 MSMEs, with around three times increase in value of production since 2014-15. The private sector’s contribution amounts to 21% in this, the official sources said.

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