India Aims to Replace Russia in the Arms Market

India aims to replace Russia in the international arms market amid increasing global defense spending.

Reuters reported on this.

To achieve this, India is expanding the capabilities of the state-owned Export-Import Bank (EXIM), which offers long-term, low-cost loans to potential buyers.

New Delhi will also sharply increase the number of defense attachés in its foreign missions as part of a new program that will see the government directly negotiate some arms deals.

India is particularly targeting governments that have long relied on Russia for arms. Delhi is focusing its arms-export strategy on Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia countries.

One of the turning points was Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, an Indian official involved in increasing arms exports shared, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Spare Western arsenals were shipped to Ukraine while Russia’s factories churned out munitions almost exclusively for its war effort. That left other nations that had historically relied on Washington and Moscow, the world’s two largest arms exporters, scrambling for alternatives.

Government data show that India produced $14.8 billion of arms in the 2023-2024 fiscal year, up 62% since 2020.

Modi’s government has set a target of doubling arms-and-equipment exports to $6 billion by 2029. Officials have started holding meetings between foreign delegations and domestic arms contractors.

India hopes sales will go beyond the ammunition, small arms, and defense-equipment components that currently compose much of its military exports.

According to Reuters, Delhi missed its target of $3.5 billion in arms sales for the latest fiscal year by about a third, but that still marks a significant increase from the $230 million in weapons and defense components it exported a decade ago.

At a time of stretched global budgets and burgeoning defense demand, India is pitching itself partially as a relatively low-cost producer.

India can produce 155 mm artillery ammunition for about $300 to $400 a piece, two Indian sources said, while European equivalents sell for upwards of $3,000.

Indian firms have also sold howitzers for about $3 million each, one of them said, or roughly half what a European-made version costs.

India plans to use increased financing of arms exports via EXIM, which had a loan portfolio of $18.32 billion in the 2023-24 fiscal year, to move its products up the value chain.

India has already eroded Russia’s monopoly over arming Armenia, which was part of the Soviet Union but has since said that it cannot rely on Moscow. It sold 43% of the arms Armenia imported between 2022 and 2024, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, up from almost nothing between 2016 and 2018.