India's defence exports surge as Indonesia doubles its BrahMos missile order.
Defence exports rose to ₹38,424 crore in FY26, reaching over 80 countries.
BrahMos missile drives India's expanding global defence exports and strategic partnerships.
Indonesia has decided to double its BrahMos order. What began in March as a single battery worth roughly $100 million has, following Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Jakarta this week, turned into a two-battery deal worth $200 million, bundled with Astra air-to-air missiles for Indonesia's Su-30 fleet and a plan to develop the Sabang-Aceh port near the Malacca Strait jointly. It is a modest sum in the context of global arms trade, but it captures something larger. India's defence sector, once reliant on imports, now looking outward to sell.
The numbers behind the shift
The scale of the change is not small. Defence exports touched a record ₹38,424 crore in FY26, a jump of about 63% over the previous year. Go back to 2013-14 and the figure was ₹686 crore. That is a rise of more than 5,500% over twelve years, and Indian-made equipment is now reaching more than 80 countries.
Government-owned defence firms did the heavy lifting this year, with their exports rising 151% against 14% for private companies, a split that says something about who is winning the big-ticket export contracts even as smaller private manufacturers still struggle to break into bigger markets. SIPRI offers a useful counterweight to New Delhi's celebratory tone. India remains the world's second-largest arms importer, accounting for over 8& of global imports between 2021 and 2025. The export boom has not replaced the import habit. It sits alongside it.
BrahMos and the widening buyer list
The Philippines was the first confirmed customer of BrahMos, signing a $375 million deal in 2022 with deliveries beginning in 2024. Vietnam followed, with a contract reportedly worth around $620 million covering coastal batteries, training and long-term support. Indonesia is now the third, its order having grown from one battery to two within a matter of months.
Beyond these three, the list of prospective buyers has reportedly lengthened considerably. Malaysia, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Brazil, Chile and South Africa have all reportedly expressed interest. The United Arab Emirates is in early talks for a package that would combine BrahMos with the Akashteer air defence command system, a deal that, if it goes through, would mark BrahMos's first entry into the Gulf.
Reports also suggested that Abu Dhabi's interest has sharpened since the recent conflict exposed the Gulf's vulnerability to Iranian strikes, particularly around the Strait of Hormuz. New Delhi reportedly sees the UAE relationship partly as a counterweight to a defence pact between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, though officials are careful to frame the wider BrahMos push as commercial rather than strategic.
There is a pattern worth noting among the buyers. The Philippines, Vietnam and, to a lesser extent, Indonesia all have overlapping maritime disputes with China in the South China Sea. Indian officials and independent analysts alike tend to describe this as India responding to market demand that happens to originate from countries with China-related security anxieties, rather than New Delhi deliberately assembling an anti-China coalition through arms sales.
The rest of the basket
BrahMos gets the headlines, but it is not travelling alone. Armenia has emerged as an unlikely showcase for Indian defence exports, having bought Akash surface-to-air missiles, Pinaka multi-barrel rocket launchers and 155mm artillery systems worth several hundred million dollars in total. Yerevan's relationship with New Delhi has a clear strategic logic, given Armenia's tensions with Azerbaijan, a country that in turn enjoys close ties with Pakistan and Turkey. Armenia became the first foreign customer for Akash, with the first battery delivered in late 2024, and it is now reportedly in discussions for the more advanced Akash-NG variant once that system clears production.
Egypt, Brazil and the Philippines have all shown interest in Akash following the Armenia order, though none of these has yet converted into a signed contract. The export basket has widened further to include Dornier 228 transport aircraft, Swathi weapon-locating radars, ATAGS howitzers, naval vessels, lightweight torpedoes and electronic warfare equipment. The United States, France and Armenia were among the largest destinations for Indian defence exports last year, alongside Sri Lanka, Israel, Germany, Belgium and a scattering of African nations, a spread that reflects how far the buyer base has diversified from the traditional focus on South Asian neighbours.
What is driving the demand
Several threads explain the surge. According to a paper published by the Jindal School of Government and Public Policy, India's nearly doubled defence budget (between 2019 and 2026), shows India's sincerity to grow in the segment.
Analysts also pointed out that Operation Sindoor, India's four-day conflict with Pakistan last year, gave BrahMos and Akash genuine battlefield exposure.
Procedural reform has helped too, with a revamped online export portal and simplified authorisation processes cutting down the bureaucratic drag that once slowed deals. India has also started building the less glamorous infrastructure of a long-term arms supplier, including lifecycle support, spare parts pipelines and end-use monitoring, the kind of after-sales credibility that buyers weigh as heavily as unit price.
The government's own targets, a defence production goal of 3 lakh crore rupees and an export target of 50,000 crore rupees by 2029, suggest New Delhi expects this trajectory to continue. Whether the current mix of state-driven mega-deals broadens into a more evenly spread private-sector export base will determine if India's defence industry matures into something resembling a genuine global supply chain, rather than a handful of headline-grabbing missile contracts.
India still needs to invest heavily on research and development (R&D) activities and expediting indigenous defence initiatives. Jindal School pointed out that India allocates ₹6,30,000 crore on R&D activities, which is substantially less compared to other prominent technological nations like the United States, which spends around ₹78,00,000 crore on R&D activities alone.
