India looks beyond Russia for defense imports

The war in Ukraine has exposed the fabled prowess of Russian weaponry as a myth and scared off its leading overseas client.

India — the world’s biggest arms importer — is drastically reducing dependence on Russian weapons, and is unlikely to make any new purchases from Russia. Earmarking $100 billion for future procurement, this now leaves a potential opening for Western arms manufacturers.

Over the last 20yrs, India spent $60 billion on weapons from Russia, but the imports have been steadily declining, going from 76% 2009–2013 to just 36% in the last five years

And according to Indian defense experts, the Ukraine war is set to accelerate the drop.

Leading Indian defense insiders noted that while spares for in-service equipment will continue to be purchased from Moscow, Russia is no longer being considered for any large future buys. Amit Cowshish, a former adviser to India’s defense ministry, said Moscow was no longer “in a position’’ to meet India’s requirements.

...even before the war, India had found the quality of some Russian imports — such as MiG-29K fighter jets — to be substandard, and the performance of Russian equipment on the Ukrainian battlefield has also come as a shock.

India has been looking on with surprise at the performance of some of the Russian kit.

“How come the Patriots took down the Kinzhal missiles that were touted as invincible? How come Russian ships are becoming such easy targets from a country that doesn’t have a navy? Its spy planes such as A-50s, and fighter jets such as Sukhois have been downed so effectively,” Rao told POLITICO.

India’s air force has been long dominated by Russian jets, but as the country now plans to revamp and procure over a 100 new multirole fighter aircraft, it isn’t even considering a Russian bid.

The difficulty for India is that Western suppliers will likely balk at substantial tech transfers. That was the previous sticking point. Russia was reputedly pretty open-handed with those arrangements.

The interesting aspect of those transfers is that India hasn’t really spun up new domestic versions of Russian weaponry. The transfers seem aimed at ensuring that India has its own domestic production capacity for parts and accessories related to Russian gear it already uses, in the event Russia shuts its own for economic or other reasons. At the same time, even this capacity seems limited. India continues to purchase a lot of Russian parts to keep its equipment operational. It’s as if the tech transfers were merely notional.

Whereas outright technology theft is the rule with Chinese purchases of Russian equipment. Just about every Russian platform purchased by China has a Chinese clone, where the technology isn’t merely reverse engineered, but purloined, perhaps via cash payments to key people at Russia’s arms manufacturers. At the same time, however, the limits to Chinese larceny are evident in the fact that they have been unable, if memory serves, to match the the longevity of Russian engines for the SU-27 family, which themselves are a pale shadow of their Western counterparts.

BRICS started off as a Goldman Sachs acronym for one of their investment funds like the MISTS, MEERKATS, PIIGS etc. etc.

Brics as I’ve argued elsewhere is a talking shop. India distrusts China heavily and bans a lot of Chinese companies and trade.

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