India Remains World’s Top Importer of Arms

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) published data on global arms transfers on Monday that found India remains the world’s largest importer of weapons, reaching a five-year high of 11 percent of all global imports.

SIPRI also crowned India the world’s top arms importer in 2022, even after a steep decline over the preceding decade. It lost the title to Saudi Arabia for a few years after the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen began.

Imports are trending down because India is trying to become more self-sufficient. The Indian government maintains a separate budget for buying indigenously produced military hardware and has a long list of systems it wishes to begin producing on its own.

“The Indian military is large and will continue to import weapons and systems for some more years. The decline in India’s arms imports is a significant achievement. Imports will drop further as indigenization efforts succeed,” retired Indian Air Marshal Anil Chopra told the Hindustan Times when the SIPRI report was released.

The Hindustan Times quoted Indian Chief of Defense Staff Gen. Anil Chauhan warning in early March that India has taken only “some baby steps toward self-reliance in the last two or three years,” but remains too dependent on outside suppliers. He predicted the Russia-Ukraine conflict would spur the Indian defense establishment to become more enthusiastic about indigenization.

The Times of India (TOI) noted on Tuesday that “a record 75% of the defense capital procurement budget” was set aside for Indian vendors in 2023-2024. According to the defense ministry, India’s procurements from foreign sources have already declined from 46 percent of the defense budget in 2018 to 36.7 percent in 2022.

TOI criticized the government for not devising “concrete long-term plans to systematically build military capabilities, with proper inter-service prioritization.” Instead, India has essentially been insisting it would spend less on foreign arms without a cogent plan for stepping up its own production, leaving it short of vital systems for jet fighters, submarines, helicopters, and missiles.

TOI also noted some of the decline in imports tracked by SIPRI was attributed to “India’s slow and complex arms procurement process,” which was not really something to be proud of.

India has long obtained much of its hardware from Russia, but Russian exports are down sharply since it invaded Ukraine a year ago. India is increasing purchases from the United States and France, which actually displaced the U.S. as India’s second-largest supplier last year. 

SIPRI found French defense companies picking up business worldwide as Russian exports declined to almost every customer except China and Egypt, which both dramatically increased their Russian purchases.

SIPRI said India’s rival Pakistan increased arms imports by 14 percent despite a dire economy, with most of the new purchases coming from China.