Military

India Becomes Second Largest Defense Importer

Douglas A. McIntyre

Published: June 13, 2016 9:40 am

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 6:53 am

The largest defense importer this year was Saudi Arabia. The second was India, which raises the question of why it needs to so many weapons. Saudi Arabia’s need is much easier to understand.

According to the Global Defence Trade Report from IHS, Saudi Arabia’s imports will total $10.1 billion this year. India’s will be $4.0 billion.

India’s spending is for protection from Pakistan, an illustration of what a country might do to protect its borders. And the India plan may not work, which means it will maintain its weapons purchasing pattern for some time.

Based on an analysis covered in New Zealand News:

According to Petr Topychkanov, Associate at the Carnegie Moscow Centre’s Non-Proliferation Programme, despite heavy investments in developing BMD systems, India may not be able to fully defend itself in a conflict from strikes by Pakistani missiles. “Even in 10 years and with the huge budgets that India plans to spend on the development of nuclear weapons and capabilities, it is difficult to imagine it will be able to defend its territory from possible strikes from Pakistan in case of conflict,” he says.

This argues that India’s spending is too modest.

From the IHS report:

Methodology: The report examines trends in the global defense market across 65 countries and is based on 40,000 programs from the IHS Aerospace, Defence & Security’s Markets Forecast database.