For decades India, which is the world’s top arm importer, has tried to move away from merely buying weapons to producing them at home. Lately, however, it seems to have redoubled its effort under its “Make in India” program under which it strives to make deals with its arms suppliers to transfer technology and produce the weapons jointly.
It’s chosen top partner seems to be Russia which is its traditional number one arms supplier, as well as a BRICS partner. As a result Russia-India military ties may be set to rise to the next level. India’s Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj:
Our military-technical cooperation with Russia was based on a ‘buyer-seller’ relationship – they sold arms, and we bought them. But this [cooperation] has now changed. Russia has decided to produce weapons in India, as well as to jointly manufacture arms with us, transferring the corresponding technologies.
Russia and India ties are based on mutual trust. Russia is our time-tested friend.
The first time India built Russian (Soviet) designs was in the 1960s when licensed MiG-21 fighter jets were assembled by India aircraft manufacturer Hindustan Aeronautics Limited.
In the 1990s India and Russia jointly built cruise missiles for the Indian army and are currently working out a deal to jointly produce Ka-226 helicopters.
The countries are also exploring the possibility to jointly manufacture modern fighter jets for the Indian Air Force which recently greatly downscaled its orders of French Rafale fighters from 126 to 36.
Excellent Russia-India military ties are supplemented by a growing economic cooperation with a target of $30 billion in bilateral trade by 2025. There are also plans for a free trade agreement between Eurasian Customs Union and India.
In 2000 India and Russia established a relation of Strategic Partnership, and upgraded it in 2010 to Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership.