India’s Arms Indigenization Quest for Self-Reliance / Desert Drills near Pakistan Showcase Determination to Be Developed Nation

By Michinobu Yanagisawa / Yomiuri Research Institute Senior Research Fellow

6:00 JST, April 24, 2026

This is the second installment in a five-part series on India’s bid to accelerate its all-alignment strategy for self-reliance by enhancing domestic arms production.

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POKHARAN FIELD FIRING RANGE, India — Huge orange flames burst out one after another in a desert that covered the horizon, each followed in a few seconds by an explosive bang. On Feb. 24, the Indian Army invited reporters to its Agni Varsha (Rain of Fire) exercise at the Pokharan Field Firing Range in the western state of Rajasthan. The range is located within tens of kilometers to the border with Pakistan and close to the sites used in nuclear tests in 1974 and 1998.

We were welcomed by a smartly produced official army video, which passionately proclaimed from a large screen: “The guardian of stability, the fortress of strength and the torch bearer of self-reliant power. This is the Indian Army.”

This image of strength through self-reliance was highlighted in the exercise, which was conducted on the premise of taking “punitive action against enemy land” after “terrorists supported by enemy land have carried out an attack on innocent civilians.”

A fleet of 10 drones first attacked enemy land. Assisted by Russian T-90 tanks, special forces on fast-moving vehicles subsequently captured one section after another of the enemy land, after which India’s first indigenous attack helicopter, the Rudra, provided air support. South Korean K9 self-propelled howitzers also joined the attack.

World’s 5th biggest spender

The strength of the Indian Armed Forces has been steadily built up. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, India’s military expenditures in 2024 — about $86.1 billion — were the world’s fifth biggest after the United States, China, Russia and Germany and about a quarter of China’s. Based on current U.S. dollars, the growth in India’s spending from 2015 was 68%, topping China’s 60%.

In 2025, India released a 15-year roadmap for military modernization, indicating its ambitious intention to procure a nuclear-propelled aircraft carrier and 200 to 250 precision long-range attack cruise missiles. India has also expanded its SSBN fleet, nuclear-powered submarines capable of launching ballistic missiles and carrying nuclear weapons for a second strike. Its first SSBN entered service in 2016 and its second in 2024. The third was commissioned in early April this year, according to media reports in India.

India believes that the way to strengthen its armed forces must be through self-reliance, which means producing defense equipment domestically rather than depending on imports. Refusing any military alliance, New Delhi has increasingly demonstrated its determination to not just improve its military capabilities but also to indigenize its weapons as the ultimate guarantee of security.

“Please put your hands together for the indigenous Akash missile system!” The emcee’s voice resonated throughout the night sky as the surface-to-air missile successfully hit a drifting aerial target in the air force’s Vayu Shakti (Air Power) exercise at the Pokharan range on Feb. 27. The Akash missile is India’s first domestically designed, developed and produced air defense system with as many as 96% of components made in the country. The missile “demonstrated stellar performance” in a four-day military confrontation with Pakistan in May 2025, according to a government news release issued shortly after the conflict halted.

Import ban

Defense equipment is an important pillar of the national vision called “Atmanirbhar Bharat” (Self-reliant India) that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been spearheading since 2020 to replace imports with domestic products. Only four powers, namely the United States, Russia, France and China, are said to have largely achieved self-sufficiency in the defense industry, and India is now trying to reach such a top position.

The indigenization of India’s weapons is being led by the government. Since 2020 the defense ministry has unveiled a total of five “positive indigenization lists” of defense components that have been placed under a phased import ban.

The lists comprise as many as about 5,000 items, ranging from light combat aircraft and naval shipborne unmanned aerial systems to land-based medium-range surface-to-air missile weapon systems and futuristic infantry combat vehicles. Approximately 3,000 items have already been indigenized, according to the Indian government.

The government has also opened an online platform listing tens of thousands of defense items currently being imported, calling for Indian industries to supply domestic substitutes.

Open to foreign investment

India has succeeded in domestically developing various military assets, including not just the INS Vikrant aircraft carrier, the Rudra helicopter and the Akash missile but also the Tejas light combat aircraft, the Agni ballistic missile and loitering munitions. The government started a program in 2010 to develop a domestic fifth-generation stealth fighter and completed feasibility studies in 2018. The fighter may log its first flight by 2029 and be deployed around the mid-2030s.

The government views the licensed production of such arms as Russian T-90 tanks and co-production of weapons like South Korean K9 howitzers as important, on the grounds that this will contribute to self-sufficiency through technology transfers. Also, in 2020, it allowed up to 74% foreign investment without government approval in the defense sector.

Indigenous defense production hit a record 1.54 trillion rupees ($16.4 billion) in fiscal 2024-25, up about 20% from the previous year. The ratio of indigenous content is now about 65%, having steadily increased from 20%-35% in the period from 1963 to 1990. Modi has aimed since 2022 to transform India into a developed country by 2047, and a military official said, “By 2047 we should be … capable of constructing, designing our own platforms.”