Indian arms imports almost triple China, Pakistan: study

[Chinese-Dragon]

First thing to note "India replaced China as the world´s biggest arms buyer in 2010.". So china was importing more than india, just four years back. If China has crossed that phase, India has just entered that phase.

Secondly, the US won't sell to China. Hence, the only available seller is Russia, which wont sell advanced weapons to china fearing that China will once again break contracts and infringe on ToT agreements like they copied the SU27. So, china does not have the same number of sellers as India. You are limited in what you can buy. I believe that is the real reason India imports more.

Thirdly, the assumption that because India has surpassed China does not mean that China can produce everything in house. China still is reliant for technology in key areas and significantly behind the West. India pays $$ and china steals via espionage/honey traps. That's how these countries try and compensate. China proudly paints copied weapons or should I refer to it as 'inspired by'. Surely China has made some advances, no doubt about that. But also, a lot of it has been due to stealing, on a military and corporate level. The government of china encourages this. Yet, some posters were thumping their chests about being high IQ, which would be true if it stood for IDIOT QUOTIENT. A copy and produce culture cannot be associated with intelligence.

There is another big difference, China's GDP is now $9.3 trillion, and India's GDP is still at $1.7 trillion.

We went into a double-digit growth phase for over three decades, and the result is a bigger GDP, which leads to a larger defence budget.

China can afford to invest a lot more in indigenous industries compared to India, which is why we have even become the 4th largest defence EXPORTER in the world.

It's true, India can buy military tech from a greater variety of sources. But the question is... does that hurt or help India's indigenous defence industries? If you can buy it, where the incentive to make it yourself?

 

[SpArK]

When St.Antony, defence minister of India took over, India was the sixth largest importer of arms and China was the largest arms importer,"


In less than a decade, India has become the world's largest arms importer and China has become the world's fifth largest arms exporter."

That speaks a lot about how bad the ministry was with support of a network of 39 ordnance factories, three defence shipyards, eight defence PSUs and 52 DRDO laboratories under it.

Its a shame in reality.


Antony's socialist leanings, his refusal to reform the defence Public Sector Undertakings (PSUS) and suspicion of the private sector,is the root cause of the failure of indigenous defence capability to meet India's requirements.

 

[Vinod2070]

There is another big difference, China's GDP is now $9.3 trillion, and India's GDP is still at $1.7 trillion.

We went into a double-digit growth phase for over three decades, and the result is a bigger GDP, which leads to a larger defence budget.

China can afford to invest a lot more in indigenous industries compared to India, which is why we have even become the 4th largest defence EXPORTER in the world.

It's true, India can buy military tech from a greater variety of sources. But the question is... does that hurt or help India's indigenous defence industries? If you can buy it, where the incentive to make it yourself?

Only partly true. A large country like India needs to be self sufficient in critical defense technologies and that itself is a huge incentive.

The problem has been mismanagement and lack of long term integrated planning.

And sheer incompetence of the politicians and bureaucrats along with the work culture in many public sector organizations that have had a monopoly.

The absurd thing is that Indian establishment doesn't trust Indian public sector but supports foreign ones.

The good thing is that it can all change very quickly once the right policies are in place.

When St.Antony, defence minister of India took over, India was the sixth largest importer of arms and China was the largest arms importer,"


In less than a decade, India has become the world's largest arms importer and China has become the world's fifth largest arms exporter."

That speaks a lot about how bad the ministry was with support of a network of 39 ordnance factories, three defence shipyards, eight defence PSUs and 52 DRDO laboratories under it.

Its a shame in reality.

Antony's socialist leanings, his refusal to reform the defence Public Sector Undertakings (PSUS) and suspicion of the private sector,is the root cause of the failure of indigenous defence capability to meet India's requirements.

Antony has just continued the pathetic tradition of Congress/UPA politicians: sheer apathy and incompetence and criminal negligence.

It is time to be rid of these bumbling failures and get better leaders.

 

[Vinod2070]

While we want to avoid any comparison with a small country in our neighborhood for obvious reasons, the data clearly shows that the small country is much more dependent on imports (and also for the money that is needed for imports).

 

[Markus]

pakistan exports more weapons than India, that by itself is the biggest insult.

 

[Levina]

What an embarrassment india is becoming LOL!!!

Pakistan and China makes their own top-class weapons, tanks, artillery guns, and even fighter jets now.

india tries to make a tank..and then end up ordering hundreds of tank from Russia to cover up the failure of arjun...

And then india spends three decades to build a jet....about which the lesser said the better

In short we can afford to buy arms.

And this should be reason enough.....

The world´s top five arms importers were now India, China, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia

So if China and Pak are really making "world class" weapons and tanks then whats the need to import arms???and in such huge quantities??

 

[Markus]

In short we can afford to buy arms.

And this should be reason enough.....

we cannot afford to buy arms. all the money that we are spending can be better utilized for infra development, healthcare etc.

we are buying because our domestic industry has been allowed to realize its full potential.

 

[Amaa'n]

what concerns me most is with arrival of economic downturn - how are they going to keep up with the demand, should they atleast not be working on ToT, and enhancing the capabilities of local industries, or is it the fact that, local vendors are not trusted ones?

 

[thesolar65]

This needs to change and change quickly. There is nothing wrong in being an importer or arms. All major Asian economies have been big arms importers before they were able to develop their own industries. India is trying the same, results will be seen overtime. Private industry needs to be boosted.

But Govt. also must show them money!!

 

[Amaa'n]

World’s Biggest Arms Importer, India Wants to Buy Local
By GARDINER HARRIS

Photo

In a joint venture with Sikorsky, Tata builds cabins and parts for the S-92 helicopter at the Hyderabad plant.CreditGraham Crouch for The New York Times

• NEW DELHI — Of the 30 countries that attended a defense exposition last month to sell weapons to India, the world’s largest arms importer, only the Russians had the chutzpah to dress up their tanks and guns with women in tightfitting camouflage.
  
  The confident and sexy display reflected Russia’s longtime position as India’s dominant military provider, but decades of effort by India to make its own hardware may finally be bearing fruit. India recently rolled out its own fighter jet, a tank, a mobile howitzer and a host of locally made ships.
  
  If India succeeds, the Russians could be in trouble. Russia has nearly $39 billion worth of military equipment on order by India, representing nearly a third of Russia’s total arms exports.
  
  India’s defense minister, A. K. Antony, said at a news conference during the exposition that the country’s reliance on foreign arms makers must end. “A growing India still depending on foreign companies for a substantial part of our defense needs is not a happy situation,” he said.
  
  Whether India can break its import addiction is anyone’s guess, but many arms analysts are skeptical. India is expected to spend about $11 billion this year buying weapons from abroad, despite decades of effort by the government to create a domestic military manufacturing sector.
  
  “I don’t think there’s another country in the world that has tried as hard as India to make weapons and failed as thoroughly,” said Pieter D. Wezeman, a senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which studies global security.
  
  Mr. Wezeman said he was skeptical that India’s new products would change that history, saying that its fighters, tanks and guns were “of questionable quality.”
  
  India ranks eighth in the world in military spending. Among the top 10 weapons buyers, only Saudi Arabia has a less productive homegrown military industry. China, by contrast, has been so effective that it is beginning to export higher-technology arms.
  
  India’s main problem as an arms manufacturer is a corrupt and inefficient government sector that has neither the expertise to develop top-notch weapons nor the wherewithal to make them in abundance, said Manoj Joshi, a fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, a policy group based in New Delhi.
  
  In one telling example, India could buy fully assembled Russian Sukhoi fighters for about $55 million each, but instead mostly relies on kits that are sent to the government-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, which assembles them at a cost of about $68 million each — nearly a quarter more. In another example, government labs spent billions trying to develop an aircraft engine, only to abandon the effort and buy engines from General Electric for the recently introduced fighter, the Tejas.
  
  “While it’s more complicated assembling Sukhois than putting together an Ikea flat-pack, it’s not that hard,” said Samuel Perlo-Freeman, a program director at the Stockholm institute. “And it’s far from an independent and autonomous development of a new weapons system.”
  
  India has tried to encourage private companies to make arms in India, both in partnerships to the government and independently, but few of these efforts have succeeded. Most of India’s homegrown arms are developed in 50 government labs and built at eight large government manufacturing facilities and 40 government ordnance factories.
  
  Companies have mostly been unwilling to work with the government, and the government has not allowed foreign makers to own more than 26 percent of any Indian factory. It has agreed to raise that limit to 49 percent, but no company has applied for the exception.
  
  Mr. Antony dismissed criticisms of the government’s chokehold on arms production. “Indian scientists and Indian industry are more efficient, and the government will have to support them,” he said.
  
  But Mr. Joshi said India’s government needed to get out of manufacturing. “Our defense industrial base is hopelessly out of date,” he said. “It needs to be dismantled and handed over to the private sector.”
  
  That has left the door open for countries like Russia, whose arms deliveries to India reached a record level in 2012, the most recent year for which figures are available, rising 50 percent from 2011. In the previous five years, India bought 12 percent of the world’s arms imports, and Russia accounted for 79 percent of India’s deliveries, according to the Stockholm institute. American manufacturers have recently won several orders for transport and maritime patrol aircraft, displacing some Russian equipment, but the Russians are still by far India’s dominant arms supplier. In 2012, Russia delivered to India the second nuclear-powered submarine ever exported by any country.
  
  Photo
  
  
  
  Ashish Saraf manages the Tata-Sikorsky joint venture. CreditGraham Crouch for The New York Times
  Alexander Kadakin, Russia’s ambassador to India, dismissed any notion of a slowdown in sales to India. “It is inappropriate in my view and even incorrect to speak about Russia allegedly losing its leading positions in the Indian market,” he told an exposition publication.
  
  Because of poor infrastructure, stultifying labor rules and difficulties acquiring real estate, making anything in India is hard. The country’s manufacturing sector is declining and now represents 13 percent of the total economy — about the same share as in the United States.
  
  But its military and civil aviation markets are so enticing that major manufacturers are opening facilities in the country anyway. In 2010, Sikorsky Aircraft, part of the American conglomerate United Technologies, opened a plant in Hyderabad that it operates jointly with Tata Advanced Systems. The facility assembles the cabin for its midsize helicopter, the S-92. The helicopter’s cabin was previously made at a Mitsubishi facility in Japan.
  
  Production was transferred to India not because costs were lower (surprisingly, they were not), but because having a local facility might encourage sales in India, said Ashish Saraf, program manager for the Tata-Sikorsky joint venture, of which Sikorsky owns 26 percent.
  
  But the challenges have been immense. New roads had to be built to the venture’s 11-acre site, and they came slowly. The company had to build its own facilities to treat water, handle sewage and harvest rainwater. It eventually got power from the state but operated initially from six backup generators, which must be kept operational for occasional power cuts.
  
  Employees needed considerable training in aerospace manufacturing and in the early days often left for higher-paying jobs as soon as their training was complete. “Our talent got poached all the time,” Mr. Saraf said. So in addition to expensive training, the company had to undertake an employee retention program.
  
  Shipping has been a challenge. Some of the Tata-Sikorsky plant’s most important equipment was damaged on the trip from the port in Mumbai by India’s terrible roads, delaying production. The plant sends its helicopter cabins back to the port; from there, they are shipped to Pennsylvania, where the aircraft are fully assembled.
  
  To safeguard against damage to the cabins, the company has hired the operator of a fleet of specially made suspension trucks that travel more slowly, at less than 30 miles an hour, and never at night. As a result, the 450-mile journey takes five days. At least two people are needed for each journey, since one must repeatedly get out with a long stick to push low-slung electrical wires up and out of the way of the truck.
  
  “Our early expenses were very high, as we were breaking ground in almost every area we wanted services — Internet, phone, water, sewage, electricity. Everything,” Mr. Saraf said. “The challenges continue in terms of logistics and transportation.”
  
  To encourage local manufacturing, India now requires private foreign arms companies to undertake at least a third of their manufacturing in India, as measured by the value of the weapons. But because of the difficulties in making high-technology equipment in India, billions of dollars’ worth of products from these so-called offsets have been piling up unused.
  
  A $16 billion deal to sell 126 Rafale fighters from the French aircraft maker Dassault Aviation has been in limbo for years, in part because the French have balked at India’s manufacturing requirements. With India’s economy struggling, expensive purchases like the Rafale may no longer be feasible anyway, said Ajai Shukla, defense consulting editor at the Business Standard newspaper.
  
  “We are at a watershed moment, because we cannot afford to keep importing every piece of equipment we need,” Mr. Shukla said. “We have just produced a fighter, a tank and a range of warships. For the first time, India can realistically indigenize.”
  
  Much of India’s military, in any case, does not want Indian-made equipment. So many Russian fighters assembled by Hindustan Aeronautics have crashedin recent years that the Indian Air Force calls them flying coffins. India’s Russian-made submarines and naval equipment have experienced deadly mishaps in the past year as well, leading the country’s naval chief to resign last week. The distrust between the civilian builders and military users has turned the made-in-India effort into an even tougher sell. If the two sides cannot agree, the Russians are ready to step in.
  
  “You cannot blame the Russians for taking advantage of the situation,” Mr. Shukla said.

 

[gslv mk3]

Much of India’s military, in any case, does not want Indian-made equipment. So many Russian fighters assembled by Hindustan Aeronautics have crashedin recent years that the Indian Air Force calls them flying coffins. India’s Russian-made submarines and naval equipment have experienced deadly mishaps in the past year as well, leading the country’s naval chief to resign last week. The distrust between the civilian builders and military users has turned the made-in-India effort into an even tougher sell. If the two sides cannot agree, the Russians are ready to step in.

• 
  “You cannot blame the Russians for taking advantage of the situation,” Mr. Shukla said.

Absolute BS.

 

[maxpayne]

Nice article

 

[Amaa'n]

Absolute BS.

care to explain??? as I can't comprehend much out of this one line --

 

[Malik Usman]

You guys dont even have your own rifle.

This is a given. I dont think India spent a lot of money on it's military in the 80s, 90s and with the recent overhauling and additions of new capabilities, and with the higher capital, it's going to be a huge importer.

Lack of knowledge that Indians always have......You are talking about Govt. or Military......even our peoples in FATA made weapons at their homes....

 

[Edison Chen]

Nothing wrong to be the biggest weapon importer, as long as your indigenous defence industry grows. You should consider the other factors like huge annual depreciation expense and the replacement cost I guess.....Of course I know the service year may vary, for submarine it's 25 years with annual 6% depreciation rate? You can't keep buying weapons, think about a few decades later. Keep these cost minimized and save your money to develop your own defence industry. China has more powerful enemies than India, we have to make our own weapons, India is a different matter.