India’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) reported two records in 2026. Defence exports in 2025-26 reached Rs 38,424 crore, announced on 2 April, and the value of domestic defence production reached about Rs 1.78 lakh crore, announced in June. Both are presented as proof that India is becoming an arms supplier rather than only a buyer. This piece sets the two numbers against their own history, asks who did the exporting, and checks what the government’s 2029 targets actually require.

Exports have grown 25-fold in nine years

From Rs 1,522 crore in 2016-17, exports rose to Rs 10,745 crore in 2018-19, dipped in 2019-20 and 2020-21, and have risen every year since. Over the nine years the compound growth rate is about 43% a year; over the last three, about 34%. The 2025-26 jump of 62.7% is the largest single-year rise since 2018-19. The Defence Secretary put the 2025-26 total at about €3.6 billion.

Production grew far more slowly, about 10% a year over the same nine years and about 18% over the last three. Exports have therefore become a much bigger part of what the industry makes: about 2% of production in 2016-17 and about 22% in 2025-26. The two series are not strictly comparable (production is the value of output by public and private firms; exports are the value of export authorisations executed), so the ratio is indicative only.

Rs crore; 1 lakh crore = 1,00,000 crore. Production for 2017-18 and 2018-19 is from reports citing the Department of Defence Production and may be rounded. The ministry later revised 2023-24 production from Rs 1,26,887 crore to Rs 1,27,434 crore and 2024-25 from Rs 1,50,590 crore to Rs 1,54,071 crore; the revised figures are used. 2025-26 production is calculated here as 15.6% above Rs 1,54,071 crore, matching the ministry’s “about Rs 1.78 lakh crore”.

The latest jump came from state-owned firms

Until 2024-25 private companies did most of the exporting: they supplied about 72% of exports in 2023-24 and 64.5% in 2024-25. In 2025-26 that flipped. Defence public sector undertakings (DPSUs, such as Hindustan Aeronautics, Bharat Electronics and the former ordnance factories) and other public-sector firms exported Rs 21,071 crore, up 151% in one year. Private firms exported Rs 17,353 crore, up 14%.

Of the Rs 14,802 crore increase, Rs 12,682 crore (86%) came from the public sector and Rs 2,120 crore from private firms. Private exports were Rs 15,209 crore in 2023-24 and Rs 15,233 crore in 2024-25, so over two years they have grown about 7% a year. The record is real, but its growth is concentrated in a handful of state firms and a few large orders, which makes it lumpier than the headline suggests.

Relative to what each sector makes, private firms still export more. The ministry put private production at around Rs 42,000 crore in 2025-26, about 24% of the total. On that basis private firms exported roughly 41% of their output and public-sector firms about 15%. This is rough, for the same reason as above: exports and production are measured differently.

What is being sold, and to whom

The ministry does not publish exports by country or product, so the picture comes from officials’ statements and reported contracts:

• Missiles. The Philippines signed a $375 million contract for BrahMos shore-based anti-ship missile batteries in 2022 and has received its first deliveries. Indonesia and Vietnam deals have been reported, with values that differ between reports. Armenia became the first foreign buyer of the Akash air-defence system, with a first battery delivered in late 2024.
• Ammunition and artillery shells. On 23 October 2026 the Defence Secretary said India had become the third-largest supplier of defence goods to Europe, mainly because of European demand for standard ammunition and artillery shells. A Bloomberg report he cited, based on Indian trade data, put ammunition exports at about $872 million. Reuters has reported that some Indian shells sold to European buyers were passed on to Ukraine.
• Parts for foreign manufacturers. The United States is reported to be the largest destination, mainly for sub-systems and components: aircraft and helicopter structures made in India for Boeing and Lockheed Martin supply chains, including through Tata joint ventures in Hyderabad.
• Other items named by the ministry and in reports: bulletproof jackets and helmets, Dornier-228 aircraft, radars, small arms, fast interceptor boats and lightweight torpedoes.

The ministry says Indian defence goods now reach more than 80 countries. The Department of Defence Production issued 1,762 export authorisations in 2024-25, up from 1,507 the year before. A full-year 2025-26 count was not found. The number of exporting firms rose from 128 to 145.

The 2029 targets: one is close, one is not

The government’s targets are Rs 3 lakh crore of annual production and Rs 50,000 crore of exports by 2029. Read as the 2028-29 financial year, three years from the 2025-26 base, exports need to grow only about 9% a year, well below anything recorded in the last five years. Production needs about 19% a year, slightly above its recent three-year pace of 18% and nearly twice its nine-year pace of 10%. Some reports date the export target to 2030; that would make it easier still.

So the export goal is likely to be met even if growth slows sharply, while the production goal depends on the large domestic orders now being placed actually being delivered on time.

India still buys far more than it sells

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), which tracks deliveries of major weapons, ranks India the world’s second-largest arms importer in 2021–25, with 8.2% of global imports, behind Ukraine. India’s imports fell about 4% between 2016–20 and 2021–25. Russia’s share of them fell to about 40%, from about 70% in 2011–15, while France supplied about 29% and Israel about 15%. SIPRI counts only major weapons, not the parts, ammunition and body armour that make up much of India’s exports, so its import and export rankings are not a like-for-like trade balance.

The ministry’s main tool for cutting imports is the Positive Indigenisation List: items that defence public-sector firms and the armed forces may no longer import after a set date. This blog has tracked those lists separately. Six DPSU lists now cover 5,417 items and five Department of Military Affairs lists another 509, and the ministry’s own figures for how much has been replaced do not reconcile.

What would fix this

• The ministry should publish exports by broad product group (complete platforms, ammunition, components, body armour and so on) and by region each year. This would show how much of the record is one-off missile orders or wartime ammunition demand.
• Exports should be reported in the same units as production, with the authorisations executed (not just issued) and the delivered value shown separately, so that the export share of production can be calculated properly.
• When production figures are revised, as 2023-24 and 2024-25 both were, the release should say so and give the old figure.
• Private-sector exports, flat at around Rs 15,000–17,000 crore for three years, need their own review. Export finance, faster authorisations for repeat orders and government-to-government backing should not be available mainly to state firms.

These are proposals from this blog, not recommendations any agency has adopted.

What this piece could not establish

The ministry’s press releases on pib.gov.in and mod.gov.in could not be opened from the research machine, so every figure here comes from news coverage and study-guide summaries quoting them. Where those disagreed, the figure most often repeated with an exact value was used. The 2017-18 to 2020-21 export figures and the 2017-18 and 2018-19 production figures come from secondary tables, and the 2025-26 production figure is calculated from the stated growth rate. No country-wise or product-wise export data were found, the number of export authorisations for 2025-26 was not found, and reports differ on whether Indian defence goods reach more than 80 or more than 100 countries. The period covered by the Bloomberg ammunition figure is not clear from the reports. Whether the Rs 50,000 crore target is for 2028-29 or 2029-30 also varies between reports.

Sources and caveats

About this article: Researched, written and edited by Umashankar Triplicane Dwarakanathan, with AI research assistance; every figure is meant to trace to the primary source cited. See the Editorial Policy for how sourcing, AI use and corrections work.