India’s defence sector is expanding rapidly under Atmanirbhar Bharat, with export targets set at $6 billion by 2029, even as China’s manufacturing base dwarfs that of the US, Japan, and Germany combined.
Experts argue that India is now a strategic necessity for Washington, but US export-control regimes and outdated technology-sharing frameworks remain bottlenecks.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Atmanirbhar Bharat policy has created industrial corridors, raised foreign investment caps, and fostered a defence-tech start-up ecosystem that is already exporting. This signals a tangible and expanding industrial capacity. India’s defence export target of about $6 billion by 2029 marks a dramatic rise from around $80 million a decade ago, reflecting the country’s growing ambitions in the global defence market.
The recent meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing underscored Washington’s concerns over industrial imbalance.
Analysts Mike Kuiken and Leland Miller of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission highlighted that China’s manufacturing base now exceeds that of the US, Japan, and Germany combined.
Even the combined industrial scale of the US and Europe cannot match China, making India “the only way the maths begins to work.” They stressed that this is not a matter of preference but of strategic necessity, aligning with India’s own threat perceptions shaped by sustained Chinese pressure along its northern border.
India’s defence modernisation is increasingly organised around this reality. The US and India have been signing key documents to strengthen cooperation. In October last year, both nations agreed to a roadmap covering joint research, co-development, supply security, and innovation bridges between American and Indian defence start-ups.
This built upon years of bipartisan effort. In 2023, then-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer used the Munich Security Conference to argue that the US and Europe could not outcompete China alone, and that India had to be central to the solution.
However, Kuiken and Miller cautioned that signing more documents without reforming the system governing US defence technology sharing is insufficient. They noted that Indian concerns about limited access to underlying technologies despite growing bilateral engagement are well justified.
The strategic case for a deeper US-India partnership has been settled in Washington for three years, but the architecture has not advanced. They emphasised that this is not a failure on India’s part but on Washington’s.
The report highlighted that constraints in Washington are slowing progress. The bottleneck lies in export-control regimes, complex procurement rules, outdated financing tools, and technology-sharing frameworks designed for a different era.
Until these structures are reformed, the US-India defence partnership will continue to operate below its potential. Each year of delay allows Beijing to consolidate its industrial and technological advantage further.
India’s defence growth, therefore, stands out not only as a national achievement but also as a strategic lever in balancing global industrial power. The challenge remains whether Washington can adapt its frameworks quickly enough to unlock the full potential of this partnership.
IANS
