India shifts from importing weapons to exporting them
World's biggest weapons importer is fostering home industry in bid to become major exporter
For more than a decade, India shopped around the world in search of a deal for more than US$1 billion worth of helicopters to replace about 200 of its military's ageing light-utility aircraft.
But in August, the new nationalist government surprised many when it abruptly scrapped the request for global bids to buy the helicopters in favour of manufacturing them in India instead.
In recent months, India has reversed two more proposals for buying transport aircraft and submarines and decided to make them at home. It's part of a push by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government to foster a domestic arms industry.
India is the world's largest buyer of weapons, accounting for 14 per cent of global imports, three times as many as China.
Over the next seven years, India is likely to spend more than US$130 billion importing arms, officials say, to upgrade its understocked, Soviet-era arsenal.
India's military modernisation can generate billions of dollars worth of business for American companies, but it also helps strengthen the nation's strategic role in the region - at a time when the Indian and US militaries are conducting more and more joint exercises. The massive buying spree coincides with India's growing border tensions with China and Pakistan.
In the past three years, India spent nearly US$14 billion importing weapons, of which more than US$5 billion worth were from the United States.