India ramps up missile sales in Indo-Pacific as China’s assertiveness turns neighbors wary

India will supply BrahMos and Astra missiles to Indonesia, the country’s third such deal in the Indo-Pacific, underscoring New Delhi’s rise as a defense supplier in the region amid growing concerns about China’s assertiveness.

BrahMos, a supersonic cruise missile with anti-ship capability, has attracted significant interest from buyers in the Indo-Pacific region as these countries with limited naval forces need to defend disputed areas in the South China Sea, experts told CNBC.

“BrahMos and air-to-air missiles What are the new areas in our cooperation? [with Indonesia]BrahMos is an important area of ​​cooperation, an Indian foreign ministry spokesman said on Tuesday, adding that commercial terms between the two sides were yet to be determined.

Siemon Wezeman, a senior researcher at the Arms Transfer Program at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, told CNBC that buyers were particularly interested in the anti-ship version of the BrahMos, which has a range of 300 kilometers and an extremely high speed that makes it difficult to capture.

“It’s one of the largest and fastest currently on the market,” he added. BrahMos Aerospace is a joint venture between India’s Defense Research and Development Organization and Russia’s NPO Mashinostroyenia.

The only other missile similar to the BrahMos is China’s YJ-12, Douglas Barrie, senior fellow in military aviation at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told CNBC in an email.

Philippines was the first buyer BrahMos in 2022. In May this year, India’s defense minister signed an agreement to sell Reuters reported that the missile was sent to Vietnam. India’s Ministry of Defense and BrahMos Aerospace did not respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.

Both of these agreements were motivated by “China’s perception of increased threats in the South China Sea,” Collin Koh, senior fellow at the Institute for Defense and Strategic Studies, told CNBC.

Koh added that although Indonesia does not see China as a primary security threat, it has differences of opinion with Beijing over the “Northern Natuna Sea claim”.

On Monday, the Chinese navy tested a ballistic missile in the Pacific; The move is expected to push countries in the region to deepen defense ties with each other amid China’s growing military might.

This opens up space for India to increase its defense exports in the region, experts said, as India is seen as a transaction provider, is not aligned with any major power centre, and is not seen as a security threat in the region.

Strengthening defense partnerships between countries in the Indo-Pacific is part of efforts to deal with the “China threat,” Farwa Aamer, director of South Asia initiatives at the Asian Society Policy Institute, told CNBC.

These countries also want to establish “less dependent” defense ties with the United States, he added, all of which make India a viable defense partner and “the BrahMos missile system profitable.”

But while the BrahMos deals have helped India rally regional partners to counter China, experts say it has done little to advance New Delhi’s ambitions of becoming a major defense exporter.

Although exports have increased in the last 10 years, they were worth only 384 billion rupees ($4 billion) in the fiscal year ending March 2026. This is just over 1% of export figures. Total arms sales are 331 billion dollars The world’s largest arms supplier is the USA.

According to SIPRI’s 2021-2025 major arms transfer data, India is not among the world’s top 25 arms exporters; China ranks fifth and South Korea ranks ninth.

But New Delhi Fifth largest military spender It is the second largest arms importer in the world, with a share of more than 8%, according to SIPRI’s 2026 yearbook.