Defence exports hit record ₹38,424 crore

India's defence exports for FY 2025-26 climbed to an all-time high, a 62.66% jump in which the public sector, for the first time, overtook private firms as the larger exporter.

What happened

• The Ministry of Defence announced that India's defence exports reached an all-time high of ₹38,424 crore in financial year 2025-26.
• This is a rise of ₹14,802 crore (62.66%) over the previous fiscal's figure of ₹23,622 crore — the steepest annual jump on record.
• Defence Public Sector Undertakings (DPSUs) contributed 54.84% (₹21,071 crore) and the private sector 45.16% (₹17,353 crore).
• The shift is notable: a year earlier the split was ₹8,389 crore (DPSU) against ₹15,233 crore (private), so DPSU exports surged about 151% while the private sector grew roughly 14%.
• India now exports defence equipment to more than 80 countries, and the number of registered exporters rose to 145 from 128 (a 13.3% increase).
• Raksha Mantri (Defence Minister) Rajnath Singh credited the climb to a streamlined export-clearance system, a revamped online portal and a simplified standard operating procedure for export authorisations run by the Department of Defence Production.

Background & context

Defence exports are the value of military hardware, sub-systems, components and services that Indian firms ship abroad in a financial year. For decades the conversation around Indian defence ran the other way: India was, and remains, among the world's largest arms importers, buying fighters, submarines and air-defence systems from Russia, France, the United States and Israel. The export number matters because it is the clearest single measure of whether the long-running push to build a domestic defence-industrial base — to make in India rather than only buy from abroad — is producing goods the rest of the world is willing to pay for.

The figure released here sits inside a deliberate policy stack. The umbrella vision is Atmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India) as applied to defence, with a stated ambition to grow the sector and lift annual exports toward the ₹50,000-crore mark by 2028-29. The instruments below that vision include the Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP) 2020, which set up a "Buy (Indian-IDDM)" — Indigenously Designed, Developed and Manufactured — category as the most-preferred route of procurement; successive positive indigenisation lists issued by the Department of Defence Production and by the DPSUs, which bar the import of specified items after set deadlines and force the supply chain inward; and the two defence industrial corridors in Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, which cluster manufacturing capacity. Liberalised foreign-direct-investment caps — up to 74% through the automatic route and up to 100% with government approval — were meant to pull in capital and technology. The export figure is the downstream result that all of these were aiming at.

Two structural facts about the sector frame the news. First, the public producers were reorganised: in 2021 the erstwhile Ordnance Factory Board was dissolved and its units corporatised into seven new defence public-sector companies, joining established DPSUs such as Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL) and the shipbuilders Mazagon Dock, Garden Reach and Goa Shipyard. Second, the private side was opened to large integrators and a wide base of micro, small and medium enterprises feeding components into both public and private prime contractors. The FY26 numbers show both engines firing, with the corporatised and established public producers posting the sharper jump this year.

For Prelims

• Headline figure: Defence exports of ₹38,424 crore in FY 2025-26 — an all-time high.
• Growth: up ₹14,802 crore, a 62.66% rise over ₹23,622 crore in FY 2024-25.
• Public vs private: DPSUs 54.84% (₹21,071 cr); private sector 45.16% (₹17,353 cr) — the public sector is the larger exporter this year.
• Sub-sector growth: DPSU exports up about 151%; private-sector exports up about 14%.
• Reach: exports to more than 80 countries; registered exporters up to 145 from 128.
• Trend: roughly a threefold rise over the last five years.
• Enabler: Department of Defence Production (DDP) eased the regulatory process with a revamped online export portal and a simplified SOP for export authorisations.
• Nodal chain: Ministry of Defence → Department of Defence Production (DDP) administers production, indigenisation and exports; the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) handles design and development.
• Umbrella: the figure is reported under the Atmanirbhar Bharat-in-defence push, with a stated export aspiration of about ₹50,000 crore by 2028-29.

The full set worth carrying. The public producers most associated with these exports are HAL, BEL, BDL and the three defence shipyards (Mazagon Dock, Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers, Goa Shipyard), plus the units that emerged from the 2021 corporatisation of the Ordnance Factory Board. Indian export-grade platforms and systems that have drawn foreign interest in recent years include the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile (an India-Russia joint venture, first exported to the Philippines), the Akash surface-to-air missile system, Pinaka multi-barrel rocket launchers, Dornier-228 aircraft, advanced light helicopters, offshore patrol vessels and a broad range of electronics, ammunition and components. Knowing this set lets you survive "which of the following are indigenous" and "match the platform to its maker" patterns.

What it is NOT

• Not arms imports. This is the value of equipment India sells abroad, not what it buys. India remains a major arms importer; a record export year does not make it a net exporter.
• Not the total defence budget. ₹38,424 crore is export sales value, a small fraction of India's annual defence outlay; do not confuse it with capital acquisition or the defence Budget allocation.
• Not a private-sector-only story. This is the year the public sector (DPSUs) became the larger exporter — the opposite of the previous year, when private firms led.
• Not a new scheme or fund. No new yojana was launched here; it is an annual performance figure released by the Ministry of Defence, enabled by procedural reform at the DDP.

Why it matters

An export record is a self-reliance signal that is hard to fake. A country can mandate indigenisation and publish positive lists, but other governments will only buy hardware that works and is priced competitively; a rising export line is therefore independent evidence that Indian-made systems are crossing a quality and cost threshold. The number addresses a long-standing strategic vulnerability — heavy import dependence concentrates risk in a few supplier nations and exposes India to sanctions, price leverage and supply disruption during a conflict. A domestic base that can also export spreads the fixed costs of design and production over a larger order book, which in turn makes home-grown systems cheaper for India's own forces.

The composition this year carries its own significance. The sharp DPSU surge suggests that the 2021 corporatisation of the ordnance factories and the order-book strength of HAL, BEL and the shipyards are translating into shippable surplus capacity. At the same time, a broad and growing exporter base — 145 registered exporters, many of them small and medium enterprises — signals that the gains are not confined to a handful of giants. Exports also serve foreign policy: defence sales build durable partnerships, give recipient states a stake in Indian platforms through training and maintenance, and extend India's strategic footprint, particularly across the Indo-Pacific and friendly states in the neighbourhood. The procedural reforms credited here — a simpler online portal and a streamlined SOP for export authorisations — show that the binding constraint was partly bureaucratic, and that easing clearances unlocked latent demand.

The honest caveat is that the level remains modest against the world's top arms exporters, and the ₹50,000-crore aspiration is still ahead. A single year's jump, helped by a low base in parts of the public sector and by large lumpy orders, is not yet a settled trajectory. The release itself implicitly admits the gap by framing the year as progress toward a target rather than arrival at it.

For Mains

For Prelims — quick comparison

One peer comparison worth holding: India's defence exports of about ₹38,400 crore (roughly US$4.5 billion at the year's rates) remain far below the established top arms exporters such as the United States, Russia and France, whose annual defence exports run into tens of billions of dollars. The point of the comparison is calibration — India is rising quickly off a low base and broadening its buyer list, but it is not yet in the front rank of global arms suppliers. For the matching-pairs pattern, remember the line ministry is the Ministry of Defence, the production-and-export wing is the Department of Defence Production (DDP), design sits with DRDO, and acquisition runs under the Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP) 2020.

Related: Atmanirbhar Bharat (defence) · Security & Defence · This week's cards