While the main purpose of Emmanuel Macron’s visit to India was the AI Impact Summit, his meeting with Narendra Modi was naturally an opportunity to refer to India’s purchase of 114 Rafale fighter jets for more than €30 billion. For us this huge contract can also be an opportunity to gauge India’s dependence on foreign suppliers to modernise its army and its efforts to break free from this dependence and gain true strategic autonomy. A faltering defence industry The frustration of the Indian defence industry is not a recent phenomenon. In 2018, Richard Bitzinger, an expert in the field, wrote that “its performance over the past half century has been disappointing to say the least”. Responsibility for this setback is generally attributed to public companies in the sector, starting with the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL), which are criticised for delivery delays and poor quality equipment, even by active military personnel themselves. Two products in particular fuel the Army’s anger: the Tejas aircraft and the Arjun tank. Launched in 1984, the HAL Tejas fighter jet has experienced repeated delivery delays, with the result that the Indian Air Force can only fly around 38 of them. Delivery of the next 40, ordered in 2017, has been postponed several times by the Indian manufacturer, HAL. Some experts believe that these delays will render the aircraft obsolete before deliveries are complete, given the rapid pace of technical progress in this field. Similarly, the Arjun tank, which was also launched in the 1980s, has still not been delivered.Other failures less high-profile than these “white elephants,” which have cost the Indian government billions, are often cited. The INSAS assault rifle is said to have caused many casualties among the Nepalese army when it was fighting the Maoist guerrillas due to major malfunctions. More surprisingly, India’s ballistic missile programme is said to have been “a bit of a bust”. Similarly, in 2025, HAL had to give up on equipping the air force’s jets with the radar that the DRDO had developed and turn to foreign suppliers. Less damaging but still problematic, the number of accidents involving Indian defence industry products is causing mistrust among soldiers throughout the chain of command. The Army lost 16 of the 154 Dhruv helicopters it had acquired in accidents, and the one that killed two pilots patrolling the Indian coast in 2025 deprived the country of reliable air cover, with the other aircraft grounded for systematic overhaul. Military imports and financial constraintsThe shortcomings of the Indian defence industry are forcing the government to import a lot of equipment, which is really expensive and makes them dependent on other countries – which isn’t great for the strategic independence that New Delhi says it cares so much about. This dependence is chronic in one major technological area: the motorisation of vehicles, whether land, air, or sea. The Tejas engine is manufactured by General Electric, the Dhruv helicopters by Safran, and the Medium Altitude Long Endurance unmanned aerial vehicles (MALE-UAVs) by two Russian companies. The Arjun tank’s engine is German, and that of another Indian tank, the Zorawar, is manufactured by Cummins. As for submarines, frigates, destroyers, and other corvettes, they are all equipped with Russian, Ukrainian, German, American, or French engines. However, as former Major General A.P. Singh points out, “No country possesses true command over a military platform without mastering its propulsion systems. It is akin to owning the form but without the heart” . India’s dependence on foreign arms suppliers exposes the country to supply disruptions for a variety of reasons. In the past, New Delhi has suffered from sanctions imposed by the United States following, for example, its nuclear tests in 1998. Today, India is affected by delivery delays from Russia, whose arms factories are mobilised by the war in Ukraine. Beyond that, importing weapons is expensive. According to SIPRI, India remained the leading importer between 2017 and 2021, accounting for 11% of global arms purchases, compared to 14% between 2012 and 2016, when it already held this title. Over the period 2020-2024, India ranked second behind Ukraine, with 8.3% of global arms imports (compared to 8.8% for Ukraine). However, the amounts spent remained very high – $1.17 billion in 2024 alone. Between 2000 and 2017, India spent $46.8 billion on arms purchases according to SIPRI – an average of more than $2.75 billion per year – these purchases cost India nearly $25 billion between 2015 and 2024, or $2.77 billion per year, a sign that India’s dependence on foreign suppliers shows little sign of abating. The defence budget, which is thus burdened by imports – especially as the rupee has been steadily depreciating against the dollar and the euro since 2016 – is proving problematic in other ways as well. Firstly, it has fallen in relative terms until 2026. While it averaged 2.65% of GDP per year during former prime minister Manmohan Singh’s second term (2009-2014), it fell to 2.47% during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first term and to 2.45% during his second term, with a linear decline in this figure from 2.52% in 2018-2019 to 1.89% in 2024-2025. In 2026-2027, apparently due to the 2025 conflict with Pakistan, the defence budget is expected to increase by more than 15%, if the entire budget allocated in February 2026 is actually spent. Secondly, at $83.6 billion in 2023-24, it is even less able to compete with China’s military budget of $296 billion in the same year – and the increase announced for 2026-27 puts the budget at “only” $133 billion. Thirdly, the composition of India’s defence budget leaves very little room for equipment procurement, with 72% of spending devoted to “salaries, pensions, maintenance, repairs, and infrastructure.” Pensions alone account for one-fifth of the defence budget. This figure partly explains a reform initiated in 2022, when the Modi government created a new – temporary – pathway into the armed forces, known as Agnipath, which was denounced by retired officers as an unacceptable challenge to military careers. Former Army Chief M.M. Naravane, who was prevented from publishing his memoirs, was nevertheless able to reveal that none of the heads of the three branches of the armed forces had been involved in this reform, which continues to be seen by officers as an attack on the professional integrity of Indian soldiers. The aim was to replace some of the 50,000 to 60,000 soldiers who retire each year with temporary recruits called up to join the army for only four years (only a quarter of whom are then called up to remain in service for 15 years). The goal was to save money by reducing not only the pay of those concerned (set at Rs 30,000 per month), but also the retirement pensions paid by the state, which had reached unprecedented levels. What kind of co-productions?In this context, India is seeking to attract foreign arms companies to India that could not only manufacture the equipment the country needs locally (which would reduce their cost and create jobs), but also transfer technology. However, finding the right partners for this type of investment and transfer is no easy task. In 2018, India decided not to go ahead with the manufacture of a fifth-generation fighter jet with Russia. Furthermore, outsourcing manufacturing to India is not enough to solve all the problems, as the case of submarines shows: while in 1999 India launched a plan to build 24 vessels by 2030, only six Scorpène submarines have been built with NavalGroup to date. Others are currently being manufactured and will be assembled in India in the future (starting with the five submarines that India purchased from Germany in 2025). Cooperation agreements – which are not particularly complex from a technological standpoint – are mainly being established with private Indian partners. In 2025, for example, Dassault and Tata announced that the fuselage of the Rafale would be produced in India, whereas previously it had only been manufactured and assembled in France. Tata also set up a joint venture to build the fuselage of the Apache helicopter in India. In general, the Modi government is relying on the private sector to develop a defence industry, as evidenced by the manufacture of the Zorawar tank entrusted to Larsen & Toubro. The results of this policy will not be known for years. Why does strategic autonomy matter so much in India? Because the country is not only facing Pakistan, but also China, that is arming Pakistan. While the difference in military capability between China and India at sea, on land, and in the air should not be exaggerated due to the levelling effect of nuclear weapons, this gap should not be underestimated for two reasons.Firstly, the fact that India does not have a defence industry that is competitive in all areas weighs heavily on its finances and, above all, undermines its independence vis-à-vis its big neighbour: no country can claim to be a major power without a defence industry worthy of the name.Secondly, India is unable to project its power in a way that can counter China’s growing influence in the Indo-Pacific. It is not possible for India to patrol the Indian Ocean – which it nevertheless considers its “mare nostrum” – in such a way as to deter Chinese vessels from engaging in illegal fishing there, or even from docking in Sri Lankan ports. The limits of its military capacity also undermine its credibility with its neighbours, most of whom are coveted by Beijing – and have sometimes succumbed to its pressure.In this context, it is more necessary than ever for India to combine its foreign arms purchases with technology transfers that will enable it to acquire the military capabilities it needs to guarantee its strategic autonomy in the long term. From this point of view, the contract for 114 Rafale fighter jets could mark a turning point if Dassault agrees to share more of its know-how and if its Indian partners are able to absorb it. Christophe Jaffrelot is Senior Research Fellow at CERI-Sciences Po/CNRS, Paris, Professor of Indian Politics and Sociology at King’s College London, Non resident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Chair of the British Association for South Asian Studies.