If India Must Buy Weapons From Trump, It Might As Well Be Smart About It

Donald Trump has never been one for subtlety. He operates like a man with a hammer—every problem is a nail, and every conversation is a transaction waiting to happen.

His call with Prime Minister Modi was no exception. With his characteristic mix of bluster and deal-making bravado, Trump demanded a "fair bilateral trading relationship" and, with no delay, suggested India buy more American weapons.

It was classic Trump: identify a problem (real or imagined) – in this case, an imbalance in trade – propose a solution, such as India buying American weapons, and pressure the other party into making a deal. India, it seems, may eventually have to oblige.

However, if India must entertain Trump's sales pitch, it should be smart about it.

One, India can fix the many piecemeal purchases from the US in the last two decades.

India has long been trapped in the cycle of making piecemeal defence purchases, opting for small quantities of equipment that inevitably prove inadequate when the situation demands more. A glaring example of this is the deal for 56 Mirage 2000 fighter jets India bought from France in the 1980s—only to realise later that the limited numbers left the Air Force sorely under-equipped. This same lack of foresight is evident in several of India’s recent deals with the US, where half-hearted buys have failed to build robust capability.

Take the Boeing C-17 Globemaster, for instance. In 2011, India signed a deal for ten of these heavy military transport aircraft, with an option to purchase six more. The C-17s have since become indispensable to India’s rapid airlift capabilities, playing a crucial role in responding to crises.

Most notably, during the Chinese aggression along the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh, the Indian Air Force used the aircraft to quickly transport troops, tanks and armoured vehicles to the frontline.

However, by the time India realised it needed more of these aircraft, the production line had already shut down. All India managed to secure was a single white-tail aircraft—the last one available—bringing the fleet to just 11. Even the Indian Air Force admits this number is far from adequate for the country’s needs.

In this scenario, the government should use the obligation of making a deal with Trump to fix many of its past deals with the US, instead of adding yet another type in small numbers to an already complicated mix of systems operated by the services.

India could buy more of P-8I and MH-60s, for instance.

With ever-growing signs of China's plans to maintain a permanent deployment of submarines in waters India considers its backyard—it now has bases on both the eastern and western ends of the Indian Ocean—India would need more anti-submarine warfare platforms than it currently has. The Indian Navy agrees, and the P-8I has proven so useful that India has also deployed them along the Line of Actual Control with China.

Initially, India bought eight P-8Is in 2009, then signed a deal for an additional four in 2016, with an order for six more approved by the Ministry of Defence and cleared by the US government. With a three-year gap between placing orders and deliveries, India may have an increasingly limited window of opportunity to place new orders. 

India would also need more MH-60s helicopters. The current order for 24 is barely enough to replace the existing fleet of Westland Sea King. The shortage is so acute that some of the Navy’s warships go to sea without dedicated anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capability.

India is in dire need of more Chinook helicopters too, especially for their crucial role in quickly transporting artillery and other heavy equipment across different theaters.

Despite impressive progress over the past decade, India is still scrambling to catch up with China when it comes to border infrastructure. In regions like eastern Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh, the Chinooks would be invaluable. With only 15 Chinooks currently in operation, the Indian Air Force is woefully under-equipped to handle the demands along both the eastern and western sectors of the LAC, not to mention the international border and humanitarian operations throughout the country.

Two, any potential defence deal with the US should pass a simple test: will it undermine India’s domestic defence industry? If a deal relegates India’s homegrown initiatives to the sidelines, turning them into little more than science experiments that never transition into mass production or operational systems, it is not a deal India should pursue.

Take the example of Chinook helicopters, where purchasing more units is pragmatic. India is not currently in a position to develop a comparable platform in the short to medium term. As a result, buying additional Chinooks is justified. The absence of a homegrown equivalent means that India would continue to depend on foreign suppliers, and failure to procure more units would leave a gap in capabilities. It makes sense to buy more now.

However, when it comes to deals like the proposed co-production of Stryker armoured personnel carriers and Javelin anti-tank missiles with the US, India must be cautious. Both these systems already have capable domestic alternatives, either in service or under development, making such a deal detrimental to the growth of India's defence industry.

In the case of the Stryker armoured vehicle, India has made impressive strides with its own indigenous program, the Wheeled Armoured Platform (WhAP).

Developed by the DRDO with Tata Advanced Systems, the WhAP has already been deployed in Ladakh by the Army. It has caught the attention of international markets, with an order secured from Morocco, and a new facility being established in Casablanca to cater to the larger African market. This marks the first time an Indian company has set up a defence assembly line abroad to produce a major military platform, proving that the WhAP is not just reliable but also gaining serious traction worldwide.

In this context, co-producing the Stryker with the US would provide little added value and might even detract from the momentum of India’s indigenous defence initiatives. It is essential for India to prioritise strengthening its own programs rather than relying on foreign technology that could inhibit domestic innovation.

Similarly, the proposed deal for Javelin anti-tank missiles raises several red flags. India’s previous attempt to procure the Javelin from the US ended in failure, primarily due to disagreements over the transfer of critical technology and the US government’s reluctance to allow India to participate in essential field trials.

While the situation may have evolved over time, it's unlikely that technology transfer would be as extensive as needed to make such a deal worthwhile.

Moreover, India has already been developing its own anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs), with several promising systems in the pipeline. Given this progress, purchasing Javelins from the US would not only be redundant but also stifle the growth of these indigenous programmes.

The development of a sustainable and competitive indigenous defence-industrial ecosystem requires consistent, large-scale demand from the armed forces to drive economies of scale and improve production efficiency. Without large-scale, recurring orders for domestically developed platforms from the armed forces, Indian manufacturers struggle to scale up their operations, hindering their ability to achieve cost competitiveness and technological maturity.

The large-scale induction of Russian T-90s, for instance, effectively stifled the development of the Arjun tank, preventing it from evolving into a mature platform that could meet the Army's requirements through iterative upgrades. The Army sought a silver bullet, the government of the day played along, and a promising project was sidelined. Any deals with the US must not perpetuate this cycle of undermining indigenous development.