Many Nations Want To Buy Made-In-India Missile Systems, Learn India’s Ship Building Technology

Underscoring that a host of foreign nations want to add Indian missile systems to their inventory, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday (12 April) said that there was an enormous export potential for sale of homegrown defence products.

In the recent past, nations like UAE, Vietnam, Indonesia and several others have expressed interest in purchasing the coveted Akash and Brahmos missile systems.

"You did talk about integrated missiles programme, which has yielded a lot of results. Today, missiles are so sought after by many countries... I want to highlight that there exists a market outside other than the Indian armed forces," the Defence Minister said while addressing an event organised by the Vivekananda International Foundation.

This assumes significance for two reasons. Firstly, India has traditionally been a major arms importer. Secondly, India has never engaged in sale of its advanced military hardware to foreign nations. So far, Indian defence exports have been restricted to armaments mostly.

Thus, the statement from Defence Minister herself is bound to gain traction.

Sitharaman added, “I can say, even our shipbuilding warship building capacity is very well recognised outside. There are several countries which are saying, help us to give that capacity to us."

Sitharaman also said that she has now asked the Defence Attaches posted outside the country to brief the Defence Ministry once a year about the developments in their countries of posting and regularly update it about their work.