‘India’s defence exports surge to ₹38,424 cr’: Defence Minister Rajnath Singh's message on I-Day eve
Ahead of the 80th Independence Day, the Ministry of Defence stated that India's defence exports had risen to a record ₹38,424 crore in 2025-26
It was also stated that the Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) had granted approval to capital acquisition projects worth more than ₹8.75 lakh crore over the preceding one year
The message, issued through an Akashvani broadcast to the armed forces, framed continued military modernisation and self-reliance as the government's top defence priorities
The message additionally referenced strengthened indigenous strike capabilities, citing platforms such as Agni, RudraM-II and Pinaka
Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) — Structure and Role
The DAC is the apex body in the Ministry of Defence responsible for approving all major capital acquisition proposals for the armed forces. It was constituted in 2001 on the recommendation of the Group of Ministers set up after the Kargil Review Committee report, as part of post-Kargil defence reforms.
Key Details
- Chaired by the Raksha Mantri (Defence Minister); members include the Chief of Defence Staff, the three service chiefs, and senior Ministry of Defence officials
- The DAC decides "Acceptance of Necessity" (AoN) for a proposal and assigns it a procurement category before it proceeds to the Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP) 2020 process
- Bigger-value proposals subsequently require clearance from the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), chaired by the Prime Minister, before a contract is signed
- AoN approval by the DAC is not the same as a signed contract — it is the sanction to initiate the procurement process, which can still take years to fructify into deliveries
The ₹8.75 lakh crore figure represents AoN-stage clearances by the DAC over one year, i.e., the pipeline of sanctioned acquisitions, not money already spent or platforms already delivered — an important distinction for interpreting such announcements.
Procurement Categories under Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP) 2020
DAP 2020 is the Ministry of Defence's governing policy document for capital procurement, prioritising indigenous sourcing through a hierarchy of procurement categories that the DAC assigns to each proposal.
Key Details
- Preference order (most to least indigenous): "Buy (Indian-IDDM)" — Indigenously Designed, Developed and Manufactured; "Buy (Indian)"; "Buy and Make (Indian)"; "Buy and Make"; "Buy (Global — Manufacture in India)"; "Buy (Global)"
- A minimum indigenous content threshold (revised upward across DAP iterations, now around 50% or higher for most categories) applies to qualify as "Buy (Indian)"
- The Strategic Partnership (SP) model, introduced in 2017, allows select private Indian companies to build major platforms (submarines, fighter aircraft, helicopters, armoured vehicles) domestically in partnership with foreign Original Equipment Manufacturers, combining technology transfer with indigenous capacity-building
The scale of DAC approvals cited is presented as evidence that the acquisition pipeline is increasingly weighted toward indigenous procurement categories, which in turn is expected to feed the growth in defence production and exportable capacity.
SCOMET Regime — the Legal Basis for Defence Exports
Export of defence and dual-use items from India is controlled under the SCOMET (Special Chemicals, Organisms, Materials, Equipment and Technologies) list, notified under the Foreign Trade Policy pursuant to the Foreign Trade (Development and Regulation) Act, 1992. This is the legal mechanism through which the export figures reported in defence announcements are actually authorised.
Key Details
- SCOMET Category 6 covers munitions and defence-related items; export licences for this category are issued by the Department of Defence Production, Ministry of Defence, rather than the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), which licenses most other SCOMET categories
- Export licences require an End User Certificate and government risk screening; a standard licence is valid for 24 months and can be revalidated
- The SCOMET list is periodically updated to align with India's participation in multilateral export control regimes — the Wassenaar Arrangement, the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR, India joined 2016), and the Australia Group
- The Defence Production and Export Promotion Policy (DPEPP), 2020 set an aggregate defence production target of ₹1.75 lakh crore by 2025, including ₹35,000 crore from exports — a benchmark the reported ₹38,424 crore figure now exceeds
Every rupee of the reported ₹38,424 crore in exports was authorised under this SCOMET-DGFT/Department of Defence Production licensing architecture, which is the regulatory scaffolding UPSC-relevant coverage of "defence exports" ultimately rests on.
- India's defence exports (2025-26): ₹38,424 crore, an all-time high, up from ₹686 crore in 2013-14
- DAC capital acquisition approvals in the preceding one year: over ₹8.75 lakh crore
- DAC established: 2001, post-Kargil Review Committee recommendations; chaired by the Defence Minister
- DAP 2020 procurement preference order (indigenous-first): Buy (Indian-IDDM) > Buy (Indian) > Buy and Make (Indian) > Buy and Make > Buy (Global — Manufacture in India) > Buy (Global)
- DPEPP 2020 target: ₹1.75 lakh crore aggregate defence production by 2025, including ₹35,000 crore from exports — already surpassed on the export component
- SCOMET Category 6 (munitions/defence items) export licences are issued by the Department of Defence Production, not DGFT
- India joined the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) in 2016, one of the export-control regimes SCOMET is aligned with
- 145 defence exporters currently ship Indian-made defence products to more than 80 countries