India's long shopping list calls for $20 billion in fighter jets, $1.5 billion worth of refueling aircraft and billions of dollars in submarines, tanks and artillery, among other equipment, all part of an estimated $80 billion spending spree over the next five years.
An exhibitor stands next to a billboard showing rockets made in India at Defexpo India 2012, the country's biggest weapons trade show, in New Delhi on Friday.
NEW DELHI — Sailor-suited Russian models touted their nation's submarines. Indian officers posed for pictures atop foreign-made armor-plated vehicles.
And working the room at New Delhi's aging exhibition center were French, British and U.S. arms merchants from global-defense giants, elbowing one another aside in the search for a deal at Defexpo India 2012, the country's biggest-ever weapons trade show.
Fueled by superpower ambitions and rivalry with China but hampered by a creaky domestic defense industry, India is on a military buying spree that's made it the belle of the global military ball.
India's long shopping list calls for $20 billion in fighter jets, $1.5 billion worth of refueling aircraft and billions of dollars in submarines, tanks and artillery, among other equipment, all part of an estimated $80 billion spending spree over the next five years.
Pakistan once kept Indian generals awake at night. But increasingly that mantle goes to China, with its growing economic and military might and festering territorial disputes along its 2,800-mile-long border with India. Adding to India's insecurity are memories of its defeat by the Chinese in a 1962 border war.
The country was the world's largest weapons importer for the 2007-11 period, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute think tank, followed by South Korea, Pakistan and China. Although China's annual military budget of $106 billion is nearly three times India's, the rapid expansion of its homegrown defense industry means it produces an estimated 90 percent of its weapon systems domestically, compared with 30 percent for India.
China holds the high ground given the altitude of the Tibet plateau — key in any land conflict — in part because of its superior hardware and better rail and road links. By some estimates, China could deploy troops within a week, whereas India would need three weeks.
India has some advantages, though. Its aircraft take off at lower altitudes, allowing them to carry greater payloads. And India probably would enjoy stronger global diplomatic support in any conflict.
Increasingly, however, Delhi also must contend with China's navy, poised to start challenging its neighbor's primacy in the Indian Ocean. China's first aircraft carrier started sea trials in August, and three more carriers are expected in quick succession. And despite its traditional focus on the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, China is financing port construction in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Pakistan and Bangladesh and flexing its muscle with anti-piracy missions off Somalia.
India has sought a Russian-built carrier for at least four years, but the cost has now reportedly doubled to $2.3 billion after repeated squabbles with Russia. Two more carrier purchases are planned by 2017. For now, India has to make do with a 1950s-era British-built carrier that's on its last legs.
Beyond perceived threats, India is also hoping its military spending will help modernize its design, engineering and assembly industries, project greater regional clout befitting an emerging superpower and help reverse its record of failed indigenous weapon production, cost overruns and delays.
Although waste and cost overruns beset defense industries worldwide, India stands out, analysts said. As procurement and production delays drag on, hardware already in service creaks along, or doesn't, well past its due date. Between 2008 and 2012, India, among the few countries still flying MiG fighter planes, lost 27 of them in crashes, prompting local media to dub them "flying coffins."
The armed services also have been mired in corruption scandals involving real estate, hardware procurement and even coffins.
Last week, army chief Gen. V.K. Singh set off a political firestorm by disclosing that he'd been offered a $2.8 million bribe in 2010, which he said he didn't take — an investigation was never initiated — to approve a shipment of 600 substandard Czech-made trucks. The vehicles, ultimately purchased for $200,000 apiece, by some accounts, sell for half that in Eastern Europe.
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