The year 2025 started for India with the Indian Defence Minister, Rajnath Singh announcing it to be the ‘Year of Defence Reforms’ for India. At the same time, a nine-point agenda – to introduce sweeping reforms to the country’s military sector was also laid out by Indian Defence Ministry. Among others, the key goals were to acquire and operationalise next-generation weapons, harness Artificial Intelligence, cyber capabilities, and space-centric network warfare, increase indigenous production, and forge integration of theatre commands. However, while 2025 indeed marked an expansion in India’s defence spending and acquisitions, however, it also revealed the structural limits of India’s military modernisation project.
A significant development in 2025 was India’s engagement in four-day military confrontation with Pakistan. This served as a major catalyst for reinforcing New Delhi’s resolve to advance technology-driven warfare and to accelerate reforms in its defence industry. In particular, following the conflict, New Delhi doubled down on enhancing its firepower and precision-strike capabilities by making procurements of the Meteor andSCALP missiles to arm Rafale fighters, and Astra MK-2 missiles to arm its Su-30s and Tejas fighter jets. New Delhi also excessively focused on making quantitative and qualitative enhancements to its drone fleet as well. As the conflict highlighted critical gaps in India’s defence apparatus, New Delhi authorised emergency procurement powers worth USD 4.7 billion. This would enable the rapid acquisition of surveillance drones, loitering munitions, missiles, and additional ammunitions. Furthermore, India’s Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) made one of the largest procurement approvals, allowing procurement proposals worth USD 9.5 billion for the Indian tri-services.
Through the year, New Delhi’s defence spending reached highest levels. According to one estimate, it spent USD 82 billion on defence, which is India’s highest defence spending ever. In tandem, record-level approvals for defence-related procurements were made. In March, the DAC approved eight major capital acquisition proposals worth over USD 6 billion. The prospective inductions indicated that New Delhi is aiming to bolster its aerial defence capabilities, as well as it is preparing for high-mobility ground warfare along its frontiers, particularly vis-à-vis Pakistan, where it has now started seeing the scope of conventional engagements as plausible. In this regard, major approvals were made for enhancing the aerial combat capabilities of the three military services. These included approvals for procurements of indigenously-produced Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Mk1A for the Air Force, naval variants of French-origin Rafale fighter jets for the Navy, and indigenously-produced LCA Prachand attack helicopters for the Army. Likewise, procurement approvals for bolstering India’s anti-tank capabilities included Nag Anti-tank Missile System and Area Denial Munitions for PINAKA Rocket System.
In addition to its military confrontation with Pakistan in which it suffered a bloody nose, India’s defence reforms are also underpinned by three other drivers. First, India’s strategic partnership with Washington, as well as its border standoffs with China have pushed it toward defence modernisation. Second, India’s ruling party, the Bhartiya Janata Party has a tendency to emphasise over military modernisation and strategic assertiveness as part of its broader national security narrative. And third, New Delhi has also been eyeing to increase its defence production and scale its defence-related exports to generate revenues. This aligns with the BJP’s broader Atmanirbhar Bharat vision. While these drivers indeed create a momentum for reform, however, the larger question remains that whether India’s defence reforms are mainly driven by its strategic necessities or by domestic political narratives.
Indigenous production has been a central pillar of India’s defence modernisation drive. Major indigenous defence inductions included the Kalvari-class INS Vagsheer diesel-electric attack submarine, INS Nilgiri frigate and the INS Surat stealth destroyer. While this indicated progress in India’s shipbuilding capabilities, however, India’s reliance externally-sourced propulsion systems persisted. Likewise, India’s dependence on engine and avionics also continued. New Delhi signed two major contracts; including an agreement with U.S.-based General Electric for the acquisition of 113 F404-GE-IN20 engines to power the LCA Tejas Mk1A jets, and a contract with Russia to procure engines for T-90 and T-72 tanks for the Indian Army’s main battle tank fleet. These agreements with foreign suppliers are critical for indigenous production lines, since they make up for India’s production-capability shortfalls. It also indicates that while India’s defence modernisation is platform-centric, however, it continues to depend on foreign suppliers for subsystem.
At the same time, India’s protracted dilemma of ‘approved but not delivered’ continued to persist. This was evident from delays in procurements of major systems including the Tejas Mk-1A fighter aircrafts and new-generation submarines to be procured under Project 75(I). Similarly, while budgetary allocations were expanded, with some 27% of the total budget earmarked for capital acquisitions. However, almost 45 per cent of the defence budget was allocated for revenue expenditures and personnel pay and allowances. In other nearly half of the total budget went into financing salaries, pensions and weapons maintenance of legacy systems.Bottom of Form
On the front of the long-sought goal of theaterisation for forging inter-service operability, a key development has been the grant of authorisation to the CDS by the defence ministry to issue joint orders across all three services in June. However, while this was projected as a landmark institutional breakthrough, however shifting towards unified commands also faces substantial entrenched resistance from within the services. Therefore, the bureaucratic hesitation that comes with deeply siloed operational cultures is also remains an uphill endeavour.
Bureaucratic reforms to speed-up defence procurement processes were also made. For instance, the Defence Acquisition Process was reportedly streamlined to slash military procurement timelines to half in order to cut down delays. Likewise, the Contract Negotiation Committee, which is the principal body responsible for finalising the prices of equipment with the suppliers was also instructed to slash down its timelines to six months. Other bureaucratic realignments included: instructing the Indian forces to align the formulation of Request for Proposal with the formulation of Acceptance of Necessity, and instructing the forces to conduct field evaluation trials under simulated conditions rather than actual conditions. However, timeline-specific delays are difficult to be addressed as long as the underlying decision-making culture which is characterised by slow executions and multi-layered approvals persists. Top of Form
In a nutshell, while the year 2025 indeed witnessed New Delhi’s political intent to modernise its military institutions and procurement processes, however, entrenched bureaucratic practices, budgetary pressures, and implementation delays continued to constrain meaningful progress. Or perhaps, a year’s timeline was too short to bring about meaningful derivatives in the first place. It is also to be noted that that while defence modernisation is one hefty and uphill task, it also does not necessarily equate with ‘defence effectiveness’, particularly if planned over short term. While enhanced military capabilities such as increased defence spendings, acquisitions of advanced weapon systems, and technological upgrades may offer a quantitative boost, however, these systems need to be integrated with advanced operational synergisation. In other words, merely accumulating sophisticated platforms without adequately addressing underlying organisational shortcomings only further divulge the gap between capabilities and operational effectiveness, which is a rather long-term affair. Nonetheless, despite being a slow starter, the trajectory remains significant due to New Delhi’s growing strategic and political resolve.
