| New Delhi |
Updated: July 22, 2020 8:20:47 am
Notwithstanding India's growing mutual convergence with the US against China following the recent tensions on the Ladakh border, its armed forces remain heavily dependent on equipment, weapons and military platforms of Russian origin which form the bulk of its inventory. The dependence is likely to continue because more than 55% of Indian defence imports since 2014 have been from Russia.
A new Stimson Center working paper by Sameer Lalwani and others shows that 86% of the equipment, weapons and platforms currently in military service in India is of Russian origin. For the Navy, it is more than 41% while two-thirds of the IAF's equipment is of Russian origin. The figure for the Army is a whopping 90%, by assigning country of origin to around 10,000 pieces of military hardware.
“India's dependence on Russian-origin systems is most acute in the Army, but also in its Air Force and even its Navy, especially when focusing on India's higher-end strike platforms. Because this dependence will endure for decades due to the long…