Ten years ago Indian defence exports meant spares and goodwill. The ₹30,000-crore year is systems — and the customer map explains itself.
Southeast Asia: BrahMos leads — the Philippines deliveries done, a second regional customer's follow-on in the book. States pricing Chinese pressure buy the missile that prices it back.
The Gulf: Akash air-defence entering delivery — post-war diversification made in-region by wartime demonstration. Systems proven under fire, as the war quarter's involuntary trade show showed, price differently from expo exhibits.
Europe: artillery and radars to rearmament programmes that outran their own production lines.
The queue: the naval laser's Malabar intercepts generated follow-up from five navies — the first Indian system marketed live at a multilateral exercise.
The asterisks stay honest: a tenth of the leaderboard's numbers, imported engines, end-use politics still learned by doing. But direction is destiny in arms industry, and the direction has flipped. The book grows on our defence desk.
