India ramps up missile sales in Indo-Pacific as China’s assertiveness turns neighbors wary

India will supply its BrahMos and Astra missiles to Indonesia, the country's third such agreement in the Indo-Pacific, underscoring New Delhi's rise as a defense supplier in the region amid growing concerns over China's assertiveness.

BrahMos, which is a supersonic cruise missile with an anti-ship capability, has garnered strong interest from buyers in the Indo-Pacific region as these countries with limited naval forces need to defend disputed territories in the South China Sea, experts told CNBC.

"BrahMos and the air-to-air missiles are the areas that are new in our collaboration [with Indonesia]," an Indian foreign ministry spokesperson said on Tuesday, adding that BrahMos was an important area of collaboration and commercial terms were yet be decided between the two sides.

Buyers are particularly interested in the anti-ship version of BrahMos, which has a range of 300 kilometers and an extremely high speed that makes it difficult to intercept, Siemon Wezeman, senior researcher in the Arms Transfers Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, told CNBC.

It is "one of the largest and fastest available on the market just now," he added. BrahMos Aerospace is a joint venture between India's Defence Research and Development Organisation and Russia's NPO Mashinostroyenia.

The only other missile similar to BrahMos is China's YJ-12, Douglas Barrie, a senior fellow for military aerospace at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told CNBC in an email.

Philippines was the first buyer of BrahMos in 2022. In May this year, ⁠India's defense secretary said the country had signed a deal to sell the missile to Vietnam, Reuters reported. India's Ministry of Defence and BrahMos Aerospace did not respond to CNBC's requests for comment.

Both these deals are motivated by "the perception of China's growing threat in the South China Sea," Collin Koh, a senior fellow at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, told CNBC.

While Indonesia does not see China as a primary security threat, it does have differences with Beijing over the "North Natuna Sea claim," Koh added.

On Monday, the Chinese navy test-fired a ballistic missile into the Pacific, a move expected to push countries in the region to deepen defense ties with one another amid China's growing military might.

That makes room for India to grow its defense exports in the region, experts said, as it is seen as a transactional provider, not aligned to any great power centers, and is not viewed as a security threat in the region.

The strengthening of defense partnerships among countries in the Indo-Pacific is part of the efforts to deal with the "China threat," Farwa Aamer, director of South Asia initiatives at Asia Society Policy Institute, told CNBC.

She added that these countries also want to form defense ties that are "less reliant" on the U.S., all of which makes India a viable defense partner and the "BrahMos missile system lucrative."

But while the BrahMos deals are helping India gather regional partners against China, experts said it hardly moves the needle for New Delhi's ambition of becoming a significant defense exporter.

The sale of BrahMos is a "very strong visible proof that India has made it in the world of arms producers and exporters," Wezeman from SIPRI said, but added India's defense exports have had limited success when it comes to major contracts.

Orders for Indian fighter jet Tejas or frigates would be "worth a lot more than several BrahMos orders," he added.

While exports have grown over the last 10 years, they were worth just 384 billion rupees ($4 billion) in the financial year ended March 2026. That's a little over 1% of the total arms sales of $331 billion by the U.S., the world's largest supplier of arms.

India is not among the world's top 25 arms exporters, according to SIPRI's 2021–2025 major arms transfer data, that includes China at fifth position and South Korea at ninth.

New Delhi, however, is the fifth largest military spender in the world and the second biggest importer of arms with more than 8% of the share, as per SIPRI's 2026 yearbook.