India needs to localize its defense production and build capacity to rapidly scale up in times of conflict, a key lesson from the Iran war, according to senior military officials.

“In this 36-day war, it is a resilience, supply chains, which have been demonstrated by the parties,” India’s Navy Chief Dinesh Kumar Tripathi said in Bengaluru on Thursday, referring to the conflict in the Middle East. Indian warships deployed in the Gulf are closely monitoring the unfolding situation and are drawing up comprehensive lessons for India’s armed forces, he added.

He was speaking at the armed forces’ annual brain storming seminar on coordinated military operations across multiple domains including space, cyber, land, air and sea.

India is the second-largest importer of weapons after Ukraine for the four years through 2025, even as it stepped up efforts to source equipment from domestic firms, according to a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a think tank that tracks global arms sales. The Indian government has raised local procurement targets and offered incentives to private firms to boost domestic defense production, while banning imports of some weapon systems.

The South Asian country allocated 1.39 trillion rupees ($15 billion), accounting for three-fourths of its defense budget for new weapons, to locally-made equipment for 2026-27, according to the Ministry of Defence.

India’s defense industrial capabilities should “not just be about manufacturing — it is about controlling architectures, software, encryption, and data standards,” Ashutosh Dixit, a senior Indian Air Force official in charge of policy and future planning, said at the conference. 

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Published on April 10, 2026