While high-profile BrahMos missile sales to Southeast Asia mark a major milestone for Indian defense exports, India and ASEAN must prioritize protecting their $128-billion maritime trade corridor through advanced supply chain security, real-time domain awareness, and robust industrial cooperation.

While high-profile BrahMos missile sales to Southeast Asia mark a major milestone for Indian defense exports, India and ASEAN must prioritize protecting their $128-billion maritime trade corridor through advanced supply chain security, real-time domain awareness, and robust industrial cooperation.

While high-profile BrahMos missile sales to Southeast Asia mark a major milestone for Indian defense exports, India and ASEAN must prioritize protecting their $128-billion maritime trade corridor through advanced supply chain security, real-time domain awareness, and robust industrial cooperation.

BrahMos sales to Manila, Hanoi and Jakarta have made headlines. But India’s real maritime stake in Southeast Asia is a $128-billion trade corridor that India and ASEAN must protect by moving beyond defence sales and building a supply-chain-first maritime security architecture.

The Philippines’ signing of a $375-million deal for BrahMos in 2022 was seen in New Delhi as a coming-of-age moment for Indian defence exports. Since then, Vietnam has followed with a deal reported at around $630 million, and Indonesia is close behind. Defence exports hit a record ₹38,424 crore in 2025-26, up by almost 63 per cent in a year.

But India-ASEAN relations are not just about selling weapons. Bilateral trade reached $128 billion, or around ₹11.3 lakh crore in FY 2025-26, driven by growing integration in electronics, pharmaceuticals and energy. India’s total global defence exports amount to just over 3 per cent of its trade with one regional bloc.

If India wants to have a shared maritime security ecosystem with Southeast Asia, cargo is more important than cruise missiles.

Maritime ecosystem > cruise missiles

Almost 95 per cent of India’s trade by volume is seaborne, and most of its trade with East and Southeast Asia passes through the Straits of Malacca and Singapore. More than 100,000 ships pass through this corridor every year, accounting for about a quarter of world seaborne trade. Any disruption there would increase freight costs and delay supply chains.

The growing trade imbalance is a major worry. India’s exports to ASEAN in 2025-26 were only $38.4 billion against imports of nearly $90 billion. The deficit was under $5 billion in 2010-11. Now it is over $51 billion, a ten-fold increase in fifteen years.

Part of this is rules of origin, the long-standing Indian complaint that Chinese inputs come into India via ASEAN with little transformation. Part of it is simple competitiveness. Either way, the review of the 2009 goods agreement (AITIGA), which started in 2023, failed to meet an end-2025 deadline. Meanwhile, ASEAN upgraded its free trade pact with China.

A shared ecosystem needs to move beyond joint naval exercises to institutionalised cooperation in three areas. The first step is to make Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) work in real time. ASEAN member countries already have liaison officers at India’s Information Fusion Centre for Indian Ocean Region (IFC-IOR). However, live data integration is still fragmented.

Working closely with ASEAN coast guards and Singapore’s own fusion centre will strengthen efforts against illegal, unreported and unregulated resource exploitation. In addition, tracking of the “dark fleet” will secure the economies of national exclusive economic zones.

Second, the port and shipping lanes need to be systematically aligned. India’s share of global shipbuilding is around 0.06 per cent. China secured around 72 per cent of new orders in the first half of 2026.

Yet India has real strengths. It is the world’s biggest ship recycler, with more than a third of the global market. It supplies about 12 per cent of the world’s seafarers. Co-producing patrol vessels, tugs and harbour craft with Vietnamese and Indonesian yards, and providing maintenance and crew training, would transform one-off arms sales into durable industrial ties.

India’s co-operation on Indonesia’s Sabang Port and the development of the International Container Transhipment Port at Great Nicobar shall provide strategic anchor points at the western entrance of the Malacca Strait.

Third, the AITIGA review needs to be completed with security in mind. Faster customs clearance, mutual recognition of electronic trade documents and practical rules of origin would enable Indian firms in building regional value chains.

Naval exports may open geopolitical opportunities, but it is the structured, data-led maritime governance that keeps trade moving. If India and ASEAN view maritime security as insurance for their supply chains, they can transform joint maritime space from a strategic vulnerability into a catalyst for collective growth.

TAGS