When people think about India’s foreign policy partners, Latin America rarely comes to mind first. Yet across the Atlantic and Pacific, a quiet defence relationship has been taking shape-one built on naval exercises, fighter jet negotiations and ambitious export targets. The cooperation is still modest, often patchy, and weighed down by old setbacks. But the strategic logic behind it is getting stronger, especially as both sides look to reduce their dependence on traditional suppliers like the United States, Russia and Europe. This is the story of where India-Latin America defence ties stand today, what they could become, and the hurdles standing in the way.
Table of Contents
- Why defence ties with Latin America matter
- A shared diplomatic foundation
- Where cooperation is actually happening
- Defence trade and equipment sales
- The Argentina story: promise and frustration
- The shadow of the Dhruv: why after-sales service matters
- The lesson on contract management
- The China contrast
- What it will take to realise the potential
Why defence ties with Latin America matter
Defence cooperation has historically sat in the background of India’s relationship with Latin America. Economic and diplomatic concerns-trade, energy, food security-took priority. But as the global order shifts and supply chains come under pressure, both regions are reconsidering the value of military partnerships built on mutual interest rather than dependence.
For India, the appeal is twofold. First, Latin America is a fresh market for an arms industry that the government wants to grow rapidly. In 2023, Prime Minister Narendra Modi set a target for India to export USD 5 billion in defence hardware by 2025, and defence exports reached ₹21,083 crore in 2023-24, a jump of more than 32% over the previous year. Selling to new regions is central to hitting these numbers. Second, deeper ties advance India’s broader vision of South-South cooperation-partnerships among developing nations that share an interest in strategic autonomy.
For Latin American countries, the draw is the chance to diversify. Many of these nations want to move away from over-reliance on Washington and want options that come without heavy political strings attached. India, with a growing industry and no colonial baggage in the region, fits that need.
A shared diplomatic foundation
The defence relationship does not exist in isolation. India and key Latin American countries like Brazil and Argentina already share platforms such as BRICS, IBSA and the G20, where they advocate for strategic autonomy and a more multipolar world. This diplomatic alignment makes military cooperation a natural extension rather than a leap. The IBSA Dialogue Forum, bringing together India, Brazil and South Africa, has been particularly important in giving the relationship a maritime dimension.
Where cooperation is actually happening
The clearest example of active military cooperation is the IBSAMAR naval exercise. IBSAMAR-short for India-Brazil-South Africa Maritime-is a trilateral exercise that first took place in 2008 and has grown steadily in scope. It now involves ships, aircraft and special forces from all three navies, focused on building interoperability and shared procedures for maritime security operations.
The exercise is held every two years and rotates leadership among the three nations, with South Africa serving as the permanent host because of its strategic position near the Cape of Good Hope. In the eighth edition, held in 2024, India contributed the frigate INS Talwar alongside Brazilian and South African vessels. A notable highlight was the use of the Indian Navy’s NISHAR information-sharing system, which allowed the navies to coordinate operations and build a common operating picture during the drills.
For India, IBSAMAR is more than a training drill. It allows the Indian Navy to extend its presence into the South Atlantic, a region far from home waters but increasingly relevant to global trade and security. It also reflects the values these three democracies share, anchoring the relationship in something deeper than transactions.
Defence trade and equipment sales
Beyond exercises, India has been working to sell military hardware in the region. Indian-made systems on offer include the Tejas light combat aircraft, the Prachand light combat helicopter, BrahMos cruise missiles, the Akash air defence system and the Dhruv advanced light helicopter. At the LAAD defence exhibition in Brazil in 2023, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) showcased several of these platforms to signal both its capability and its intent to break into the market.
India and Brazil have been particularly active in talking about deeper industrial collaboration. A senior Brazilian defence official has outlined proposals ranging from technology exchange and capacity building to joint ventures and maintenance services, all aimed at helping both countries diversify away from traditional suppliers. The traffic is not one-way either-Brazil’s aviation major Embraer signed a memorandum of understanding with Mahindra Defence to offer its C-390 Millennium transport aircraft to the Indian Air Force.
The Argentina story: promise and frustration
No case captures the opportunity and the difficulty better than India’s attempt to sell the Tejas fighter to Argentina. Argentina retired its Dassault Mirage fleet in 2015 and has been hunting for a replacement ever since. India saw a chance to make Argentina the first export customer for the Tejas, a deal reportedly worth over a billion dollars. Argentina also showed interest in BrahMos missiles and Prachand helicopters.
But the deal hit a serious obstacle. The Tejas contains British-origin components, and the United Kingdom maintains export restrictions on military goods that could enhance Argentine capability-a legacy of the 1982 Falklands War. With around 16 such components in the aircraft, the sale stalled. Argentina ultimately moved toward acquiring used F-16 jets via the United States, with Washington approving a transfer of Danish F-16s in a decision shaped partly by concerns about China’s influence in the region.
The episode is a useful lesson. It shows real Latin American appetite for Indian hardware, but it also reveals how external politics, component dependencies and competition from established suppliers can derail even promising deals.
The shadow of the Dhruv: why after-sales service matters
If there is one experience that haunts India’s defence ambitions in Latin America, it is the Dhruv helicopter deal with Ecuador. In the late 2000s, HAL won a contract worth around USD 45 million to supply seven Dhruv advanced light helicopters to Ecuador, beating Western competitors like Eurocopter. It was celebrated as a milestone-the first major export of an indigenous Indian military platform.
The optimism did not last. Between 2009 and 2015, four of the seven helicopters crashed. In October 2015, Ecuador grounded the remaining fleet and unilaterally cancelled the contract. Crucially, Ecuador’s defence minister cited not just mechanical problems but the difficulty of obtaining spare parts from India.
The dispute over responsibility is revealing. HAL argued that maintenance was the buyer’s responsibility once the 24-month warranty period expired, and attributed some crashes to human error. Ecuador insisted the spares simply were not arriving on schedule. Whoever was right, the outcome damaged India’s reputation in the region for the better part of a decade.
The lesson on contract management
The Ecuador experience points to a structural weakness in India’s defence export model. Selling equipment is only the first step. Buyers expect reliable contract management, a steady supply of spare parts, and responsive after-sales technical support throughout the life of the platform. Indian industry analysts have repeatedly noted that offering superior after-sales support is essential to building the buyer confidence that turns one sale into a lasting relationship. Without this, even good hardware struggles to win repeat business.
Another recurring problem is that many agreements with Latin American countries remain stuck at the stage of letters of intent or memoranda of understanding, without converting into binding contracts. Sustaining momentum will require follow-through on licensing, production timelines and actual deliveries-not just exhibition displays and ministerial visits.
The China contrast
India’s modest efforts look even smaller when placed beside China’s. Beijing has been steadily expanding its military footprint in Latin America for over a decade through arms sales, officer exchanges and training programmes. Chinese institutions host military personnel from at least 18 Latin American states across various People’s Liberation Army colleges and academies-a scale of training engagement that India does not come close to matching.
China’s defence relationships have been most active with Brazil and Argentina, while Venezuela remains its largest arms customer in the region. Yet it is worth keeping perspective. Analysts point out that China’s weapons sales remain relatively insignificant compared to the United States, which still maintains by far the densest framework of military cooperation in the hemisphere. Chinese influence operates largely through soft power-training, exchanges and relationships-rather than dominant hardware sales.
This is actually an opening for India. The region is not locked up by any single supplier. Latin American militaries genuinely want to diversify their sources, and China’s reputation has been dented by complaints about low-quality equipment and incomplete technology transfers. India’s challenge is less about competing head-on with China’s training networks and more about proving it can be a dependable long-term partner where China and others have left gaps.
What it will take to realise the potential
The path forward for India rests on a few clear priorities. The first is reliability. Fixing the spare-parts and after-sales service problem that sank the Ecuador deal is non-negotiable if India wants serious buyers. The second is reducing dependence on foreign components-the British parts in the Tejas show how third-country restrictions can kill a sale outright. Greater indigenous content would give India more freedom to export. The third is converting intent into contracts, turning the many MoUs into actual deliveries.
Naval cooperation through IBSAMAR offers a model worth building on. It is low-cost, builds trust over time, and creates the kind of institutional familiarity that makes hardware deals easier later. Expanding training and joint exercises could quietly do for India what they have done for China-create relationships that outlast any single transaction.
The opportunity is real but narrow. India enters as a credible, non-threatening partner with competitive products and strong diplomatic alignment through BRICS and IBSA. Whether it can turn this goodwill into a durable defence relationship depends on execution far more than ambition.
What do you think? Should India prioritise expanding military training and joint exercises with Latin America before chasing big-ticket hardware sales, given the trust-building these create? And how much should India worry about competing with China’s established presence in the region versus simply offering itself as a reliable alternative supplier?
References
- https://www.pressreader.com/india/mint-hyderabad/20240404/282033332214170
- https://indianmasterminds.com/news/india-deepens-defence-and-nuclear-cooperation-with-argentina-and-brazil-126339/
- https://www.indiannavy.nic.in/content/exercise-ibsamar-v-between-india-brazil-and-south-africa
- https://defenceweb.co.za/featured/naval-exercise-ibsamar-viii-commences-in-south-africa/
- https://www.eurasiantimes.com/before-lca-tejas-argentina-might-sign-the-deal-for-light/
- https://defencesecurityasia.com/en/tejas-sales-philippines/
- https://www.eurasiantimes.com/haunted-by-a-string-of-crashes-and/
- https://www.deccanherald.com/archives/ecuador-grounds-fleet-dhruv-choppers-2156253
- https://m.thewire.in/article/security/dubai-tejas-crash-more-than-pr-embarrassment-hal-credibility-gap
- https://defencenewsindia.in/tejas-export-countries-2025/
- https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/2011/ssi_ellis.htm
- https://thedialogue.org/analysis/why-is-china-bolstering-military-ties-in-latin-america-and-the-caribbean
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