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Indonesia has agreed to acquire India’s BrahMos cruise missile system, becoming the second foreign buyer after the Philippines.
BrahMos is jointly developed by India and Russia by BrahMos Aerospace, named after the Brahmaputra and Moskva rivers.
What’s going on: for Jakarta, this is a move tied directly to geography. Indonesia is the world’s largest archipelagic country with more than 17,000 islands, and it sits along the Malacca Strait, one of the busiest maritime chokepoints where roughly a quarter of global trade flows every year.
At the same time, Indonesia has been facing growing maritime pressure around the Natuna Islands in the South China Sea. The deal also comes at a time when defence procurement across Asia is accelerating amid rising geopolitical tensions and conflicts.
India-Indonesia relations: in 2018, the two countries signed a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, and defence cooperation has since accelerated through joint naval exercises, technology exchanges and maritime security coordination.
Their militaries regularly conduct the “Samudra Shakti” naval exercise, and the two sides also cooperate around the Sabang port near the Malacca Strait.
Meanwhile, trade ties are also growing, bilateral trade crossed $38 billion in 2022–23, making Indonesia one of India’s largest partners in Southeast Asia.
