Armenia, a landlocked state in the South Caucasus, has spent the years since 2020 reducing its dependence on Russian military supply and looking for alternative sources it can obtain quickly and at a price it can carry. India, which has been pushing to convert its domestic defence-industrial build-up into exports, matched that requirement: the systems Armenia has bought — air defence, rocket artillery, counter-battery radar and towed guns — are exactly the categories where Indian production is mature. The MoU moves the relationship past sales into research, development and shared production, which is the step that turns a customer into a partner and produces the longer revenue tail.