Loading…
Defence Secretary Shri Rajesh Kumar Singh visited Armenia from 17 to 18 August 2026, holding bilateral meetings with Deputy Defence Minister Mr Karen Brutyan and with First Deputy Defence Minister and Chief of General Staff Mr Edward Asryan on capacity building, training, military technical cooperation and defence R&D.
The two sides exchanged the Terms of Reference for institutionalising Joint Services Staff Talks between the Indian and Armenian Armed Forces, and an MoU between the two Defence Ministries on joint collaboration, innovation and research was concluded and signed during the visit.
He called on Armenia's Minister of Defence Mr Suren Papikyan, Minister of Hi-tech Industry Mr Davit Tradevosyan and Deputy Foreign Minister Mr Mnatsakan Safaryan, and visited the Armenian Military Academy named after Vazgen Sargasyan, including its IT Lab set up with Indian assistance.
The Defence Secretary is the administrative head of the Department of Defence, one of the five departments of the Ministry of Defence — the others being the Department of Military Affairs (created in 2019 and headed by the Chief of Defence Staff), the Department of Defence Production, the Department of Defence Research and Development, and the Department of Ex-Servicemen Welfare. The Department of Defence handles defence policy, the three Services and inter-service coordination.
The Ministry of Defence's research arm, formed in 1958 by amalgamating the Defence Science Organisation, the Technical Development Establishments of the Indian Army and the Directorate of Technical Development and Production. It developed the Akash system that Armenia has bought, and the defence R&D cooperation discussed on this visit runs through it.
BDL is the nodal production agency for the Akash missile; BEL manufactures the system's Rajendra multi-function phased array radar. Both are Defence Public Sector Undertakings under the Department of Defence Production, and DPSUs supplied 54.84% of India's record FY 2025-26 exports.
Akash is an indigenously developed medium-range surface-to-air missile system for area air defence. The missile is supersonic and engages aerial targets out to a range of roughly 25 km and altitudes of about 18 km. What makes it a system rather than a missile is the sensor and control chain around it: the Rajendra multi-function phased array radar can track around 64 targets and guide engagements against four of them simultaneously, while surveillance radars, control centres and ground support are mounted on high-mobility vehicles so a battery can move with the force it protects. DRDO developed it, Bharat Dynamics Limited is the nodal production agency and Bharat Electronics Limited builds the radar. Armenia's 2022 order made it India's first export customer for the platform, which is why Akash is the anchor of the India-Armenia defence relationship.
Simple Analogy: The missile is the arrow; Rajendra is the archer's eye, tracking dozens of birds at once and deciding which four the arrows go for.
Armenia is a landlocked republic in the South Caucasus, the mountainous belt between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. It borders Turkey to the west, Georgia to the north, Azerbaijan to the east and Iran to the south, with Azerbaijan's Nakhchivan exclave to its south-west. Its capital and largest city, Yerevan, lies in the centre-west of the country on the Hrazdan river. The geography explains the diplomacy: with the Turkish and Azerbaijani borders effectively closed to it, Armenia's usable links run north through Georgia and south through Iran — and the Iranian route is the one that connects to India, via the International North-South Transport Corridor and Chabahar port on the Gulf of Oman. Armenia and Azerbaijan are the two South Caucasus states inside the INSTC framework; Georgia is the third country of the region.
The International North-South Transport Corridor agreement is signed at St Petersburg by India, Iran and Russia; the 7,200-km multimodal corridor later expands to thirteen members, Armenia among them.
Armenia contracts about 15 Akash air defence systems worth roughly Rs 6,000 crore (about USD 720 million), becoming the first foreign buyer of the platform.
Bharat Forge supplies ATAGS howitzers to Armenia; Pinaka multi-barrel rocket launchers and Swathi weapon-locating radars also enter the Armenian inventory.
Azerbaijan's offensive ends resistance in Nagorno-Karabakh; on 28 September the Artsakh authorities decree the republic's dissolution, effective 1 January 2024. Armenia accelerates procurement diversification.
India Ports Global Limited signs a ten-year contract with Iran's Ports and Maritime Organisation to equip and operate the Shahid Beheshti terminal at Chabahar — the maritime leg of India's route towards Iran, the Caucasus and Central Asia.
The first Akash battery is shipped to Armenia.
Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh visits Armenia; Terms of Reference for Joint Services Staff Talks are exchanged and an MoU on joint collaboration, innovation and research is signed between the two Defence Ministries.
Signed on 12 September 2000 at St Petersburg by India, Iran and Russia, the INSTC is a 7,200-km ship-rail-road network linking the Indian Ocean to northern Europe via Iran and the Caspian. It has grown to thirteen members including Armenia and Azerbaijan, and it is the connectivity logic that makes a small landlocked Caucasus state strategically legible to India.
On Iran's Gulf of Oman coast in Sistan-Baluchistan province, Chabahar gives India sea access to Afghanistan and Central Asia bypassing Pakistan. India Ports Global Limited signed a ten-year contract on 13 May 2024 with Iran's Ports and Maritime Organisation to equip and operate the Shahid Beheshti terminal, committing about USD 120 million in equipment alongside a USD 250 million credit line. It is the maritime entry point to the same corridor Armenia sits on.
Staff Talks are the standing, institutionalised channel through which two militaries plan exercises, training exchanges and cooperation across all three services, instead of negotiating each activity afresh. Exchanging the Terms of Reference is the step that converts an ad-hoc relationship into a scheduled one — arguably the more substantive outcome of this visit.
India's Rs 38,424 crore of exports in FY 2025-26, up 62.66% year on year and spread over 80-plus countries, turn defence industry into foreign policy: a buyer of Akash needs Indian spares, training and upgrades for decades, which is exactly the dependency this visit's capacity-building and training agenda deepens.
GS Paper 2 > International Relations > India and its bilateral relations; GS Paper 3 > Security > Defence industry
General Knowledge > Defence agreements, indigenous systems and exports
General Awareness > Current Affairs — bilateral agreements and defence
India's defence exports and indigenous systems appear in UPSC Prelims and defence exams every cycle; South Caucasus geography has been asked repeatedly since the 2020 and 2023 Nagorno-Karabakh conflicts.
An institutionalised, recurring dialogue between two countries' armed forces covering all three services, used to plan exercises, training and cooperation.
Cooperation covering equipment supply, spares, upgrades, technology transfer and joint development, as distinct from purely operational or training exchanges.
The region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia.
International North-South Transport Corridor — a 7,200-km multimodal ship-rail-road route agreed in 2000 by India, Iran and Russia, now with thirteen members.
A mountainous territory recognised as part of Azerbaijan, held for three decades by ethnic Armenians as the self-declared Republic of Artsakh, which dissolved on 1 January 2024 after Azerbaijan's September 2023 offensive.