With BrahMos Deal, India Deepens Defence Ties as Indonesia Preserves Its Strategic Balance

New Delhi: India and Indonesia on Tuesday (July 7) elevated defence cooperation by agreeing to cooperate on the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile system during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's state visit to Jakarta, formalising discussions that the two sides have pursued for almost eight years.

Modi had previously visited Indonesia twice for multilateral summits, but this was his first standalone bilateral visit since 2018. It followed President Prabowo Subianto's own state visit to India in January 2025, when he was the chief guest at the Republic Day parade.

Besides the agreement on cooperation over the BrahMos missile system, the two sides also announced cooperation on Astra air-to-air missiles, critical minerals, maritime security and digital payments, while agreeing to continue work on the long-pending Sabang port project in Aceh.

"The growing trust between our two countries is strengthening our cooperation in defence, security and the maritime domain. Today, we agreed to further enhance collaboration in defence exchanges, disaster management and industrial cooperation," Modi said after talks with Prabowo.

Prabowo similarly underlined that the two sides had agreed "to increase security cooperation through the third India-Indonesia Security Dialogue" and deepen cooperation on capacity-building, digital infrastructure and maritime security.

Indonesia first expressed interest in the missile around 2018. By 2022, Indian media were reporting that a BrahMos team had visited an Indonesian shipyard to study fitting the weapon to Indonesian warships. Indonesia's navy chief, Admiral Muhammad Ali, revived the matter with his Indian counterpart at Cilangkap in December 2024, though it stayed off the joint statement issued after Prabowo's visit to India the following month.

In March this year, Indonesian defence ministry spokesperson Rico Ricardo Sirait said Jakarta had finalised procurement of the BrahMos system as part of efforts to modernise coastal defence and strengthen deterrence, although financing and implementation details remained undisclosed.

Asked repeatedly during the media briefing about the value of the BrahMos agreement and delivery timelines, secretary (east) in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Rudrendra Tandon said commercial arrangements were not discussed by the leaders.

"Yes, BrahMos was discussed. It is an important part of the industry-to-industry collaboration that the two leaders are trying to develop … However, commercial agreements are not really discussed at the highest level. Those are left for the companies to sort out," he said.

Vietnam and the Philippines had already signed their own BrahMos deals, making Indonesia the third country to do so.

For Indonesia, the interest in BrahMos is tied to a broader effort to modernise its armed forces and strengthen maritime deterrence. As the world's largest archipelagic state, Indonesia must secure major maritime choke points including the Malacca, Sunda, Lombok and Makassar straits, through which 40% of the world’s sea trade flows.

Analysts have also argued that procuring BrahMos would diversify Jakarta's defence suppliers as it balances relationships with Western, Russian and Asian partners.

Even the reception accorded to Modi upon reaching Indonesian airspace reflected that balancing instinct. The F-16 and Sukhoi-30 that escorted his aircraft were US and Russian-built respectively.

In the months before Modi's visit, Prabowo signed a security treaty with Australia in February, a defence partnership with the United States in April and a defence pact with Japan in May. He made his third trip to Moscow in under a year that same May. Indonesia's defence ministry confirmed a $9 billion deal for 42 Chinese J-10 fighters back in October 2025.

A recent study by the International Institute for Strategic Studies counted 87 defence and security agreements Indonesia has signed with 36 countries over 25 years, which was attributed to Jakarta’s hedging posture rather than a commitment to any one power.

Analysts have argued that procuring BrahMos missiles would diversify Indonesia's defence suppliers as it balances relationships with Western, Russian and Asian partners. Photo: PIB via Wikimedia Commons.

The art of balancing

That balancing approach is also reflected in the language of the latest India-Indonesia joint statement.

Unlike the joint statement issued during Prabowo's visit to New Delhi in January 2025, the 2026 document omits an entire paragraph devoted to the South China Sea. The earlier statement had backed the full and effective implementation of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea and called for the early conclusion of an "effective and substantive" Code of Conduct consistent with international law, including the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

The latest statement, with no mention of the South China Sea, instead confines itself to broader formulations, such as commitment to a "free, open, transparent, rules-based, peaceful, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific", adherence to international law and UNCLOS, as well as freedom of navigation and overflight.

The omission is notable because Indonesia has its own maritime dispute with China in the South China Sea, centred on Beijing's claims overlapping Indonesia's exclusive economic zone off the Natuna Islands. At the same time, successive Indonesian governments have sought to manage those differences without allowing them to dominate broader bilateral ties with Beijing, its largest trading partner.

The different diplomatic contexts were also reflected in the counter-terrorism language.

The India-Indonesia statement "unequivocally and strongly" condemned terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, called for a "zero-tolerance approach" and urged action against terrorists and entities listed under the UN Security Council's 1267 sanctions regime. It also emphasised cooperation against terrorist financing, online radicalisation, violent extremism, money laundering and transnational organised crime. However, like previous India-Indonesia joint statements, it stopped short of naming any country or specific terrorist organisation.

That stands in contrast to the joint statement issued after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's visit to India last week. India and Japan explicitly condemned cross-border terrorism “from Pakistan”, referred to recent attacks in India and named Pakistan-based groups including Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed.

Although Jakarta has expanded strategic cooperation with India, it also maintains close relations with Pakistan, including defence ties and regular high-level exchanges.

Modi speaks at the delegation-level talks in Jakarta. Photo via PTI and YouTube/NarendraModi.

The long road to Sabang

The visit also revived talk of Sabang, the deepwater port in Indonesia's Aceh province that lies close to India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

In the context of connectivity, Prabowo stated that he expressed “support for the construction of ports in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in India and also for the development and construction of the Sabang port in Aceh as a strategic link between Sabang Island and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in India”.

This echoed the same connectivity theme that had framed the port in Modi's first visit to Jakarta in 2018, when the two countries' joint statement had welcomed a plan to build connectivity between the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Aceh.

Days before the 2018 visit, Indonesia's then-coordinating minister for maritime affairs, Luhut Pandjaitan, travelled to Delhi and told an audience at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library that Indian involvement in Sabang would help balance power in the region. Modi had even been expected to visit Sabang by ship, but those plans fell through.

Yet the visit stopped short of announcing a new agreement on Sabang, with the joint statement only stating that the Indonesian president “welcomed India's interest in partnering in the integrated development of Sabang port”. It said such cooperation could include cruise and marine tourism facilities, ship repair and shipbuilding, and shore-based services supporting offshore energy activities, while directing officials to work out the scope, modalities and financing of the project in a "time-bound and mutually beneficial manner".

At the official briefing, MEA secretary (east) Tandon said the discussions built on work that had already been underway since 2018.

"If you recall, in 2018, when the Shared Vision was brought out, both sides had established a Joint Task Force. Two meetings of the Joint Task Force have already taken place and the third is expected later this year. So, the discussions today were about taking forward that process," he said.

The new statement also introduced a different maritime focus. Reflecting the disruption caused by the recent Iran war, the two leaders expressed "deep concerns over the situation in West Asia/Middle East and its global effects", called for de-escalation through dialogue and diplomacy, and underlined the importance of freedom of navigation, the global flow of commerce and transit passage through the Strait of Hormuz in accordance with international law.

The visit also revived talk of the long-pending Sabang deepwater port project, though no new announcement took place. Sabang Island is seen in the centre and India's Great Nicobar Island near the top left. Photo: Google Earth.

Mining for common ground

Defence and security, however, was only one pillar of Tuesday's discussions. Another major outcome touted by the two sides was cooperation on critical minerals, an area both governments identified as strategically important amid global competition over rare earth supply chains.

During the briefing, Tandon said mining and critical minerals had become "a very important issue for both countries", pointing to India's industrial demand and Indonesia's resource base.

Indian ambassador Sandeep Chakravorty added that the new agreement between India's Non-Ferrous Materials Technology Development Centre, Midwest Ltd and Indonesia's state miner PT Perusahaan Mineral Nasional was designed to draw on the heavy rare earths available in Indonesia, with technology transfer and co-design work from India to build rare earth magnets for the global market.

That push comes as the wider trade relationship has weakened. Figures from India's Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics in Kolkata show that bilateral merchandise trade peaked near $38.8 billion in 2022-23, then fell to $28.4 billion in 2024-25. Tandon noted that the current trade is around $25 billion.

Much of the slide traces to India's petroleum product exports, which made up nearly 39% of Indian sales to Indonesia in 2022-23 but under 13% by 2024-25. Indonesian coal, which accounts for more than a third of India's imports from the country, has also come off its peak.

Both governments used Tuesday's joint statement to call for a faster conclusion to the review of the ASEAN India Trade in Goods Agreement, describing it as a step toward what the statement called a “comprehensive deeper bilateral trade engagement”. Prabowo also said that the two countries were also accelerating talks on a standalone India-Indonesia preferential trade agreement.

The two sides reported progress on linking India's Unified Payments Interface with Indonesia's domestic payment networks, with Chakravorty saying the technical work was at an advanced stage and that he expected integration by the end of the year. Separately, Modi and Prabowo travel to Yogyakarta on Wednesday to launch a conservation project at the Prambanan temple complex, a UNESCO World Heritage site. The two countries have named 2026-27 the Tagore-Dewantara Year of cultural and educational diplomacy to mark the occasion.

Remembering Nehru, invoking Patnaik

The highest note of the visit, however, was ceremonial, with Indian officials taking pains to describe the “unusual” warmth of the welcome.

The Indonesian president went to the airport to receive Modi, and on Tuesday conferred the Bintang Republik Indonesia Adipurna, Indonesia's top civilian honour.

Standing next to Modi, Prabowo reminded that another Indian PM had received the award first. “Previously, the same honour was also awarded to the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, as well as for his great appreciation and role in strengthening Indonesia-India relations and his contribution as one of the pioneers and initiators of the non-aligned movement,” he said.

At a ceremony in 1995 in the Indonesian embassy in New Delhi, Nehru’s award was received posthumously on his behalf by Sonia Gandhi, Congress leader and widow of Nehru's grandson Rajiv Gandhi. In the same ceremony, three other Indians Biju Patnaik, Muhammad Yunus and P.R.S. Mani, received a lower ranked award, the Bintang Jasa Utama.

While Prabowo mentioned Nehru, Modi, addressing Indonesia's lawmakers, reached for a different name when linking the two countries.

Recounting India's support for Indonesia's independence struggle, he credited Biju Patnaik, who flew Indonesia's Prime Minister-designate Sutan Sjahrir and Vice President Mohammad Hatta to safety in India, an act Modi said had brought the two countries closer.

Modi, who often criticises Nehru, also noted that at the Bandung Conference, “President Sukarno and Prime Minister Nehru sent a clear message to the world – that independent nations have the sovereign right to make their own decisions”.

The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.