Ranit Kr. Singh , New Delhi - India has officially signed a BrahMos supersonic cruise missile deal with Vietnam, while a parallel agreement with Indonesia is in its final stages. Speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on Saturday, Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh revealed that the deal with Vietnam is completed but has not been publicly announced yet. These agreements represent a major expansion of New Delhi’s defence exports into Southeast Asia, building on India’s first successful USD 375 million BrahMos export contract signed with the Philippines in 2022.

The move underscores India's strategic push to deepen security ties with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) amidst escalating geopolitical tensions. Several member states, including Vietnam and the Philippines, face overlapping maritime claims with China in the heavily contested South China Sea. Singh emphasized that sharing sophisticated weapons platforms is fundamentally rooted in geopolitical trust, explicitly categorizing ASEAN members as "friendly foreign countries" with whom India is highly committed to sharing advanced defence technologies.

Addressing global delegates on building defence industrial resilience, Singh noted that recent conflicts in Europe and West Asia, alongside trade route disruptions, highlight the dangers of fragile, over-concentrated supply chains. He outlined India's decade-long internal reforms that transformed the country into a reliable manufacturing and maintenance hub, where the private sector now contributes 28% of production. Ultimately, Singh asserted that India’s growing export capabilities are not meant to create exclusive strategic blocs, but to forge inclusive, reliable partnerships aimed at securing regional maritime commons and reducing shared vulnerabilities.