India’s Central Asia missile sales spark a new Great Game — SkimNews
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- India's Defense Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh confirmed the export of domestically developed Akash surface-to-air missiles to Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, with the DRDO-engineered system capable of countering aircraft, cruise missiles, and drones up to 18–20 km altitude and supplied alongside Rajendra radar and maintenance packages.
- China's J-10CE combat aircraft have reached Uzbekistan — at least six jets visible in official Tashkent footage, with reports of a 24-aircraft order — making it the second confirmed foreign operator after Pakistan and a breakthrough into a market long dominated by Soviet and Russian manufacturers.
- Russia's major arms exports collapsed 64% between 2016–20 and 2021–25, with its global market share falling from 21% to 6.8% per SIPRI's March 2026 data, and nearly three-quarters of remaining exports concentrated in India, China, and Belarus.
- Russia retains structural regional influence through roughly $44 billion in bilateral trade with Central Asian states in 2023, CSTO mutual defense pacts with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, and forward deployments including S-300 systems in Tajikistan and forces at Kant Airbase in Kyrgyzstan.
- India's "Necklace of Diamonds" strategy uses arms sales along China's periphery — Akash missiles to Central Asia and Brahmos supersonic anti-ship missiles to the Philippines and Indonesia — to counter Beijing's Belt and Road encirclement across Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka.
- China is bundling defense sales with economic investment in Central Asia, becoming Uzbekistan's leading trading partner and primary foreign investor while backing infrastructure projects like the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway to transform it into a regional transit corridor.
Why it matters: For Central Asian states, the diversification away from Russian hardware is now operational — Indian Akash and Chinese J-10CE systems are entering service. Arms sales create long-term dependency for training, updates, and parts, giving India and China structural leverage to shape regional defense policy as Russia's global share contracts to 6.8%.
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