For much of the post-independence period, India's armed forces have depended heavily on foreign suppliers for the weapons platforms, systems, and technologies that constitute their operational backbone. This dependence has carried with it a set of well-recognised vulnerabilities: supply disruptions during conflicts, restricted access to spare parts, inability to independently maintain or upgrade platforms, and a chronic drain on the foreign exchange reserves. The 1965 and 1971 wars exposed some of these limitations; the Kargil conflict of 1999 brought them into sharp relief once again.

The political decision to change this trajectory took firm shape after 2014, when the Government of India launched the Make in India initiative and subsequently the Aatmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan, both of which placed defence indigenisation at the centre of the country's industrial and strategic policy. The years that followed saw a cascade of reforms: revised Defence Procurement Procedures, the introduction of Positive Indigenisation Lists (PILs) that restricted import of specified items, higher Foreign Direct Investment limits in defence manufacturing, the creation of a dedicated Defence Industrial Corridor in Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, and the launch of iDEX to bring startups and MSMEs into the defence supply chain.