What to Look for in India’s Defence Budget: Beyond Headline Numbers

It is not customary to write a pre-Budget commentary on the Defence allocation. Public and media attention tends to focus almost exclusively on headline figures—the overall allocation, the absolute increase, and the percentage change over the previous year. Strategic orientation, operational implications, and questions of preparedness rarely receive comparable scrutiny, and sustained analysis is even rarer. This piece is therefore written deliberately ahead of the Budget, not to anticipate numbers, but to establish a framework for reading them more meaningfully once they are presented.

As India approaches the presentation of the Budget, much of the discussion will once again gravitate toward quantum rather than consequence. While aggregate figures have their place, they often obscure the more consequential question; what does the Budget signal about India’s preparedness not just for short, controlled crises, but for sustained military contingencies? Recent operational experience, viewed alongside the broader economic context outlined in the pre-Budget Economic Survey, offers a useful lens through which these questions can be examined.

The above question has gained particular relevance in the aftermath of Operation Sindoor, a brief but high-intensity military operation that demonstrated India’s capacity for calibrated force employment under political control. The operation reaffirmed the effectiveness of India’s armed forces in managing hybrid contingencies—those that blend conventional military power with political will, signalling, restraint, and escalation control. Yet precisely because Operation Sindoor lasted just 88 hours, it also offers a useful boundary condition; it validated readiness, but could obviously not test endurance.

Defence budgets are not designed just for the first three days of conflict. They are instruments for sustaining military power beyond the initial, high-impact phase of hostilities—carrying operations into the second and third weeks, when logistics, replenishment, maintenance, and manpower depth matter as much as operational brilliance. A pre-Budget assessment, therefore, should focus less on quantum and more on whether the structure of defence expenditure reflects this reality.

Short Wars Validate Readiness; Long Wars Validate Budgets

Operation Sindoor underscored India’s ability to apply force precisely, proportionately, and with clear political objectives. Such operations reward preparedness, intelligence integration, and rapid mobilisation. They do not place severe strain on ammunition stocks, maintenance cycles, or force rotation. Nor do they demand prolonged mobilisation of reserves or sustained high-tempo logistics across multiple theatres. However, budgets do cater for technologies and enablers that set the pace and establish dominance in the opening hours.

A longer, more classical conventional conflict would present a different set of challenges. Consumption rates would increase sharply. Maintenance and spares pipelines would come under pressure. Air power sustainability would depend not just on platform availability, but on engine overhaul cycles, ground crew endurance, and access to critical components. Land forces would need depth for rotation and reinforcement, while logistics networks would be tested under both physical and digital stress.

These are not hypothetical vulnerabilities; they are structural realities of modern warfare. The appropriate question, therefore, is whether the forthcoming Defence budget is oriented toward endurance as much as deterrence.

What the Economic Survey Signals—And What It Leaves Unsaid?
The Economic Survey offers useful cues in this regard. While it does not dwell explicitly on military threats, it consistently emphasises resilience, infrastructure development, supply-chain security, and domestic manufacturing. National security is framed as part of a broader ecosystem that includes logistics, technology, energy, and climate resilience.

This framing implicitly supports defence investments that strengthen mobility, sustainment, and redundancy—capabilities that matter most in prolonged contingencies. At the same time, the Survey’s emphasis on fiscal discipline suggests that defence will continue to operate under tight resource constraints. This reinforces the need for prioritisation within the Defence budget rather than expectations of dramatic expansion.

Equally instructive is what the Survey does not emphasise; the cost of long-duration, high-intensity conflict, the cumulative burden of pensions and maintenance, and the trade-offs between manpower-heavy structures and technology-intensive forces. These silences suggest that the forthcoming budget is more likely to pursue incremental correction than radical restructuring. It's for the Armed Forces to tailor this to optimum requirement.

The Structural Reality of Defence Expenditure
Recent defence budgets reveal a persistent structural pattern. Revenue expenditure—salaries, pensions, maintenance—does dominate. Capital allocations have risen, but not at a pace sufficient to transform force structures rapidly. This is not a reflection of neglect, but of the inherent challenge of sustaining a large standing force while attempting modernisation under fiscal limits and simultaneous threats.

From an operational perspective, revenue spending sustains readiness today; capital spending builds deterrence for tomorrow. A defence budget would have to balance both. Prolonged conflicts disproportionately punish underinvestment in sustainment, spares, and war reserves—areas that rarely attract public attention.

Service-wise, this tension manifests differently. The Army must sustain manpower-intensive commitments while modernising selectively and under current conditions, in a more transformational way. The innovations need to be progressively absorbed. The Navy’s capital-heavy shipbuilding programmes align well with indigenisation goals but lock in long-term expenditure. The Air Force faces the dual challenge of squadron depletion and the high cost of modern platforms, making sustainment and availability as critical as induction.

What to Look for in the Defence Budget?
Against this backdrop, the forthcoming Defence Budget should be assessed through a small set of strategic questions rather than a long list of demands or quantum allocations.

First, does the budget visibly support ammunition endurance and replenishment? War-wastage reserves and surge manufacturing capacity matter far more in prolonged conflicts than headline platform numbers. The Ukraine War has manifestly demonstrated that.

Second, is there adequate emphasis on sustainment—spares, maintenance infrastructure, and repair ecosystems—particularly for air power and precision systems? Availability over time is a stronger indicator of combat power than induction figures.

Third, does the budget reinforce mobility and logistics? Investments in roads, bridges, depots (infrastructure), and transport aircraft directly translate into operational endurance, especially across India’s diverse terrains.

Fourth, is jointness being funded as an operational requirement rather than articulated as a reform slogan? Integrated logistics, communications, and command systems become primarily decisive only when conflicts extend in time and space.

Finally, are emerging domains—space, cyber, unmanned systems—being treated as integral to force sustainability, or as marginal add-ons?

A Measured Way to Judge the Budget
None of these questions imply that India is unprepared or vulnerable. On the contrary, Op Sindoor demonstrated operational confidence and effective political control. The issue is not readiness for limited contingencies, but preparedness for escalation that cannot be ruled out in an increasingly uncertain strategic environment.

A defence budget cannot eliminate all risk, nor should it attempt to do so. But it must signal that endurance has been factored into planning—not merely assumed. When the Finance Minister presents the Defence Budget, the most important task for analysts and readers alike will be to look beyond aggregate numbers and assess whether the structure of expenditure supports sustained military effectiveness to a higher degree, or not.

In that sense, the true test of the Defence Budget will not lie in whether it is the “largest ever,” but in whether it quietly strengthens the less visible foundations of military power— national war stamina, the ability to last, adapt, and prevail if a short war does not remain short.