New Delhi: India and Armenia have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to expand cooperation in research, development, innovation and shared production in the defence industry, taking their growing defence relationship another step beyond the sale of Indian weapon systems. The agreement was signed in Yerevan on August 17 during defence secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh’s meeting with Armenian high-tech industry minister Davit Tadevosyan.
The Indian defence ministry said the MoU reaffirmed the two countries’ commitment to expand bilateral defence-industrial cooperation in areas of mutual interest. The ministry’s official wording is “shared production”, rather than joint production or co-production, and no specific weapon system has been identified for manufacture under the arrangement.
Military cooperation to defence industry
The latest agreement builds directly on the military cooperation framework established during the same visit.
As RNA Media reported earlier, Singh and Armenia’s chief of the general staff Lieutenant General Edvard Asryan exchanged a document defining a new format of cooperation between the general staffs of the two armed forces. Armenia’s defence ministry confirmed the arrangement on August 17.
The MoU now extends that engagement into the defence-industrial sphere. Singh’s talks with Armenian defence minister Suren Papikyan covered bilateral defence cooperation, including military technical cooperation, while the Indian defence ministry said his meeting with Asryan renewed the focus on defence industrial cooperation and defence research and development.
The engagement continued on August 18, when Singh visited Armenia’s Vazgen Sargsyan Military Academy. The defence ministry said he reviewed an IT Lab established with Indian support, was briefed on weapon systems supplied by India and discussed greater cooperation in capacity building and training.
The India supported technology facility has an established institutional base. The chief of defence staff (CDS), General Anil Chauhan, attended the opening of the academy’s Information Technology Laboratory and Distance Learning Centre during his visit to Armenia on February 2.
Taken together, the developments add training, military headquarters level engagement, research and defence industrial cooperation to a relationship whose recent growth had been driven substantially by Armenian procurement of Indian equipment.
Armenia’s place in India’s defence export push
Armenia has emerged as one of India’s leading defence export destinations. Government data placed Armenia among the top three destinations for Indian defence exports in 2023-24, alongside the United States and France.
Pinaka provides one clear example of that procurement relationship. On January 18, defence minister Rajnath Singh flagged off the first tranche of Guided Pinaka rockets to Armenia from a manufacturing facility in Nagpur.
The Armenian market has grown alongside a wider expansion in India’s defence exports. Government figures show exports reached a record ₹38,424 crore in 2025-26, up 62.66 per cent from ₹23,622 crore the previous year. Annual defence production also rose to a record ₹1.78 lakh crore during 2025-26.
The latest MoU adds an industrial and technology framework to a relationship that had previously been driven largely by procurement and military cooperation.