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In February 2026, India approved the largest arms purchase in its history: $40 billion in defense equipment, including 114 Rafale-M fighters to operate on Indian Navy aircraft carriers and six P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft from the United States, as part of a declared strategy to dominate the Indian Ocean before 2030 and contain China’s naval expansion in the region.
The Rafale-M and what it will do on the INS Vikrant
The Rafale-M is the naval version of the multirole fighter developed by French Dassault Aviation. Unlike the conventional Rafale, the Rafale-M has a reinforced chassis for the impacts of catapults and arrest during landing on aircraft carriers, more robust landing gear, and arrest hooks. It is the same model that equips the aircraft carrier squadrons of the French Navy on the Charles de Gaulle.
The 114 Rafale-M will operate on the INS Vikrant, the first aircraft carrier entirely built in India, delivered by the Indian Navy in 2022 after decades of development. The Vikrant uses the STOBAR system — ski-jump runway for takeoff, cable arrest for landing — which limits the maximum takeoff weight of aircraft compared to catapults, but it is the technology that India operationally masters.
The agreement includes partial technology transfer and integration of indigenous Indian weapon systems — missiles, EW pods, and sensors developed by the DRDO (Defence Research and Development Organisation) — into the Rafale. This is important for India: it doesn’t just want to buy, it wants to learn to make.
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The P-8 Poseidon and anti-submarine warfare
While the Rafale-M is the fighter, the P-8 Poseidon is the eye. Developed by Boeing on the 737-800 airframe, the P-8 is the most advanced maritime patrol aircraft in the Western world — it detects submarines with sonobuoys, torpedoes, and acoustic sensors, monitors surface ship movements with radar and cameras, and can engage targets with Mark 54 torpedoes and Harpoon missiles.
China has about 60 to 70 submarines in operation, including ballistic nuclear submarines (SSBN) that patrol the Indian Ocean as part of China’s nuclear triad. India needs to know where these submarines are — and the P-8 is the platform that allows this on a scale.
The six Poseidons will join 12 that India already operates — expanding maritime patrol coverage across the entire Indian Ocean, from the Gulf of Aden to the Strait of Malacca.
The strategy behind the $40 billion: why the Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the most strategic maritime route on the planet. 80% of the world’s oil passes through it. Trade between Europe, Asia, and Africa depends on the straits of Hormuz, Bab-el-Mandeb, and Malacca, all washed by its waters. Whoever controls the Indian Ocean influences global trade.
China is aware of this. Beijing has ports or bases in Sri Lanka (Hambantota), Pakistan (Gwadar), Djibouti (military base opened since 2017), Bangladesh, and the Maldives — in a string of naval presence points encircling India. The strategy, which analysts call the “string of pearls,” is designed to give China access to Indian Ocean maritime routes regardless of Indian objections.
India responds with superior capability — it cannot or does not want to have bases in so many countries, but bets that with aircraft carriers, embarked fighters, and superior patrol aircraft, it can dominate the Indian Ocean where it matters: in combat.
What this means for Brazil and the South Atlantic
The dynamics India is setting up in the Indian Ocean have a mirror in the South Atlantic. Brazil has the largest coast in the South Atlantic, the largest EEZ in South America, and pre-salt oil reserves that are globally strategic. The Brazilian Navy operates a decommissioned aircraft carrier and works on a conventional and nuclear submarine program with France.
But $40 billion in two years — what India approved — is beyond the reach of the Brazilian defense budget, which revolves around $20-25 billion in total per year. The question is not whether Brazil will match India, but whether it will have the minimum capacity to protect its interests in the South Atlantic in a world where major powers are accelerating naval rearmament.
The pre-salt is 300 km off the coast. Anyone who wants to threaten this production will need to cross 300 km of sea before reaching it. Today, who and what ensures that this crossing does not happen?
The timing of India’s $40 billion purchase is relevant: it was approved two months after the Sino-Indian military confrontation in Arunachal Pradesh in December 2025, which reignited land tensions on the Himalayan border. India simultaneously engages in territorial disputes with China by land (Ladakh, Arunachal Pradesh) and by sea (Indian Ocean). The defense package responds to both fronts: the Rafale-M and the P-8 cover maritime dominance, while the purchase also includes early warning radars and anti-missile defense systems for the land border that have not been publicly detailed. For the French defense industry — which exports Rafale to Egypt, Qatar, Greece, Croatia, Indonesia, the UAE, and now India —, the deal is valuable not only for the 114 aircraft but for the precedent that Rafale is the premium fighter that medium-sized democracies choose when they want the best technology available outside the US. For Dassault, the Rafale has gone from being the aircraft that lost all bids in the 2000s to becoming the biggest export success in French fighter history.
If India is spending $40 billion to dominate the ocean that washes its coast, what is Brazil doing to protect the 300 km of ocean that separate the coast of Santos from the country’s largest oil fields?
