NEW DELHI: India is expediting the procurement of another five additional S-400 “Sudarshan Chakra” squadrons from Russia, increasing their number to 10 operational units, and assembling a far -more strict, intermediate, multi-layered missile-and-air-defence shield for China and Pakistan. Following this battlefield deployment, the S‑400 is expected to play a key role in helping India neutralise cheap Pakistani drones, cruise missiles and strike aircraft along the western front in 2025–26, and harden India’s northern flank against Chinese air and missile threats.
What India plans to buy
In a big boost to its defence- modernisation drive, the Indian government has cleared a mega package worth about ₹2.38 lakh crore (around $25 billion) for procurement of five new S-400 air-defence squadrons, along with 60 medium transport aircraft, strike drones and other platforms. This will formally expand the number of S-400 batteries with the Indian Air Force from five units delivered under contract to 10 full regiments, making the system the backbone of India’s long-range air and missile defence architecture.
Sources in the Defence Ministry stated that the new S‑400s will be stationed on the eastern and western fronts — both in the LAC region with China and along the Jammu–Punjab–Rajasthan belt opposite Pakistan. Talks with Russia are already under way to expedite the replenishment of missiles and to integrate the S-400 more closely with India’s network-centric air-defence grid.
S‑400’s role in a multi‑layered shield
India’s layered air and missile‑defence umbrella has an outer ring consisting of the S‑400 Triumf (engagement range of up to 400‑km and radar detection of about 600 km). In this model of architecture‑of‑layers, incoming threats are countered sequentially at long, medium and short ranges rather than through a single system.
Long‑range (outer ring): S‑400 interception of aircraft, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and drones at stand‑off distances, most likely even before entering deep Indian airspace.
It covers the data set of early October 2023. — The middle layer: Protecting vital airbases, urban settlements and strategic assets are indigenous Akash/Akash‑NG and Israeli‑Russian Barak‑8 family systems (approximately 70‑100 km ranges).
An Inner/Terminal Layer; Close-range systems (QRSAM, SPYDER, Pechora, OSA‑AK and MANPADS) that defend forward-edge nodes and high-value platforms in the close-in areas. government.
However, if one layer leaks through, the next can still intercept, allowing India to deal with saturation attacks—multiple missiles, drones and aircraft in swarms from China or Pakistan at the same time—with this layered grid.
Why more S‑400s? Deterrence vs China and Pakistan
The three overlapping imperatives for India regarding S‑400s are: technology, geography and deterrence. For one, the S‑400 is able to detect and target stealthy (low‑observable) aircraft, cruise missiles, and medium‑range ballistic missiles, making it a credible opponent against Chinese platforms such as the J‑10, J‑16, J‑20, and Pakistan’s Shaheen and Ghauri‑class missiles.
With a radar-tracking range of approximately 600 km, the system allows India to possibly watch airspace far inside Pakistani and Chinese territory, thus generating advance warning and layered interception options. S‑400 coverage over the Siliguri Corridor (“Chicken’s Neck”) protects India’s exposed land‑connection to the northeastern states, even as Chinese influence spreads on India’s eastern front in Bangladesh and on the western side of the Indo‑Pacific littoral.
For example, with S‑400 deployment around major cities and airbases, the effective range of any missile or drone strike on Pakistan will increase the cost of such an operation many fold—because Pakistan cannot extrapolate from past experience that its conventional missiles will reach their intended targets. This subsequently enhances India s conventional deterrence and constrains the room to coerce or escalate to limited war.
How it fits into India’s broader defence plan
The S‑400 expansion is not a singular initiative; it is one part of a larger air‑ and missile‑defence bubble that contains Russian, Israeli, European and domestic systems. Both the IAF and DRDO remain keen on indigenous long‑range systems (for instance Project Kusha, the BMD‑2 upper‑tier layer), if only to ultimately reduce dependency on foreign platforms, while the S‑400 is retained as a central workhorse.
Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and more than 30 other cities are already under the S‑400 umbrella, and five more squadrons will allow India to extend similar protection to secondary industrial hubs, coastal complexes and forward‑area bases. It also provides inputs to India’s Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) programme, where Phase‑I (approximately Delhi) has been operational for quite some time and Phase‑II is being ramped up to cover other regions.
Strategic implications for the region
Additional S‑400s will shift the air‑defence balance in India’s favour, especially with Pakistan reacting with its own long‑range systems in the Chinese HQ‑9, and an upgraded aerial and missile inventory. Chinese Aircraft and Missiles in the Himalayas Offensive More Dangerous for ChinaHowever, the S‑400 rings on the northern and eastern borders also mean greater risk of losing the aircraft and missiles involved to Chinese adventurism in the Himalayas or the Bay of Bengal in the future.
Conversely, some critics caution that saturation of missile defence may change nuclear deterrence stability in South Asia, with increased interception potential incentivising nuclear-deployed adversaries to become more heavily armed, adopt more advanced delivery methods, or lower launch-on-warning thresholds. However, New Delhi maintains that the S-400 and other systems are not offensive, but defensive and stability-enhancing and that they are necessary to deal with conventional and hybrid threats from its two immediate neighbours.