Three Stages of Indo-Russian Defence Relations: A Military Perspective

For those interested in looking further than a USA focus - this is a great read. How did India come to find itself importing more weapons form the US than from Russia in a short space of time?
"Besides the spares imbroglio, the delivery schedules started to slip, especially in case of ammunition and missiles. The catastrophic beating which their economy had taken showed up at many places. RBE started quoting unrealistic costs for mainframe equipment thus losing out in several big ticket procurements in multi-vendor scenarios - case in point, Tunguska Weapon system for Army Air Defence. Since the time was now approaching for the periodic OH of mainframe equipment, The OEMs started to make astronomical time and cost estimates for setting up facilities for the OH – a case in point being the overhaul of guns and missile systems of Air force and Army. Besides this, RBE stared to drag its feet on many offset negotiations or asking for unbelievable costs for Transfer of Technology (ToT).

Getting frustrated with the emerging realities, the armed forces stated looking elsewhere towards countries like USA, Israel, UK, Sweden, France, Singapore, Germany and Korea. The initial years were a NO-GO for USA due to a seemingly impassable disconnect between our DPP and their procedure of Foreign Military Sales (FMS). It is besides the point that today the No 1 arms supplier to India is not Russia but USA.

At that stage things were actually looking bad and difficult for the Soviet origin equipment."