In one telling example, India could buy fully assembled Russian Sukhoi fighters for about $55 million each, but instead mostly relies on kits that are sent to the government-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, which assembles them at a cost of about $68 million each — nearly a quarter more. In another example, government labs spent billions trying to develop an aircraft engine, only to abandon the effort and buy engines from General Electric for the recently introduced fighter, the Tejas.

“While it’s more complicated assembling Sukhois than putting together an Ikea flat-pack, it’s not that hard,” said Samuel Perlo-Freeman, a program director at the Stockholm institute. “And it’s far from an independent and autonomous development of a new weapons system.”

India has tried to encourage private companies to make arms in India, both in partnerships to the government and independently, but few of these efforts have succeeded. Most of India’s homegrown arms are developed in 50 government labs and built at eight large government manufacturing facilities and 40 government ordnance factories.

Companies have mostly been unwilling to work with the government, and the government has not allowed foreign makers to own more than 26 percent of any Indian factory. It has agreed to raise that limit to 49 percent, but no company has applied for the exception.

Mr. Antony dismissed criticisms of the government’s chokehold on arms production. “Indian scientists and Indian industry are more efficient, and the government will have to support them,” he said.

But Mr. Joshi said India’s government needed to get out of manufacturing. “Our defense industrial base is hopelessly out of date,” he said. “It needs to be dismantled and handed over to the private sector.”