New Delhi, June 6 -- There's a particular kind of news that makes defence investors sit up, and last weekend in Singapore delivered exactly that.

At the Shangri-La Dialogue, India's defence secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh confirmed something the rumour mills had been chewing on for weeks: the deal to sell BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles to Vietnam is already signed.

According to reports, the contract is valued at roughly $629 million. Singh also added that a similar deal with Indonesia is now in its final stages.

To understand why this matters, let's rewind a few years. The BrahMos, a Mach 2.8 monster co-developed by India's DRDO and Russia's NPOM, was for the longest time something India built only for itself. Too strategic, too sensi...