India has historically signed deals with the United States and Israel to acquire advanced drones; however, a quiet revolution is taking place within the country. Local industry is developing and manufacturing various systems, from basic quadcopters to large-sized drones. As of 2025, more than 600 firms in India, including private and public sector companies, manufacture drones and associated equipment. These companies also manufacture counter-drone systems.
A silent but indigenous drone revolution is underway in India. It will reduce New Delhi’s reliance on foreign companies.
Drone manufacturing in India has surged in the last few years, since the Indian government introduced the Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme to incentivize companies producing drones and their components. This scheme involved financing up to 1.2 billion Indian rupees (around $13.6 million) to manufacturers over three years, which yielded positive dividends as more players joined the drone club. Besides this, the government allocated $234 million for the local drone industry in July 2025, which is equivalent to 20 billion Indian rupees for the next three years. The additional funding came after the four-day clash with Pakistan, which underscored the risks of too much reliance on employing systems acquired from abroad.
The Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) remains the principal entity in public-sector firms because it develops technology and then passes it on to other companies for serial production. It is working on developing India’s maiden stealth-armed uncrewed platform, known as Ghatak, which is expected to make its first public appearance in 2026. It is claimed that the platform can carry a weapons payload of about 1.5 tons, with a range of 1000 km, while staying airborne for up to six hours. Moreover, DRDO unveiled a small rotary drone, the first of its kind, earlier this year, which can fire a small missile for anti-tank and anti-bunker missions. This will allow soldiers deployed on the frontlines to operate armed drones with missiles independently.
Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) is working to develop advanced drones under the aegis of its “Combat Air Teaming System” (CATS) program. The concept is based on a manned-unmanned teaming (MUM-T) system. One of the initiatives is CATS Warrior, a remotely piloted airborne platform capable of conducting various offensive and surveillance missions and even sacrificing itself to save the mothership from adversary attacks. The Su-30 MKI and Tejas are likely candidates to act as motherships to control and guide the unmanned CATS Warriors during their combat missions.
In addition to the public sector, private companies are central to the ongoing indigenous drone revolution. These include Adani Aerospace, Solar Defence, Zen Technologies, Idea Forge, and NewSpace Research & Technologies. They manufacture diverse types of drones to fulfill the requirements of the Indian military. Adani Defense’s Drishti 10 Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) drone is a domestically produced copy of the Israeli Hermes 900, with an endurance of about 36 hours. The Adani group is also developing the Akshi-7 with 24-hour endurance and the ability to conduct kinetic strike missions.
NewSpace Research & Technologies has provided the Indian Army with an “autonomous surveillance and armed drone swarm” (A-SADS). This drone swarm contains two uncrewed systems: a Beluga hexacopter and a Nimbus Mk-III quadcopter. According to the company, 100 of these two systems can be jointly deployed in swarm mode for three hours at a maximum range of 50 km to overwhelm the adversary. The Indian Army has already demonstrated publicly using 75 drones in a swarm mode in 2021, which depicts that this A-SADS system is not a technology demonstrator but a potent platform with lethal capabilities. Moreover, the use of Solar’s Nagastra-I loitering munitions and IdeaForge’s Netra and Switch class drones in Operation Sindooor highlights that the private industry has the potential to manufacture high-end systems, which can be inducted into the military.
Both public and private sector companies are also developing counter-drone systems, which employ soft and hard kill means to neutralize uncrewed platforms. A notable example is the development of the Bhargavastra counter-drone system, which uses small, lightweight guided and unguided micro-missiles and micro-rockets to neutralize threats from loitering munitions and destroy drones that cannot be jammed or spoofed. Developed by Solar Defense, the anti-drone system employs small guided projectiles, which can neutralize drones at a maximum range of 2.5 km. This is designed to neutralize the threat posed by drone swarms.
Moreover, the D-4 anti-drone system, developed by DRDO and manufactured by Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), is another potent platform to destroy unwarranted uncrewed platforms. Further, Zen Technologies, a private manufacturing unit, is offering its Zen anti-drone system (ZADS), which can detect airborne threats at a range of 5000 m and altitude, respectively, while capable of jamming them in a radius of 4 km.
As demonstrated by India’s recent military confrontation with Pakistan, when six of its air force manned aircraft were shot down in a brief aerial engagement, it is highly expected that the Indian military will employ more drones along with standoff missiles to engage targets in Pakistan in the future. In this regard, India has increased its efforts to make CATS Warrior operational, along with drone swarms, to not only penetrate Pakistan’s air defense grid but also avoid the loss of a combat fighter, which the last conflict proved that it may cause damage to the military’s reputation, even if a few of them are shot down.
The growing drone industry, with its ability to manufacture more drones at a low cost in a short duration, allows the Indian military to deploy them in large numbers and replenish them on short notice. The Indian Army recently demonstrated such an endeavor when its Pakistan-centric IX Corps soldiers under the Western Command assembled 50 small-sized drones in only three hours. This reflects the domestic industry’s ability to manufacture a system with non-complex sub-units, which soldiers can easily assemble promptly. This shows that during wartime, the industry can also ship non-assembled drones to combat units, which they can then assemble based on their specific needs, resulting in more units produced per day. Moreover, to increase its operational drone units, the army has placed an order worth 2.95 billion Indian rupees for acquiring drones and loitering munitions from domestic firms in the aftermath of the post-May 2025 conflict with Pakistan. This includes the supply of 450 Nagastra-1R and a large quantity of surveillance drones from Solar Defense and IdeaForge.
India’s Chief of Defense Staff, General Anil Chauhan, recently emphasized the need to augment investment in R&D for next-generation drones, establish new drone startups, enhance the capability to manufacture stealth drones, and advance the MUM-T concept. The policy direction, coupled with the ongoing silent drone revolution, will reinforce the Indian military capability to fight the modern drone war by manufacturing and supplying various types of platforms on short notice to the military.