Military drones | Raising an Indian swarm

Across all military platforms being used in the Iran conflict—a war of missile, bomb and drone strikes, counterstrikes and air defence—one of the clear winners is the humble, cheap UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle). Systems like Iran’s Shahed-136 have shown how low-cost, mass-produced drones can penetrate even the most sophisticated air defence networks. Flying low and deployed in swarms or waves, such drones force defenders to use interceptor missiles that cost millions of dollars to shoot down UAVs worth a fraction of that amount. For example, a Shahed-136 kamikaze drone costs between $20,000 (Rs 18.8 lakhs) - $50,000 (Rs 47 lakhs), but each US Patriot missile interceptor costs around $4 million (Rs 37.6 crore). Many are neutralised, but the significant numbers that pierce missile defence shields are causing havoc. Crucially, they use pre-programmed navigation, with minimal reliance on real-time communication, making them more resilient in the face of sophisticated Electronic Warfare (EW) tools.

Taking a cue from the Iran war and the Ukraine conflict, where such drone tactics first made their mark, India is now focusing on mass production of indigenous, long-range strike drones. Like Shahed, the exemplar in this field, they are being designed to be cheap, scalable and deadly. A couple of Shahed-class programmes are currently underway, and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) may award a contract for this type to the industry before the end of 2026. India’s policy push aims for industrial-scale production and secure supply chains by 2030. The goal: to build a “low cost, high impact” drone ecosystem delivering machines that can support swarm attacks in high-risk environments.

Speaking at the recent National Defence Industries Conclave, defence minister Rajnath Singh said, “We clearly see that drones and counter-drone technologies have a huge role in future warfare. Today, there is a need to create such a drone manufacturing ecosystem in India that is completely self-reliant—not only at the product level—but also at the component level so that the drone’s mould, software, engine and batteries are all made in India.” He promised manufacturers “every kind of support from the government”.

“Air warfare is shifting from piloted systems to unmanned platforms, and we must accelerate our efforts,” says Lt Gen. Raj Shukla (retd), former commander of Army Training Command. “We have not been able to keep pace, though we have enough talent and capability in the drone manufacturing ecosystem.”

Operation Sindoor—the 87-hour aerial clash with Pakistan in May 2025—delivered a brutal wake-up call to India’s drone forces. Pakistani directional jamming arrays—where high-power radio frequency waves disrupt GPS-reliant communication/ navigation—and other EW tactics like signal spoofing crippled much of India’s UAV inventory. Many Indian platforms, reliant on vulnerable radio frequencies and GPS links, could not operate effectively.

Indeed, before Operation Sindoor, EW received scant attention in Indian drone procurement. A reliance on imported subsystems—sensors, communication kits, propulsion and precision electronics—left platforms exposed to signal denial and jamming, turning them into deadweight duds. Clearly, combating EW is a major challenge, for without protection against it, even advanced drones can fail in combat.

COUNTERING THE EW THREAT

In electronic warfare, jamming usually targets control and video. Disrupting these is sufficient to cut off operator control and eliminate real-time situational awareness. GPS-jamming is a more aggressive step. It can degrade navigation, trigger fail-safe modes (return-to-home) or reduce positional accuracy. During Op. Sindoor, Indian drones could not counter the basic disruption of control and video links, revealing limited anti-jamming capability, fragile communication links and insufficient autonomy when connectivity is severed.

To counter EW, modern drones combine command, telemetry and video into unified digital links rather than through separate channels. Advanced models also employ frequency hopping spread-spectrum (FHSS) techniques—which rapidly change frequencies—and encryption to resist basic jamming. Some can maintain autonomous flight or switch to other backup behaviours when links are lost.

An expert on drones points out that, with India finally adopting coordinated swarms of drones as its drone strategy, it must now develop distributed drone intelligence and algorithms that ensure seamless operation even under disruption. Such decentralised algorithms enable drone waves to collaborate autonomously. Instead of depending on a central control system, each drone uses its sensor data and communicates real-time with nearby peers, enabling it to change speed or direction to avoid threats while maintaining cohesion.

“India must invest in EW-proof navigation systems, including Inertial Navigation Systems (INS) and terrain mapping capabilities. The objective is to make drones that do not depend on GPS to survive or strike, creating a force that can penetrate defended airspace and execute missions regardless of electronic threats,” he explains.

As inspiration, India can look at Iranian drones like Shahed-136 and the smaller Shahed-131 that are designed to operate in such hostile environments. Rather than relying heavily on continuous external inputs, they are built to function with limited or no GPS access. Many of these systems use inertial navigation—a self-contained navigation module—allowing them to maintain course without satellite guidance. A key Indian military official says that Iranian drones ran into some of the same difficulties during the 12-day war in June 2025 that afflicted Indian drones. In eight months, Iran changed the GPS and navigation of its drone inventory, dumping reliance on the US GPS satellite network and switching to China’s BeiDou satellite navigation system, making them difficult to track and intercept.

A drone industry insider explains the logic behind Iran’s drone strategy. “Low-cost drones can compel defenders to use high-cost interceptor missiles, resulting in an unfavourable economic exchange. Even when defensive systems successfully neutralise incoming threats, the cost incurred can far exceed that of the attacking systems. Modern warfare is no longer defined solely by firepower, but also by economic sustainability,” he says.

However, the Shaheds have met their match in the battlefields of Ukraine. Iran had supplied thousands of them to Russia (rebranded as Geran-2 for Shahed-136 and Geran-1 for Shahed-131), and they had entered combat from September 2022. Since 2025, Ukraine has found their antidote—equally low-cost interceptor drones operated by personnel tracking them on a monitor or by wearing first person view (FPV) goggles that are shooting down hundreds of Russian drones. Now, such ‘Shahed killers’ as the Sting, Bullet and Octopus 100 are being eagerly sought by the US and Gulf countries.

INDIA’S DRONE CHARGE

India has several low-cost long-range strike drone projects in the pipeline. The most prominent are the Sheshnag-150, being developed by Bengaluru-based startup NewSpace Research and Technologies (NRT), and Project KAL, by Noida-based IG Defence.

Bodhisattwa Sanghapriya, founder and CEO of IG Defence, says that KAL is not an attempt to replicate the Shahed but is India’s answer to what comes after it. “We are building a mass-deployable strike platform designed for swarm operations—100 to 300 drones launched within a short operational window, overwhelming enemy air defences through sheer saturation. The design is modular, built for rapid manufacturing and mission flexibility across strike, decoy and EW roles,” he says. Noting that the Shahed changed the calculus of modern conflict by proving that volume beats precision at scale, Sanghapriya adds, “KAL is designed to give India that same asymmetric edge on Indian terms.”

MASS EXPENDABLE FLEETS

Sameer Joshi, CEO of NRT, which is developing the Sheshnag-150 drone designed to strike targets over 1,000 km away, says the Indian military is prioritising thousands of low-cost, attritable UAVs for saturation and deep-strike operations. He notes that the MoD is integrating dedicated drone platoons and counter-UAS (Unmanned Aerial Systems) units across infantry and mechanised units. While high-end platforms remain for reconnaissance/ surveillance, mass expendable fleets now form the doctrinal core for asymmetric advantage along the Line of Control (LoC) and the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

“India’s UAV ecosystem has been crippled for years by fragmented procurement, the toxic lowest-bidder trap and a dangerously thin domestic component base. Operation Sindoor laid bare these weaknesses and created a now-or-never moment for reform,” Joshi says. He adds that the industry needs multi-year committed orders, turbocharged PLI (production linked incentive) schemes for true indigenisation and procurement models that reward deep domestic system-level innovation, not just the lowest price. He believes that success demands nothing less than full doctrinal integration of UAVs across services, tight public-private R&D fusion and the mass fielding of thousands of low-cost platforms by 2030. Today, 50–60 per cent of mission-critical subsystems remain imported, leaving sovereign capability exposed. “The proposed PLI for FY 2026–27, reinforced by the Centre’s Electronics Components Manufacturing Scheme, must drive import dependence below 40 per cent by this decade’s end. Anything more jeopardises India’s ability to sustain drone warfare on our terms,” says Joshi.

Sai Pattabiram, co-founder of Chennai-based Zuppa Geo Navigation Technologies, a drone firm specialising in software, says ongoing global conflicts demand a paradigm shift—performance metrics now focus on the asymmetric cost impact of equipment in both attack and defence roles. Consequently, cost-effective equipment must be produced, procured and deployed in millions. “Rapid adaptability in weeks across the entire inventory to evolving threats and countermeasures is crucial. The MoD must lead this evolution,” he says.

A top military official says the biggest constraint is scale. Over 600 Indian firms manufacture drones and UAV equipment but the expanding drone ecosystem still lacks industrial-level production capacity of cheap drones in large numbers.

“The future of warfare will not be decided solely by the most advanced technology but by the ability of drones to endure in a jammed, silent battlespace—and to fight back with systems that are cheap, numerous, intelligent and impossible to ignore,” he adds.

The challenge is thus twofold—achieving fully indigenous, state-of-the-art technology and ensuring its rapid manufacture. Finally, India is gearing up to meet it.