Confronted with the prospect of swarm attacks on its western and northern fronts, the Indian Air Force (IAF) is putting together an architecture in which drones, sensors, airspace management and air defence operate as a single system.
Its first Dronathon, held at the Pokhran field firing range in Jaisalmer in mid-September, was an opening move. The IAF demonstrated Vayu UTtaM, an indigenous system designed to track drones in crowded airspace, and set out what it wants Indian industry to build.
The IAF, already operating with 29 fighter squadrons against a sanctioned strength of 42.5, faces an adversary that can potentially swamp air defences with drones costing a few lakh rupees each, forcing the defender to expend interceptor missiles worth crores that are intended for fighters and cruise missiles.
Vice Chief of Air Staff Air Marshal Ashutosh Dixit used the three-day event to release the IAF’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Roadmap. Its focus goes well beyond airframes to engines, sensors, payloads, communication links, autonomy and electronic warfare — precisely the areas where import dependence has been most persistent.
IAF’S Drone Journey
1996-2000: Israeli Searcher drones arrive. The Army inducts them in 1996, and the IAF follows in 2000 with its first UAV squadron at Bhatinda. The Kargil conflict strengthens the case for persistent aerial surveillance.
Late 1990s: The Israeli Harpy anti-radiation loitering munition gives the IAF an early armed unmanned capability — designed to detect and destroy radar emitters.
2003: Heron-1 MALE UAVs are inducted, followed by a larger order in 2005, providing persistent surveillance over a much wider area.
2009: Harop is inducted under a $100-million deal. Capable of loitering, identifying and striking a target, it represents a more sophisticated hunter-killer capability.
2016-2024: DRDO’s TAPAS flies for the first time in 2016 but falls short of the original requirement of 30,000 feet and 24 hours, achieving about 28,000 feet and 18 hours. The programme is dropped from mission-mode development in January 2024.
2024: India signs a deal for 31 MQ-9B remotely piloted aircraft, including eight SkyGuardians for the IAF. Deliveries are expected to begin in 2029.
Now: Loitering munitions have demonstrated their utility in recent operations. The focus has shifted towards indigenous armed systems such as Archer-NG, a large MALE UAV procurement, and the integration of swarms, electronic warfare and counter-drone systems into the wider air-defence network.
Q&A
What was the IAF actually testing at Pokhran?
Whether Indian-made drones and counter-drone systems can work in the conditions in which they may eventually have to fight.
More than 20 defence companies, start-ups, micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), defence public sector undertakings (DPSUs) and individual innovators flew systems covering expendable surveillance platforms, loitering munitions, drones carrying electronic-warfare payloads, logistics and resupply platforms, mapping and survey systems, counter-drone technologies and AI-enabled autonomous navigation.
The choice of venue was deliberate. Pokhran in September offers dust, intense heat and a demanding electromagnetic environment, allowing the IAF to assess reliability and performance under field conditions rather than simply relying on manufacturers’ brochure specifications.
The stated objective was to move beyond technology demonstrations and assess operational effectiveness — including how quickly systems could be adapted as threats evolved.
The inaugural session was also attended by senior representatives of the Army and BSF. That reflects a larger reality: managing and defending low-altitude airspace is increasingly a joint problem rather than the preserve of any one service.
What does Vayu UTtaM do that existing systems cannot?
The IAF’s existing air picture is built around the Integrated Air Command and Control System (IACCS), which draws feeds from ground-based radars, tethered aerostats and Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft. AWACS platforms can detect and track threats beyond the range of many ground stations. IACCS fuses these inputs into a continuously updated picture of Indian airspace, allowing commanders to assign a detected threat to the most appropriate weapon system.
But conventional air-defence architecture was primarily designed around traditional aerial threats.
Vayu UTtaM is aimed at the band much closer to the ground, where small quadcopters, survey drones, crop-spraying platforms, police drones and hostile unmanned aircraft can appear remarkably similar on a radar or operator’s screen. Its purpose is to manage drone operations in increasingly crowded airspace and identify and mitigate unauthorised or rogue drones.
The difficult part is not simply detecting an object. It is determining, within seconds, whether it is a legitimate civilian drone, a police or government platform, or an armed intruder — and then passing that information to the appropriate gun crew, interceptor or jammer operator.
A wrong decision near a refinery, airport or populated area could make the counter-drone response itself a hazard.
That is why the IAF has identified applications beyond the military, including airspace safety, civil aviation, protection of critical infrastructure and public safety. The larger objective is to avoid having multiple, disconnected pictures of India’s low-altitude airspace.
India’s air defences held during Operation Sindoor. So what worried the IAF afterwards?
The more important question was the composition of the aerial threat during the operation.
A significant component comprised small drones, which can be used not merely to attack targets but to probe and saturate air-defence networks and reveal the location and response patterns of radars and missile batteries. Alongside them came more sophisticated unmanned systems, missiles and munitions released by aircraft.
The tactic can amount to reconnaissance by expenditure.
Cheap airframes force the defender to activate radars, deploy jammers and, potentially, expend interceptors. In doing so, they can reveal how an air-defence network detects, classifies and responds to an incoming threat — information that can be exploited by more sophisticated weapons following behind.
That creates an uncomfortable cost asymmetry. A drone costing a few lakh rupees can compel the defender to reveal an expensive system or expend a missile worth crores.
The operation also highlighted the continuing role of legacy systems in dealing with the low end of the threat. Among the systems used against drones were Pechora and OSA-AK missile systems and upgraded L-70 and ZU-23 anti-aircraft guns, several of which have been awaiting replacement or modernisation.
What is being inducted to handle that low end?
A growing mix of 'soft-kill' and 'hard-kill' systems.
Soft-kill defeats a drone without physically destroying it, usually by jamming its communications link or spoofing its satellite navigation so that it loses its route, drifts away or is forced to land.
Hard-kill means physically destroying the drone.
Soft-kill is generally cheaper and can be preferable in populated areas, where falling debris from a kinetic engagement creates its own risks. But a drone flying a pre-programmed route may have no active communications link to jam. And a saturation raid can overwhelm a limited number of jammers covering a sector.
That is why the hard-kill layer is being strengthened.
Systems in service or under trial include Zen Technologies’ ZADS, which combines jamming with kinetic effectors; Bharat Electronics Ltd’s D4 counter-drone system; Indrajaal; and Solar Defence and Aerospace’s Bhargavastra, whose micro-rockets were test-fired at Gopalpur last year.
DRDO’s ULPGM-V3 missile, designed to be launched from a UAV, is also being developed.
Lasers could eventually alter the cost equation further. Instead of consuming a conventional interceptor for every engagement, a directed-energy weapon draws primarily on electrical power. DRDO’s Centre for High Energy Systems and Sciences has demonstrated a vehicle-mounted 30-kilowatt laser against a fixed-wing UAV and smaller drones and is working on more powerful laser and microwave systems.
Air defence guns and short-range missiles sit with the Army. So where does the IAF fit in when it comes to stopping drones?
On the picture and on the decision, rather than necessarily on the trigger.
The IACCS provides the IAF’s integrated picture of Indian airspace. The Army’s Akashteer, inducted in 2024, performs a similar function for its air-defence units and enables tracks to be shared across the wider network.
Vayu UTtaM is intended to extend that picture into the low-altitude environment in which small drones operate.
The difficult problem during a saturation attack is triage. Within seconds, commanders have to determine which incoming object should be jammed, which should be engaged by a gun, and which represents a sufficiently serious threat to justify an interceptor costing crores.
The danger is misallocation. A cheap decoy can consume a weapon intended for a fighter or cruise missile. Conversely, an armed drone may be allowed through if the system misclassifies it or cannot engage it quickly enough.
The gun crew may belong to the Army, but the track against which it is firing — and the assessment that an object is hostile — can form part of the wider integrated air picture.
That explains why the IAF has a direct interest in the low end of the drone threat even though many of the physical counter-drone weapons belong to the Army.
The IAF operates the higher layers of India’s air-defence architecture, including systems such as the S-400, MRSAM, Akash and Spyder. A swarm of inexpensive drones is designed, in part, to force precisely those expensive layers to respond to a large number of relatively cheap targets.
Swarm drones are at the low end. What about the IAF’s own drones at the high end?
The IAF’s long-range unmanned fleet has historically been dominated by surveillance platforms and imported systems.
The Army was first off the blocks in the mid-1990s with the Israeli Searcher, followed by the IAF and Navy with Searcher Mk-II and later the Heron medium-altitude, long-endurance drones. The Kargil conflict in 1999 provided their first major operational test in sustained surveillance over difficult terrain.
Armed unmanned capability came later, notably with Israeli Harpy and Harop loitering munitions.
Three decades on, the front-line fleet still includes the Israeli Searcher and Heron families, along with newer platforms such as the Hermes 900.
India’s 31 MQ-9B remotely piloted aircraft contracted from General Atomics in 2024 — 15 for the Navy and eight each for the Army and IAF — are expected to begin arriving only in 2029. The Navy has therefore continued to use leased SeaGuardian platforms in the interim.
Indigenous efforts are centred on DRDO’s Aeronautical Development Establishment (ADE), which has worked on the Rustom, TAPAS and Archer-NG programmes, as well as Ghatak, a jet-powered stealth unmanned combat aircraft intended for deep-penetration missions.
The Defence Acquisition Council in March cleared procurement of 60 Ghatak-derived Remotely Piloted Strike Aircraft (RPSA), with DRDO expected to execute the programme with a private-sector partner.
HAL is also developing the CATS Warrior “loyal wingman”, designed to operate alongside manned fighters such as Tejas, Su-30MKI and Jaguar and, eventually, the fifth-generation Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft. Such systems are intended to absorb some of the riskier elements of a mission without putting a pilot in every aircraft.
There is a larger force-structure logic behind this push.
With the IAF operating 29 fighter squadrons against an authorised strength of 42.5, and the proposed acquisition of 114 Rafale F4 fighters still years away from translating into operational squadrons, the gap between authorised and available combat strength is likely to persist.
Attritable unmanned platforms offer one way of adding combat mass without waiting for manned fighters to arrive.
So does Dronathon actually change anything?
Its significance lies less in the three-day event itself than in what comes next.
The UAS Roadmap sets out the IAF’s capability priorities and gives domestic industry, academia and research laboratories a clearer indication of what the force wants to develop and acquire. That matters because India’s drone challenge is no longer simply about producing airframes.
The IAF has identified engines, sensors, payloads, communication links, autonomy, electronic warfare, countermeasures and airspace management as part of the requirement. The Army published a comparable roadmap for drones and loitering munitions in April. The harder task now is integration and scale.
IACCS, Akashteer, Vayu UTtaM, civil drone-management systems and the expanding range of counter-drone technologies will have to exchange information and operate as a common architecture rather than as separate networks.
And the 20-odd companies that demonstrated systems at Pokhran will have to make the much harder transition from promising prototypes to a production ecosystem capable of delivering reliable systems at scale and sustaining them through prolonged operations.
That, ultimately, is the test of the drone push: not how many different drones India can fly, but whether sensors, software, electronic warfare, weapons and unmanned platforms can function as one network — quickly enough, cheaply enough and at sufficient scale to survive a saturated battlefield.
