Reams have been written about the strategies in the recent India-Pakistan border conflict. But fewer words have been expended on a core aspect of this war: drones—their use; their different deployments by the two countries; the cost to each country centred on the kinds of drones used; and, most importantly, how the war drones in this conflict fit into various streams of global developments in warfare.
The credit for ‘the first drone war’ goes to the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian conflict. The India-Pakistan faceoff was just another bead in a long chain that began 176 years ago, when pilotless hot-air balloons bombed Venice during the 1848-49 Italian revolution.
It took 68 years to progress from the wind to radio-control—an ‘aerial torpedo’ against zeppelins and submarines designed by Archibald Low, the ‘father of aerial guidance systems’.
In 1935, the de Havilland DH.82 Queen Bee made its debut—a yellow-and-black liveried, radio-controlled biplane that not only became a testbed for future designs but also fathered the appellation ‘drone’.
During the Second World War, the US Navy converted four-engined B-24 Liberator bombers to radio-control for bombing missions. During the Cold War, the US used AQM-34 Firebee for photography missions over China and Vietnam, with China shooting down one in 1964. Iraq first used its ubiquitous Mohajer-1 for battlefield surveillance in 1986, explosively multiplying the use of drones in West Asia.
But these were large and spottable, and therefore more stoppable. Today, drones come in all shapes and sizes, from palm-width playthings to quadcopters and hexacopters that can be assembled by non-state actors—such as guerrillas in Myanmar and insurgents in Syria.
In Myanmar, the Karenni Nationalities Defence Force uses drones made with 3D printers and mechanics stripped from Chinese pesticide-sprayers. In Syria, the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), now in power, began producing winged drones in 2019. In Gaza, Hamas used hobbyists’ first-person-view (FPV) drones to scope out Israeli border posts.
Drone development is now official across the conflict ecosystem, from militaries to militias. The HTS’s Al-Shaheen (Falcon) Brigade, which reports directly to now-president Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa, specialises in the “production, manufacturing and development of advanced drones and weapons”.
In February 2024, the Ukraine government established the Unmanned Systems Forces, the world’s first branch of a military dedicated to drone warfare.
The research focus is now on repurposable drones, small drones, drone swarms, and the cost benefit. Ukraine’s sub-$400, explosive-packed FPV quadcopters inspired by racing drones square off against Russia’s Iranian-made $20,000-100,000 Geran-2 drones (essentially, Shahed-136/131s).
Ukraine can afford to toss buckets of them at Russia, as it did in May 2025, using 524 drones to disrupt 350 commercial flights across Russia; Russia has thrown 10,000 Shaheds at Ukraine since 2022. So Ukraine can afford to lose an estimated 50-80 percent of its deployed drones; but Russia is financially crimped by a 50 percent loss. Drones are now all about the money.
In the recent India-Pakistan duel, Pakistan lobbed 300-400 low-cost drones at India like confetti, testing India’s defences and perimeters. India says it intercepted 90 percent of them, while Pakistan claims it shot down 25-77 Indian drones.
The wild figures suggest that, in typical war scenarios, drone launches and casualties are difficult to estimate for now. But this much is true: Pakistan’s Turkish-made Asisguard Songar and NESCOM Burraq drones, the latter based on the Chinese CH-3A, are far less expensive than India’s IAI Harop and Heron Mark-2.
Pakistani quadcopters were used in small swarms. India used targeted and loitering drones that were not in packs. The countries had different intentions, and their drones had differing utility.
As everywhere, the competition is as much between rival entities as it is between two arms of a single technology.
And there is more mayhem waiting on the wings: sea drones, amphibious drones, mesh networks of low-tech kamikaze drones, high-speed return-to-base bomber drones, those targeting body heat, autonomous facial-recognition ones and AI-enabled interceptors.
The global drone arms race is fundamentally between China and the US. The US, as ever, is pursuing monumentalism: large drones such as the Boeing MQ-25 Stingray and the MQ-9 Reaper.
China’s focus is on aircraft carrier-based drones, ‘mothership’ drones—or swarm-carriers such as the Jetank with a 6-tonne payload capacity for missiles, bombs and ‘isomerism hive modules’ of hundreds of drones for swarm reconnaissance and strike—and drones that can split into smaller autonomous units. The pace of development is frenetic.
China demonstrated in Shenzhen a balletic swarm of 10,197 light-show drones on September 26, 2024, up from 7,998 on September 4, and 8,100 a day later. A dark horse, Vietnam, broke this record with 10,518 coordinated drones on April 28, 2025.
These drone swarms are one step from weaponisation—maybe not even that far, because China’s drone weaponisation programme is enmeshed with civilian drones, what with the Shenzhen DJI Sciences and Technologies owning 70 percent of the global civilian drone market share. The record-breaking Shenzhen drone swarm was controlled by a single laptop, which the US’s Autonomous Multi-Domain Adaptive Swarms-of-Swarms (AMASS) project is not even close to replicating.
At the end of the day, drone development is backed by the human desire to wage war but not to be caught in its midst. To destroy with unbloodied hands. The days of warriors with the PlayStation mentality are upon us.
Kajal Basu
Veteran journalist
(Views are personal)
(kajalrbasu@gmail.com)
