Asia Defense | Security | South Asia

India’s Drone Production Ecosystem Is Evolving

New Delhi’s accelerating militarization of drone technologies not only risks deepening existing asymmetries, but will also fuel a regional drone arms race.

Recent conflicts have triggered a palpable surge in drone production, particularly in countries including United States, China, Israel, Turkiye, Ukraine, and Iran. Mainly spearheaded by the private sector, with the exception of China, drone production is allowing states involved in active combat to meet their own operational battlefield requirements. For states not engaged in active conflict, indigenous drone production serves as a pathway to industrial development and increased export potential beyond military self-reliance. 

New Delhi has jumped on the bandwagon. The Indian government has attempted to encourage the private sector to step up drone production. As it picks up pace, the Indian drone industry seems to be following a hybrid model whereby it seeks to combine the Israeli industry’s mature commercial-feedback loop with the Ukrainian drone industry’s wartime innovation and scalability. 

India has long imported drone technology. During the 1999 Kargil conflict, India’s military deployed Israeli-origin IAI Heron and Searcher drones for the first time. While the ambitions for indigenous drone manufacturing remained latent, they were considerably constrained by New Delhi’s operational and tactical requirements. India’s ambitions to become a drone producer truly came to fore following its military confrontation with Pakistan in May 2025. The four-day conflict fundamentally altered the role of drones from intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) roles to strike roles. While the U.S.-brokered ceasefire brought a halt to kinetic hostilities, a security-driven technological arms race has taken off.

This is not to suggest that New Delhi’s transition from being a drone importer to becoming a drone producer began in 2025. Instead, this transition was already underway through a sequence of state-led structural-level policy interventions. 

In 2021, the Indian government had imposed import restrictions on drones to create a protected market space for domestic manufacturers. Likewise, the 2021 Production Linked Incentive scheme, launched by the Indian government, catalyzed private investment in UAV manufacturing at component and system level. The Drone Shakti Mission of 2022 articulated an ecosystem-building vision that treated drones as dual-use infrastructure rather than niche defense equipment. 

On the demand side, the Defense Acquisition Procedure (DAP) 2020 created structural demand for indigenously produced drones by reserving the “Buy IDDM” (Indigenously Designed, Developed, and Manufactured) procurement category exclusively for Indian vendors with less than 49 percent foreign direct investment, and mandating at least 65 percent local content. 

Collectively, these structural interventions have translated into over 600 drone and drone-components manufacturing companies in India, among which over 100 companies particularly specialize in their defense applications.

Following the 2025 confrontation however, Indian demand for drones has escalated. For instance, Zuppa Geo Navigation Technologies reportedly experienced a 10-fold jump in its order pipelines during May 2025 alone. The firm has since announced plans to expand its geographic footprint to Africa and the Middle East region, positioning itself as an exporter of electronic warfare-resistant systems.

At the same time, private firms are also utilizing the emergency procurement mechanism, provided under DAP to accelerate drone production. In June 2025, immediately following the India-Pakistan confrontation, ideaForge Technology Limited secured an emergency order for military-grade mini unmanned aerial vehicles. The order was worth $16 million, and the drones were to be delivered within a year. Subsequently, India’s military placed another emergency order valued at around $11.3 million for Zolt tactical drones and Vertical Takeoff Long-Range (VTOL) SWITCH 2 drones. In addition to this, the Indian government is also preparing to place a military drone order worth over $2 billion with domestic manufacturers including major firms like Adani Group, Tata Advanced Systems, and Larsen & Toubro, and startups including ideaForge and Asteria Aerospace, marking this its largest-ever unmanned systems procurement.

The surge in drone production has also been accompanied by a surge in drone testing. In September 2025, Rajesh Kumar Singh, India’s defense secretary, said that while a select few drone systems had cleared government trials to secure contracts from the armed forces, numerous other drones developed by private companies had been undergoing rigorous testing since Operation Sindoor. He emphasized that post-operation evaluations focused on reliability in contested environments, integration with legacy systems, and resistance to electronic warfare. 

India’s drone production seems to be following a hybrid model whereby it seeks to combine Israel’s mature commercial-feedback loop with Ukraine’s wartime innovation and scalability. Israel fields a considerably mature and well-established drone production infrastructure, characterized by deep integration between ecosystems. Israeli defense producers (both state-owned and private producers) such as the Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, Israel........

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