New Delhi: The Indian armed forces are likely to buy $2 billion worth of drones this year, in what is being characterized as the largest such order to date, Reuters reported on Wednesday, quoting an industry body representing over 550 companies.
The uptick in the demand for military drones is driven by the recent conflicts around the world, including the Russia-Ukraine and West Asian wars, which witnessed the deployment of drones in asymmetric warfare to take out costly military installations using cheap missile-firing and kamikaze unmanned aerial vehicles.
The drone buying plans are in advanced stages, with deliveries over an 18-to-24-month period, much more than the recent government orders worth at least ₹30 billion (₹3,000 crore or $313 million), a Reuters report quoting Drone Federation of India president Smit Shah said.
The previous orders were for tactical unmanned aerial vehicles. “In the next phase, tactical drone procurements in India may exceed ₹200 billion (₹20,000 crore) or more than $2 billion,” Shah was quoted as saying.
He said the new orders may go through a fast-track procurement route under the defence acquisition procedures to meet urgent operational requirements, with deliveries taking up to two years.
Global conflicts, Operation Sindoor drives drone procurements
The fast tracking of key procurements is aimed at boosting the war preparedness of the armed forces following the May 2025 short military conflict with nuclear-armed neighbour Pakistan.
The conflict, codenamed Operation Sindoor by India, was the first battle since the 1999 Kargil war with Pakistan. The four-day war witnessed a high use of unmanned aerial vehicles for the first time in the South Asian context.
Operation Sindoor localised drone-based asymmetric warfare that was previously witnessed in the 2020 Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict and replicated in both the Russia-Ukraine conflict in Europe and the Iran versus US-Israel combine in West Asia.
All these conflicts brought out the potential of low-cost unmanned aerial vehicles to take out high-value military assets, pushing the Indian armed forces to search for drone solutions to both launch offensives and defend the Indian skies with countermeasures.
India’s drone ecosystem growing faster than ever
India’s drone ecosystem is growing faster than ever, with nearly 600 companies entering the manufacturing space to meet the domestic requirements, both for civilian and military use cases. The drone payload domain, too, has many small and medium enterprises manufacturing subsystems for drone manufacturers.
Even large players in the aerospace and defence market in India, such as Tata Advanced Systems, Larsen & Toubro, and Advani Group, have entered the drone manufacturing domain, competing with drone-only companies such as ideaForge, Newspace Research, and Asteria Aerospace, which was acquired by Reliance Industries.
The counter-drone domain too has picked up pace, with several companies such as the Small and Medium Enterprise Zen Technologies bagging orders from the defence ministry and deploying their systems during Operation Sindoor.
“Drones are force multipliers on the modern battlefield,” Reuters quoted Ramesh Chandra Padhi, an executive at IG Defence, a builder of advanced unmanned aerial and short-range missile systems.
“The Indian army is following emergency or fast-track procurement to expedite the induction of drones on a very large scale,” the former senior army officer added.
In March, the defence ministry approved a procurement proposal for remotely piloted strike aircraft, among a slew of purchases cumulatively worth ₹673,000 crore, without giving a specific spending breakdown for the armed drone.