Manohar Bhat is a Research Analyst and Associate Consultant at Rajneethi, working at the intersection of geopolitics, technology, strategy, and public policy.
In modern warfare, drones have become indispensable tools for surveillance, strikes, and disruption, making it essential for India to build a robust, Atmanirbhar (self-reliant) Counter-Unmanned Aerial System (CUAS). CUAS integrates radar, radio-frequency sensors, cameras, and jamming tools to detect, track, identify, and neutralise drone threats, and India urgently needs a strong, indigenous CUAS system to safeguard its security and strategic interests.
Recent conflicts underline this need. During Operation Sindoor on 7 May 2025, India conducted precision military action targeting terror camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in retaliation for the Pahalgam terror attack. Pakistan’s response leaned heavily on drones and loitering munitions launched against Indian military installations, showing how central unmanned systems have become to an adversary’s war-fighting doctrine, and why India’s own defences must keep pace.
A robust CUAS will significantly enhance the Indian Air Force’s readiness against drone-specific threats, functioning as one critical layer within a broader, multi-tiered air defence architecture. Integrated with radar networks, air defence systems, cyber capabilities, and command-and-control frameworks, CUAS strengthens deterrence against drone-based attacks without being viewed as a standalone safeguard.
What Constitutes a CUAS?
The threats radiating from Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) are manifold, and it is precisely these threats that have propelled the development of CUAS technologies. CUAS involves a network of tools working together to spot and stop dangerous UAS before they cause harm, usually deployed near sensitive sites such as airports, military bases, government buildings, and energy plants.
At its core, a CUAS functions through four integrated stages: detecting a drone using radars, cameras, radio sensors, or acoustic tools; identifying the drone and assessing the threat; tracking its trajectory; and finally responding through soft-kill measures such as jamming, GPS spoofing, or cyber takeover, and hard-kill options including physical interception or kinetic destruction.
At the detection stage, radars track small drones at long range while radio sensors listen for the signals they use to communicate, and cameras and acoustic sensors confirm what is flying. Identification then distinguishes a drone from birds or other aircraft, often using AI (Artificial Intelligence) to “fingerprint” drones by their unique signals. Tracking follows the drone’s location continuously and predicts its path, and when it is time to respond, jamming, GPS spoofing, or, in extreme cases, nets, lasers, and specialised guns can neutralise it.
All of this is coordinated through a central Command and Control system, and CUAS platforms can be fixed, vehicle-mounted, or man-portable. As the technology matures, AI-driven prediction, faster networks, and counter-swarm capabilities are making CUAS more efficient and affordable, a must-have as drone threats grow every day.
Drones Reshaping Global Battlefields: Lessons from Abroad
Drones are no longer supplementary tools; they have become central to intelligence gathering, targeting, and force multiplication, particularly for states or groups lacking conventional military strength. During the 2020 Armenia–Azerbaijan war, Azerbaijan’s extensive drone arsenal, including the Bayraktar TB2, Harop, and Hermes series, systematically destroyed Armenian air defences, artillery, and armoured formations, denying Armenian forces the ability to regroup and granting Azerbaijan air dominance without manned aircraft. Analysts assess that Azerbaijan’s decisive victory in the 44-day war owed much to this persistent surveillance-strike cycle, which compressed decision-making timelines and proved drones can be genuine game-changers in modern warfare.
The Russia–Ukraine war has similarly reshaped battlefield dynamics, making the battlespace transparent and compressing the sensor-to-shooter loop. Ukraine has fielded everything from micro-UAVs like the Black Hornet to armed Bayraktar TB2s and low-cost FPV drones – cheap, first-person-view quadcopters retrofitted with explosives, for real-time reconnaissance and precision strikes. Russia has countered with jamming and spoofing, pushing Ukraine to develop jamming-resistant, AI-powered autonomous drones, while Russia itself has deployed armed UAVs such as Orion and Sirius alongside Iranian-origin Shahed-136 loitering munitions, rebranded as “Geran-2.” Both sides continually innovate, lowering the cost of precision strikes and eliminating safe rear zones.
During the War between Iran and US Iran’s drone programme demonstrated how technological self-reliance, indigenous innovation, and continuous advancements in cyber and electronic warfare can offset conventional military disadvantages. By developing low-cost, mass-producible drones and exploiting gaps in advanced air defence systems, Iran used unmanned systems as a strategic force multiplier, enabling persistent operations against technologically superior adversaries.
Iran’s Shahed-136 itself emerged as one of the defining weapons of contemporary drone warfare. First supplied to Russia for use against Ukraine from 2022 onward, the low-cost loitering munition, built largely from foam and plywood at an estimated cost of $20,000–$50,000 per unit, has demonstrated that mass-produced, expendable drones can saturate and exhaust even sophisticated air-defence networks. Iran has since used Shahed-136s directly against Israel and, from February 2026, against U.S. and allied targets in the Gulf, firing thousands of drones to wear down interceptor stockpiles through sheer volume. Its proliferation shows why layered, cost-effective CUAS capability, rather than reliance on expensive interceptors alone, is now indispensable against drone-saturation tactics.
India’s Defence Preparedness Turning Critical
Many analysts describe China as a world leader in drones. China’s deployment of the AI-enabled WZ-7 high-altitude reconnaissance drone from Shigatse air base in Tibet marks a qualitative expansion of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) capabilities along the India–China frontier, enhancing China’s Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) architecture while supporting electronic warfare and precision targeting. Its value lies less in strike power than in information dominance, continuous surveillance and data processing, that can shape the battlespace. China’s push for electromagnetic-spectrum dominance further optimises its HALE (High-Altitude Long Endurance) and MALE (Medium-Altitude Long Endurance) UAV fleets to degrade adversary communications, radar networks, and command-and-control systems, with such platforms also enabling Electronic Intelligence (ELINT) and radar reconnaissance central to the Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) / Destruction of Enemy Air Defenses (DEAD) doctrines against Indian air defences.
Pakistan, meanwhile, has rapidly operationalised a diversified UAV ecosystem combining Turkish, Chinese, and indigenous platforms, including the Bayraktar TB2, CH-4, Songar, Shahpar-II, and YiHA-III, alongside loitering munitions, with reports of 400–500 drones deployed in a single operation, underscoring its growing capacity for swarm-based, saturation tactics. UAVs are now embedded in Pakistan’s operational doctrine for ISR, Signal Intelligence (SIGINT), electronic interference, and precision strikes, a capability scaled rapidly through local assembly, technology transfer, and strategic alignment with China and Turkey.
Operation Sindoor: India’s Integrated CUAS Response and the Road Ahead
India has witnessed a sporadic rise in drone activity within the country over the past decade, with growing use of drones and small UAVs for military and civilian purposes, alongside consistent efforts to build indigenous counter-drone systems. The Indian Air Force (IAF), with over two decades of experience operating UAS, has become one of the largest users and protectors of Indian airspace. The 2021 drone attack on the Jammu Air Force station exposed the vulnerability posed by small, commercially available drones, accelerating the induction of CUAS into the IAF.
During Operation Sindoor, this build-up was tested directly. India’s integrated counter-UAS and air-defence network proved decisive in neutralising a massive Pakistani aerial offensive of 300–400 drones, loitering munitions, rockets, and missiles targeting airbases from the Himalayas to Gujarat, many of them Kamikaze UAVs aimed at radars and air-defence assets, with night-time swarms seeking to overwhelm defences. At the heart of the response was networked command and control: The IAF’s Integrated Air Command and Control System (IACCS) and the Army’s Akashteer system fused radar and sensor data into a single air picture, automatically detecting, classifying, and assigning weapons to each threat. This was complemented by hard-kill systems such as Akash, Medium Range Surface-to-Air Missile (MRSAM), SPYDER, and S-400, alongside soft-kill measures including indigenous jammers, Radio Frequency (RF) disruptors, GPS spoofing, and electronic warfare rifles. The layered defences and automated Command and Control (C2) ensured no hostile UAV or missile breached Indian airspace.
India’s indigenous solutions are the cornerstone of this strategy. DRDO’s Drone Detect, Deter and Destroy (D4) system, conceptualised between 2018 and 2019 to counter “low, slow, and small” aerial targets, has moved from field trials to active operational and mass-induction stage across all three armed services, and is being upgraded to Mk-1A and Mk-2 variants with 10–30 kW lasers offering a 2–5 km hard-kill range. The project is led by the Electronics and Radar Development Establishment (LRDE) in Bengaluru, which handles the core radar technology, in partnership with DRDO’s DLRL Hyderabad (RF/GNSS jamming), CHESS Hyderabad (laser-directed energy weapons), and IRDE Dehradun (electro-optical sensors). Its soft-kill layer uses RF and GNSS jamming and GPS spoofing, escalating where needed to CHESS’s high-energy lasers for precision hard-kill. Available in vehicle-mounted and static, 360-degree-coverage configurations, D4 is manufactured domestically by Bharat Electronics Ltd under the ‘Make in India’ initiative and has been showcased to international defence forces.
Operation Sindoor offered India’s air-defence community several critical lessons, widely described as the subcontinent’s first true “drone war.” Enhanced night operations using thermal imaging, night vision, and integrated CUAS mitigated vulnerabilities during nocturnal attacks; technological integration proved a force multiplier even where numbers were limited; and the layered defence strategy of legacy weapons, missiles, and CUAS proved effective, though it also revealed the need for fuller CUAS integration against swarm and asymmetric threats. Indigenous systems such as IACCS and Akashteer demonstrated battle-readiness, but also underscored the need for larger-scale, indigenous UAS capable of precision strikes and strategic standoff operations, with automated C2 central to matching reaction times to the speed of drone swarms.
Strategically, defence commentators have called for India to adopt a holistic drone-warfare doctrine, a tri-service integrated command for strategic drones at the macro level, dedicated integrated organisations at the theatre level, and specialised drone units with kinetic and non-kinetic CUAS capabilities embedded within an Integrated Air Defence Command at the tactical level. India’s Former Chief of Defence Staff has similarly stressed that reliance on imported niche technologies undermines long-term readiness, limits scalability, and creates vulnerabilities in sustained operations, and that indigenously developed CUAS systems tailored to India’s terrain and missions are indispensable for safeguarding secrets and reducing costs. He has urged investment in R&D for next-generation unmanned systems, modular architectures, test beds for startups and DRDO, stealth UAVs, Manned-Unmanned Teaming, and swarm drones, drone carriers, AI integration, and directed-energy weapons.
Why India Must Invest Heavily in Indigenous CUAS Now
The age of drone warfare is no longer a distant possibility; it is the reality reshaping global conflicts, from Armenia and Azerbaijan, to the prolonged Russia–Ukraine war, to Iran’s Shahed-driven campaigns in the Gulf, and now to India’s own western front during Operation Sindoor. For India, the stakes are high: with China and Pakistan constantly upgrading their drone arsenals, the threat is real and multidimensional. Operation Sindoor demonstrated both how hundreds of coordinated drones can threaten to overwhelm defences and how India’s indigenous systems can neutralise every attack, safeguarding military assets and civilian lives alike.
Yet the global drone race is being led by the United States, whose DARPA-backed innovations continue to redefine warfare, and China, whose military investment is heavily skewed toward UAV fleets and anti-drone defences. India cannot afford to lag behind. Investing in indigenous CUAS is not merely a technological choice; it is about preserving sovereignty, securing assets, and ensuring peacetime resilience. With adversaries advancing their drone capabilities and global conflicts demonstrating the lethal potential of UAVs, the urgency for indigenous defence systems such as DRDO’s D4 has never been greater. By securing its airspace and equipping its armed forces with cutting-edge technology, India can remain resilient, prepared, and strategically ahead in modern warfare.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article are personal.
