The Army’s Drone Roadmap: A Second Chance to Make India’s Defence Industry Real

I read the BusinessLine piece on the Army’s drone roadmap with a mix of relief and urgency: relief because the armed forces are finally signalling a predictable, structured demand for unmanned systems; urgency because this is a narrow window in which India can turn years of talk into a manufacturing reality for defence drones and their entire supply chain Army’s drone roadmap to unlock business opportunities for domestic industry.

This is personal for me. For almost a decade I’ve been arguing — publicly and in meetings with policy-makers and industry — that India must convert demand signals into domestic manufacturing, jobs and exports. I laid out those ideas in my 2016 essay defending FDI in defence and again in 2025 when I advocated an import-substitution, Make-in-India playbook built around detailed project reports and graduate engineer training programs In defense of FDI in Defense · Retaliate without Escalating — Import Substitution as Smart Retaliation. Seeing a formal roadmap from the Army feels like validation — and it deepens my sense of urgency.

Why a roadmap matters

A defence customer that publishes clear capability requirements, timelines and procurement intent does three things:

• It converts speculative interest into bankable demand for industry.
• It shortens lead times by enabling suppliers to invest in tooling, skills and factories.
• It cascades demand to tier-2 and tier-3 suppliers — the MSMEs that create most jobs.

Global procurement portals also show there is growing demand for UAVs beyond armies: multilateral and development agencies are buying unmanned platforms too (for surveillance, disaster response and scientific missions). For instance, UN procurement notices list UAV acquisitions and related kit, signalling export markets and international buyers who will need reliable suppliers UNDP Procurement Notices (search results for UAV/UAV-related items).

The industrial opportunities the roadmap opens

This is not just about assembling airframes. A drone ecosystem implies dozens of value chains and revenue lines:

• Airframe design and composite manufacturing (lightweight structures, rapid prototyping)
• Sensors: EO/IR cameras, SAR, LIDAR integration
• Avionics, navigation and secure datalinks
• Onboard compute, edge AI and swarm management software
• Batteries, power management and propulsion systems
• Ground control stations, secure cloud/edge ops and C2 integration
• Testing, certification, calibration ranges and EMI/EMC labs
• Maintenance, repair & overhaul (MRO) and logistics chains — spares, payload integration
• Counter-UAS (detection and mitigation) and cyber-hardening
• Training services: simulators, pilot/technician training
• Export packaging and certification for international sales

Each of these categories can spawn hundreds of MSMEs and thousands of skilled jobs if the demand signal is used wisely.

Turning the roadmap into a resilient, competitive ecosystem

A few practical ingredients are essential if we want more than low-value assembly:

• Predictable demand signals: multi-year purchase plans and clear capability milestones so industry can invest in capital and skills.
• Progressive indigenisation targets: not mere “assembly in India”, but staged technology transfer and local value addition percentages tied to contract milestones.
• Cluster approach: establish testing ranges, EMI/EMC labs and composite hubs near defence corridors to create supplier ecosystems.
• Finance and incentives: long-tenor loans, capital subsidy for tooling, tax incentives for defence R&D, and credit risk sharing for MSMEs working on strategic suppliers.
• Skill pipelines: scale the Graduate Engineer Training (GET) model I’ve advocated — employers certify training, government tax incentives for training, and bankable DPRs for startups and MSMEs Retaliate without Escalating — Import Substitution as Smart Retaliation.
• R&D partnerships and IP clarity: encourage joint R&D with foreign firms under contracts that protect Indian IP creation and prevent mere transfer of low-skill assembly work.
• Procurement reform: faster clearances, single-window approvals for defence MSMEs, and a buying policy that privileges proven indigenous systems where they meet capability thresholds.

Avoid the trap of hollow assembly

We must be candid: inviting global OEMs to set up in India will not automatically create high-value capability. Without contractual bindings on local R&D, test labs, and component manufacturing, we risk becoming a low-cost final assembly location. The roadmap must be accompanied by enforceable milestones for real technology absorption and local supplier development.

Exports and dual-use upside

One of the points I made before — and that the current landscape reinforces — is that cheaper, well-engineered indigenous products will find export markets if we design them for cost-competitiveness and certification from the start. The same drone platforms used for surveillance can be adapted for policing, forestry, disaster response and scientific use. That multiplies the addressable market and strengthens export viability UNDP Procurement Notices (examples of UAV procurement).

Why this confirms an idea I argued earlier

The core idea I’ve been pushing for years is simple: give industry a reliable demand signal, pair it with incentives for local value-add and skills-building, and India will produce competitive defence equipment — not just for itself, but for export. The Army’s roadmap is precisely such a demand signal. It brings into sharp focus something I wrote about in 2016 and again in 2025: the moment to convert policy talk into factory floors and training halls is when the customer publishes its needs In defense of FDI in Defense · Retaliate without Escalating — Import Substitution as Smart Retaliation.

That earlier thinking — about FDI, Make in India, DPRs and a GET training pipeline — was not academic. Today’s roadmap validates the premise: policy plus demand equals industry. I feel a quiet satisfaction in seeing these threads come together. But satisfaction is not the same as complacency; the roadmap is a second chance. We must act.

A final, personal note

Defence capability is inherently strategic, but it is also one of the most tangible ways to create skilled manufacturing jobs and strengthen national autonomy. The Army’s drone roadmap is an invitation to industry, to entrepreneurs and to policy makers: build for the long-term, insist on real local value-add, and create the supply chains that will sustain India’s strategic and economic security for decades.

If we seize this moment, the next decade will not be remembered as another missed opportunity, but as the time India finally built an indigenous, globally competitive drone and unmanned-systems industry.

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Regards,
Hemen Parekh