First Principles IAS · Current affairs
The monthly magazine, July 2026 · Internal Security › Platforms and missiles
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Why in news
- On 3 July 2026 the Defence Acquisition Council, chaired by the Defence Minister, gave Acceptance of Necessity to proposals worth about ₹52,000 crore, and the list reads like a drone war's shopping list: the Akash Tarang anti drone electronic warfare system, a Very Short Range Air Defence System, jet powered kamikaze drones and an active protection system for the Army; a shipborne unmanned aerial system for the Navy; and a fixed wing High Altitude Pseudo Satellite for the Air Force.
- The same month, reporting on the conflict between the United States and Iran showed that nine attack drones in ten were shot down and that each interceptor cost far more than the drone it destroyed.
- India's own night of 300 to 400 Pakistani drones during Operation Sindoor is the reason the Council bought what it bought.
- About ₹52,000 crorethe value of the Acceptances of Necessity of 3 July 2026
- 300 to 400drones Pakistan launched at 36 Indian locations in one night of Operation Sindoor, May 2025
- Tens of thousands of dollars against about four millionthe cost of an attack drone against an interceptor missile
- 350 kgthe thrust class of the first Indian expendable turbojet, delivered on 22 July, the engine of a cruise missile or a target drone
Background
- A drone, or unmanned aerial vehicle, flies without a pilot on board. A one way attack drone flies to its target and destroys itself, which is why it can be cheap.
- The kill chain is the sequence find, fix, track, target, engage and assess. Its slow point was always the human work of joining imagery, signals and other intelligence; artificial intelligence now does the joining, and passes targets to weapons within minutes.
- The Defence Acquisition Council is the Defence Ministry's highest body for capital purchases. Its Acceptance of Necessity is an in principle approval of the need, given before tenders; requests for proposals, trials and price negotiation follow before any contract.
What has changed in warfare
- Sensor fusion: data from satellites, drones and radar is merged into one picture, so that a target found by one sensor is engaged by a weapon that never saw it.
- Mass: cheap drones are used in hundreds, to exhaust a defence that has a finite number of missiles and must fire two at each target to be sure.
- Autonomy: a system that narrows thousands of possibilities to a short ranked list has shaped the decision, even when a human approves it; a stale image or a wrong geolocation produces a confident wrong answer.
The cost problem
- A defender who shoots down nearly every drone can still lose the exchange on cost, because the interceptor is a hundred times the price of the drone.
- The answer is cheap ways to stop cheap drones: electronic jamming, which cuts the drone's link, interceptor drones, and directed energy weapons such as lasers, which cost a few dollars a shot once built.
- The July approvals follow this logic. Akash Tarang jams; the Very Short Range Air Defence System is the cheap layer of a layered defence; and the kamikaze drones are India's own cheap mass.
| The cost exchange, and the cheap answers | |
|---|---|
| One attack drone | tens of thousands of dollars |
| One interceptor missile | about four million dollars |
| Drones shot down in the United States and Iran exchanges, 2026 | nine in ten, and the defender still loses on cost |
| Pakistan's drones in one night of Operation Sindoor, May 2025 | 300 to 400, at 36 locations |
| Akash Tarang | electronic warfare that jams the drone's link |
| Very Short Range Air Defence System | the cheap inner layer, with multi spectral sensing |
| Jet powered kamikaze drones | India's own cheap mass; the 350 kg expendable turbojet of 22 July is their engine |
| Directed energy (lasers, microwaves) | electricity per shot; in development |
India's response
- Akashteer is the Army's indigenous automated air defence control and reporting system, which linked radars and guns during Operation Sindoor.
- The Council's July list adds the Akash Tarang anti drone electronic warfare system, a Very Short Range Air Defence System with multi spectral sensing, jet powered kamikaze drones, a Multi Influence Ground Mine and a shipborne unmanned aerial system for the Navy, and a fixed wing High Altitude Pseudo Satellite that loiters in the stratosphere on solar power and does a satellite's reconnaissance work at lower cost.
- On 22 July the Gas Turbine Research Establishment took delivery of the first indigenous expendable turbojet of the 350 kg thrust class, built by a Hyderabad firm; it is the engine a cruise missile or a kamikaze drone burns once.
- On 23 July the Defence Research and Development Organisation flew the Kusha long range surface to air missile for the first time, the expensive layer that the cheap layers protect.
The ethical question
- If a machine selects targets, who is accountable for a wrong strike: the operator, the commander, the programmer or the State?
- International humanitarian law requires distinction between combatants and civilians and proportionality in attack, which an algorithm trained on patterns may not make reliably.
- There is no treaty on lethal autonomous weapons; the talks continue under the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons at Geneva, and India takes part.
Analysis
- Air defence is priced wrong, not failing. The lesson of the United States and Iran exchanges is that a defence can win every engagement and lose the war on cost, the oldest problem in military economics, the one that sank the battleship.
- The July approvals show the lesson has been read: nearly every item on the Defence Acquisition Council's list is either a cheap drone or a cheap way to stop one.
- What the list does not show is the software: the fusion, the data links and the targeting models that make a swarm or a defence work, which no Acceptance of Necessity buys and no public sector undertaking yet makes.
- The deeper risk hides in the kill chain. As the machine does more of the finding and sorting, the human's approval becomes a formality, and accountability for a wrong strike, which international humanitarian law places on a person, has no person to land on.
- For a Mains answer, hold the economics and the ethics together: cheap mass is the right answer to cheap mass, and the harder the forces lean on autonomy to afford it, the more meaningful human control matters.
The way forward
- Build cheap drones in large numbers and cheap ways to stop them, and not only costly platforms; the July list is a start, and the contracts should follow the Acceptances within a year.
- Invest in the software, fusion, data links and targeting models, across the three services, which is what a theatre command would use.
- Keep meaningful human control over the decision to use force, written into doctrine and rules of engagement.
- Take part in framing international rules on autonomous weapons rather than waiting for them.
Exam lens
- Prelims: the Defence Acquisition Council is chaired by the Defence Minister and gives Acceptance of Necessity, which is not a contract; Akashteer is an air defence control and reporting system, Akash Tarang an anti drone electronic warfare system; a High Altitude Pseudo Satellite flies in the stratosphere on solar power; the kill chain is find, fix, track, target, engage, assess; the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons hosts the talks on autonomous weapons.
- Mains: "In a war of cheap drones, the defender who intercepts nine in ten can still lose." Examine the cost problem of air defence and India's response to it after Operation Sindoor.
Asked before: Prelims 2026 · Mains 2023 GS3 · Prelims 2025
Show the questions
- Prelims 2026: Which of the following statements with regard to drone swarms is/are correct? 1. They use Terahertz band of frequency to communicate with the command centre. 2. Individual drones in the swarm can communicate with other drones in the swarm. 3. GPS Spoofing is a commonly used technique to counter drone swarm attack.
- Mains 2023 GS3: The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) by our adversaries across the borders to ferry arms/ammunitions, drugs, etc., is a serious threat to the internal security. Comment on the measures being taken to tackle this threat.
- Prelims 2025: With reference to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), consider the following statements : I. All types of UAVs can do vertical landing. II. All types of UAVs can do automated hovering. III. All types of UAVs can use battery only as a source of power supply. How many of the statements given above are correct?
Connects to
- Integrated theatre commands: the roadmap reaches the Defence Minister (Internal Security, July): the command structure a drone war needs.
- Micro gas turbine engines (Internal Security, July): the engine of the cheap drone.
- Project Kusha (Internal Security, July): the expensive layer of the same defence.
Sources
- PIB, 3 July 2026
- PIB, 23 July 2026
- Frontline, 7 July 2026
- Frontline, 1 July 2026
- The Indian Express, 6 July 2026
Settled facts (dates of Acts, constitutional provisions, standing definitions) are from standard references.
Filed under: Platforms and missiles · The monthly magazine, July 2026