Warfare is changing faster than our procurement files can be signed.
Drones swarm now, not just fly. Electronic warfare blinds before the first shot is evenfired. Space-based eyes watch every troop movement, and cyber can shut a command post down without a single bullet. Somewhere in the middle of all this, artificial intelligence is quietly rewriting the rules.
Sun Tzu said it centuries ago “The supreme art lies in subduing the enemy without a fight.” Today, that subduing often happens in the electromagnetic spectrum, long before soldiers meet on ground.
The real question India now has to confront is: Are we building fast enough to matter, or just fast enough to announce?
Numbers Tell Half the Story
To be fair to the policy makers, the numbers do look good. Defence production touched ₹1.78 lakh crore in FY 2025-26. Exports crossed ₹38,424 crore. Private industry’s share of the pie keeps growing, year on year.
These are real gains. Nobody should dismiss them.
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But numbers on a ledger and capability in a soldier’s hands are two very different things. The Defence Acquisition Council’s July 2026 approvals nearly ₹52,000 crore, covering anti-UAV systems, electronic warfare, air defence and tank active-protection is a clear indication where the fight is heading. The intent is right. The question is whether delivery will keep pace.
Production Is Not the Finish Line
For years, we measured indigenisation by how much India manufactures. That today is the wrong yardstick.
What matters is what the Services actually receive. What they operate. What they maintain without waiting six months for a spare part from somewhere else.
If a prototype takes years to reach user trials, or a “Made in India” platform still leans on a foreign chip for its brain, the advantage stays on paper. It never reaches the trench.
This calls for a harder introspection- a new accountability contract between DRDO, the Defence PSUs, private industry and the Services. Every major programme needs its own roadmap, not a copy-paste calendar. Some questions simply cannot wait until delays pile up:
What capability do we actually need? Where does the technology stand today? Who validates it, and by when? Which components still depend on someone else’s factory? And finally, the one nobody likes answering- Who is accountable when a milestone slips, again?
None of this is about punishing honest failure. Risk is the price of innovation. The real job is separating a productive failure from an avoidable one.
What Türkiye Got Right
There is a story in Asia that India does no need to copy but needs to study- Türkiye.
Ankara built its defence transformation on one idea by linking national security needs to industry, SMEs, exports and long-term planning and let them feed each other. Its 2024–28 roadmap leans hard into disruptive technology and a stronger domestic supply chain.
Baykar is the story everyone quotes and for good reason. It grew its drone programme largely on its own resources, and exports now make up roughly nine-tenths of its revenue, with agreements across a wide arc of countries.
The lesson is not “Build an Indian Baykar.” The lesson is to build the soil in which an Indian Baykar can grow on its own namely in drones, propulsion, electronic warfare, undersea systems, space and autonomous platforms. We already see early shoots. Skyroot Aerospace is one. Indrajaal is another. That is the model – government builds the runway, private enterprise supplies the speed, and the Forces define what winning looks like.
Fixing the Architecture at the Top
The Department of Military Affairs under the Chief of Defence Staff was a good first step in higher defence management. It shouldn’t be the last one.
Space does not belong to one Service. Cyber can cripple every command at once. Cognitive warfare goes after perception itself on how people think, not just what they defend. Maritime security today stretches from the sea’s surface to seabed cables and satellite-linked awareness.
These domains do not respect old boundaries, so must our structures either. India needs dedicated ownership of Space, Cyber, Cognitive-Information Warfare and Maritime Affairs led by officers with genuine operational credibility, working alongside scientists and industry and not another layer of paperwork, but faster decisions.
Admit what isn’t working and fix it before the next war asks the question for us.
The Doctrinal Shift India Needs
The real shift is not a stricter procurement calendar. Instead, it is moving from a procurement mindset to a capability-delivery mindset.
America’s experience, Türkiye’s model and lessons from the Ukraine war all point the same way that technology development, user trials, production and battlefield feedback must overlap, not queue up one behind another.
India could build this around a simple six-step Capability Acceleration Framework:
- Is the technology mature enough to proceed.
- Can a prototype prove itself in realistic conditions?
- Can the Forces test it and push changes back quicky?
- Can industry manufacture it at scale and cost?
- Does it actually reach a unit and get used.
- And finally, can it be sustained and upgraded year after year.
Test early. Field when ready, not when perfect. Listen to the warfighter. Keep upgrading. That should be the whole doctrine.
The Boardroom Echo
Boards face a version of this same test. A strategy document is not a strategy delivered; governance, like defence, is judged by what reaches the ground, not what sits in a slide deck.
Directors who chase milestones and fix accountability early, the way a capability roadmap should tend to avoid the delays that quietly erode shareholder trust.
The Sequence That Wins
India’s genuine edge lies in combining military experience, engineering depth, digital talent, entrepreneurial energy and a market few countries can match. The pieces exist. What is often missing is the bridge connecting them.
Capability, fielded, at scale, sustained, evolved – that has to be the sequence, in that order, every time.
Atmanirbharta stops being a slogan the day it becomes a habit. And the next war, whenever and wherever it arrives, won’t ask how much we manufactured. It will ask what we could field, and how fast we adapted once the balloon goes up.
About the Author – Colonel M V Shashidhar (Retd) is an Independent Director, strategic governance commentator and leadership practitioner. He writes on geopolitics, corporate governance, sustainability and the intersection of national strategy and boardroom leadership.
Disclaimer—(The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Indian Masterminds. For feedback or queries, please write to [email protected].)
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