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हिन्दी — Read in HindiMilitary platforms, drones and new weapons
The platforms that carry military power: aircraft and their engines, ships and submarines, tanks and artillery, drones and counter drone systems, and directed energy and electronic warfare. Prelims has asked about fifth generation fighters, stealth and drone swarms.
Foundation note: Stealth: radar cross section and how to shrink it
UPSC has asked
- Prelims 2025: unmanned aerial vehicles, their landing, hovering and power
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AI, drones and autonomy in warfare
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LeadDrones, autonomy and the cost of defenceJuly 2026
Why in news
Reports in July 2026 on the conflict between the United States and Iran showed that about nine in ten attack drones were shot down, yet each interceptor cost far more than the drone it destroyed. In the same month the Defence Acquisition Council cleared drone and counter drone systems for the Indian forces.
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.
- 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 that joining.
- During Operation Sindoor, Pakistan launched 300 to 400 drones at 36 Indian locations in one night.
What has changed in warfare
- Sensor fusion: data from satellites, drones and radar is merged into one picture, and targets are passed to weapons within minutes.
- Mass: cheap drones are used in hundreds, to exhaust a defence.
- Autonomy: a system that narrows thousands of possibilities to a short ranked list has shaped the decision, even when a human approves it.
The cost problem
- A drone costs tens of thousands of dollars; an interceptor missile about four million.
- A defender who shoots down nearly every drone can still lose the exchange on cost.
- The answer is cheap ways to stop drones: jamming, interceptor drones and directed energy weapons such as lasers.
India's response
- Akashteer is India's indigenous automated air defence control and reporting system.
- The Defence Acquisition Council gave Acceptance of Necessity in July 2026 to the Akash Tarang electronic warfare system against drones, a Very Short Range Air Defence System and jet powered kamikaze drones.
- It also cleared a High Altitude Pseudo Satellite, a solar powered aircraft that loiters in the stratosphere and does a satellite's work at lower cost.
The ethical question
- If a machine selects targets, who is accountable for a wrong strike?
- International humanitarian law requires distinction between combatants and civilians, which an algorithm may not make reliably.
- There is no treaty on lethal autonomous weapons; talks continue at the United Nations.
The way forward
- Build cheap drones in large numbers and cheap ways to stop them, and not only costly platforms.
- Invest in software and data integration across the three services.
- Keep meaningful human control over the decision to use force.
- Take part in framing international rules on autonomous weapons.
Prelims facts
- Akashteer is an air defence control and reporting system; Akash Tarang is an electronic warfare system against drones.
- The Defence Acquisition Council is chaired by the Defence Minister.
- Acceptance of Necessity is an in principle approval of the need, given before tenders, and is not a contract.
- A High Altitude Pseudo Satellite flies in the stratosphere.
The kill chain runs find, fix, track, target, engage and assess. Its weak point was always the human capacity to fuse imagery, signals and other intelligence fast enough, which is the gap artificial intelligence now fills. A one way attack drone flies to its target and destroys itself. Akashteer is India's indigenous automated air defence control and reporting system. In March 2026 the Pentagon made Palantir's Maven system a core command and control program of record, fusing data from satellites, drones, radar and sensors; a system that narrows thousands of possibilities to a ranked shortlist has shaped the decision even when a human approves it.
Layered targeting
Sensors
Satellites, drones and radar gather data: find, fix and track
Data fusion
The feeds are merged into one picture
Specialised models
Computer vision, graph analytics, anomaly detection and language models narrow the choices: target
Where it breaks: Stale imagery, faulty geolocation or bad translation can produce a wrong but confident answer.
Humans
Analysts, lawyers and commanders decide: engage and assess
What changed
7 Jul 2026LeadDrones, autonomy and the cost of defence
UPSC has asked
- Prelims 2026: drone swarms and how they are countered