14 September, 2026, Bengaluru: IIM Bangalore hosted Shaurya 2026, a national seminar on the Indian Military-Industrial Complex, conceived and organized by Batch 5 of the Business Management Programme for Defence Officers (BMPDO), an Executive Education Programme for officers of the Indian Armed Forces, and sponsored by the Kshipra Foundation, on 12th September. By bringing together the Armed Forces, defence industry, technology leaders, investors and policymakers, the seminar examined the many layers of India’s defence-industrial transition, from evolving operational requirements and emerging technologies to manufacturing, MRO, supply chains, talent and the capital required to take indigenous capabilities from development to scale.
Delivering the welcome address, Prof. U Dinesh Kumar, Director-in-charge, IIM Bangalore, pointed to the ongoing conflicts around the world as proof that no country can now consider itself invulnerable, and that militaries must prepare for forms of warfare that cannot yet be fully anticipated. Turning to artificial intelligence, he cautioned delegates against overstating its reliability, noting that AI models are probabilistic systems that are only as good as the data behind them. “Data is going to become the new electricity”, he said, urging every organization, including the armed forces, to treat rigorous, high-quality data collection as a strategic priority rather than an afterthought.
Maj Gen Bhutani, introducing Shaurya 2026 on behalf of the organizing BMPDO-05 batch, described the seminar as a conversation between those who understand the battlefield and those who build for it. Drawing lessons from recent conflicts, including the Armenia-Azerbaijan war, the Russia-Ukraine war and the India-Pakistan conflict, he pointed to the growing centrality of technology, the criticality of domestic production, and the need to scale production rapidly once a capability is proven. “The transition from being primarily a consumer or buyer of defence equipment to becoming a creator and partner in a global defence ecosystem is a very complex journey”, he said.
Mr. Kamesh Raghavendra of the Kshipra Foundation told the delegates that India stands at an inflection point comparable to the software services boom of the 1990s, pointing to the shift toward lower-cost, high-volume systems, the growing unreliability of satellite-dependent designs, and the mismatch between the pace of technology and defence procurement cycles. “This is India’s moment”, he said.
Keynote address: The changing character of conflict
Delivering the keynote address on the topic, ‘Changing global battlefield dynamics and the capability roadmap for India’, Air Marshal Awadhesh Kumar Bharti, SYSM, AVSM, VM (Retd.), former Deputy Chief of the Air Staff, traced the role of disruptive technology in warfare through history, from the English longbow to the first Battle of Panipat, and argued that the character of conflict today is being shaped by the same forces: war, he said, is being normalized as smaller powers are incentivized by technology to go kinetic, and the boundary between peace and conflict is becoming increasingly ambiguous, with wars beginning through cyber degradation and cognitive operations rather than a first shot fired.
He outlined a capability roadmap for India built around persistent, real-time intelligence, including investment in low-earth-orbit satellite constellations; long-range precision-strike capability supported by seeker and quantum-navigation technologies; and manned-unmanned teaming, cautioning that unmanned systems alone “can avoid a defeat but cannot give you victory.” On artificial intelligence, he called for India to invest in its use for operations, maintenance and sustenance while building in ethics and regulation from the outset, rather than confronting its risks only after the technology has matured.
The industrial foundations of strategic autonomy
The first panel of the day on ‘How Technology Is Redefining the Battlefield and Doctrine of War?’ moderated by Rear Admiral Deepak Bansal (Retd.), examined how technology is redefining the battlefield and the doctrine of war.
Shri Jayant D. Patil, President of the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE), Member of the Board of IN-SPACe, and former Whole-Time Director for Defence & Smart Technologies at Larsen & Toubro, joined virtually to speak on ‘Imperatives of Atmanirbhar as a Doctrine of War and Defence Exports’. Tracing India’s economic trajectory from a 27-billion-dollar GDP at independence toward a 5-trillion-dollar economy today, he argued that this growth gives Indian industry the means to pursue genuine self-reliance, pointing to the nuclear, space and strategic defence sectors as areas where India has achieved it and arguing the same chip-to-system control needs to be replicated more widely. “Unless we have complete control right from the basic hardware… we will not be assured of a no-denial regime”, he said, warning that systems dependent on foreign components can be remotely disabled in a crisis. He noted that India’s defence exports have grown roughly 1.5 times in the aftermath of Operation Sindoor, and pointed to a defence order pipeline of roughly ₹7.5-8 lakh crore and a ₹1 lakh crore government R&D corpus as signs of momentum that industry must now match with genuinely indigenous hardware and software.
Dr. Atul Dinkar Rane, former Director General of BrahMos Aerospace, spoke on ‘Beyond BrahMos: Stand-Off and Long-Range Strike, and the Indian Supply Chain That Must Sustain It’. He attributed BrahMos’s success to building a unique product rather than replicating an existing missile category, committing to on-time delivery, and continuously upgrading range and capability, noting that the programme was structured as a joint venture with roughly two dozen private industry partners, including L&T, involved from its first year. On the future of stand-off weapons, he described a supersonic cruise missile in the 2,000-2,500 km range as a “sweet spot” given India’s current road, bridge and tunnel infrastructure, and cautioned against treating hypersonics, a term he said is as hyped as artificial intelligence, as an immediate goal. Since most nations besides Russia have yet to master the ramjet propulsion that precedes true hypersonic cruise systems, he recommended progressing incrementally, starting with an 800 km hypersonic capability rather than attempting 2,500-3,000 km at the outset, while pursuing international collaboration on design but insisting on full self-sufficiency at the production stage.
Dr L. Venkatakrishnan, Chief Scientist at CSIR-National Aerospace Laboratories (CSIR-NAL), Bengaluru, closed the panel with an address on ‘High-Altitude Pseudo-Satellites: Building an Indian HAPS Industrial Base for Persistent Surveillance’. He described HAPS as solar-powered, unmanned aircraft capable of remaining airborne for weeks or months to provide persistent surveillance that neither satellites nor conventional aircraft can sustain alone. Citing HAPS programmes underway in the UK, Germany, South Korea, the US and Japan, he said India is not far behind on the underlying platform technology: CSIR-NAL’s own programme, begun in 2022, has logged more than 14 hours of subscale flight, with a full-scale aircraft, a 30-metre wingspan, a 150 kg vehicle carrying a 10 kg payload with a 90-day endurance target, expected to fly by the end of this year. He flagged three choke points for industry to address: miniaturized, indigenous sensor payloads, since satellite-grade payloads cannot simply be scaled down to HAPS weight constraints; space-grade carbon fibre, currently sourced from a single global supplier; and continued progress in battery technology. “The armed forces have no use for this vehicle other than a toy unless you have the proper payloads on it”, he said, calling for a national programme to develop the platform and its payloads together.
The next test of self-reliance: Sustain, upgrade, export
The second panel titled, ‘Building the Industrial Base: Manufacturing, MRO and the Export Opportunity ’ examined the next frontier of India’s defence-industrial ambitions, which encompass not only manufacturing platforms, but also the building of capability to maintain, upgrade, sustain and ultimately export them.
Rear Admiral Deepak Bansal (Retd.) underlined the strategic significance of MRO, particularly as India seeks to establish itself as a credible defence exporter. Manufacturing, he stated, is only the beginning, and that a serious export proposition must be backed by dependable lifecycle support. With ageing platforms facing obsolescence and newer foreign-origin systems carrying continuing dependencies for spares, diagnostics, upgrades and support, he posed a broader test of indigenization: “Can we maintain it, repair it, upgrade it, and sustain it in India?” The opportunity, he noted, lies in bringing the capabilities of military establishments, DPSUs, private industry, MSMEs, startups and academia into a more integrated ecosystem.
Air Vice Marshal Ashutosh Shrivastava, VSM, ACAS (Maintenance Planning), extended this argument from an IAF perspective, and framed sustainment as an element of operational autonomy rather than a downstream service. “The next big opportunity for us is not ‘Make in India’ but maintain in India and eventually sustain the world from India”, he said. For military aviation, he argued that logistical dependence can often, and in unprecedented ways, translate into operational vulnerability. “If we cannot maintain an aircraft, we actually do not possess that aircraft”. He called for India to develop an export-oriented MRO mindset, with the ambition of exporting not only platforms and systems, but also maintenance, repair, upgrade and sustainment capabilities.
Shri Arun Ramachandani, President, Society of Indian Defence Manufacturers (SIDM), Senior Vice President & Head – L&T Precision Engineering & Systems, Larsen & Toubro Ltd., brought an industry perspective on the distinction between capacity and capability by emphasizing that the latter demands patient and risk capital, sustained orders and continuous R&D. With India moving from drones and autonomous systems to indigenous artillery, air defence and radar technologies, he observed that the country is increasingly “moving from a buyer to a builder of equipment”. He, however, cautioned members of the audience, “being in defence is a game of patience” – and sustaining that industrial base will require greater consistency in funding, acquisition and long-term technology development.
Shri Mani Padagalingam, Executive Director, Aerospace India Association (AIA), Former Director (Quality) UTC Aerospace (now Collins Aerospace), Former Chief Manager – Design, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), highlighted ‘speed’ and ‘quality’ as critical determinants of India’s ability to compete globally. Drawing on his experience across HAL, Collins Aerospace and the Aerospace Industries Association, he called for “aero-excellence”, which he said was common quality standards and systems, to become embedded in India’s industrial culture. He also argued for a shift from “skill development” to building deeper competence, and from “build to print” to “build to spec”, signaling the need for greater design ownership and engineering depth within Indian industry.
Drawing the discussion together, Rear Admiral Deepak Bansal identified four practical priorities: more effective deployment of technically qualified veterans; a dynamically updated national defence technology capability registry; a live vendor and supplier dashboard; and a similar capability-mapping mechanism for academia. The larger architecture, he suggested, should connect the entire chain: “Problem to expert, expert to laboratory, laboratory to industry, industry to qualification, qualification to production, production to MRO and then to export”.
Roadmap from operational need to indigenous capability
The discussions then turned to a critical interface between operational requirements and industrial capability, with Brig Vikas Sharma, the moderator, framing the central question: how can India induct the right equipment, at the right pace, in a technology environment where the character of warfare is changing rapidly? He identified four defining features of the current technological cycle: democratization of technology, unprecedented speed of development, the expansion of warfare into the cognitive domain, and the rise of artificial intelligence.
Air Vice Marshal Vikas Dwivedi, VSM (Retd.), Former Assistant Chief of Air Staff (Engineering – Transport & Helicopters), Indian Air Force, steered discussions sharply to the demands of high-altitude operations, particularly for manned and unmanned aerial platforms. Drawing on the experience of Kargil, he contrasted ‘innovation’ with ‘improvisation’ – from the direct use of Bofors and laser-guided bombs to improvised navigation in the absence of GPS. India’s capabilities have since transformed across firepower, mobility and surveillance, he noted. Yet a fundamental gap remains: “Even after 27 years, we still can’t fly ourselves up there by ourselves”. The continued reliance on Cheetah/Cheetal helicopters for operations at altitudes approaching 6,000 metres, along with imported critical components, he said, illustrates the gap between operational necessity and indigenous sustainment.
He outlined a demanding but clearly defined opportunity for industry: a high-altitude rotorcraft in the 800-1,000 kg class, capable of 400+ km range, with substantially greater range with auxiliary fuel, low disc loading and reduced downwash for confined helipads, GPS-denied-capable navigation and encrypted beyond-line-of-sight (BLOS) capability.
Vice Admiral S. R. Sarma, PVSM, AVSM, VSM (Retd.), Former Chief of Materiel, Indian Navy, examined the role of MSMEs in rejuvenating India’s defence-manufacturing ecosystem. “We as a country achieved far too little in in-house defence production given the huge potential of the world order”, he observed, calling for an industry that is independent, quality-conscious and capable of influencing strategic decisions.
He spoke of a shift away from a legacy ecosystem characterized by build-to-print manufacturing, technology-transfer constraints, procedural delays and government dependence towards one anchored in systems engineering, entrepreneurship, quality and accreditation, stronger financial management and indigenous R&D. Systems engineers, he stressed, are particularly critical to this transition, as they bring together disciplines ranging from engineering and supply chains to integration, testing and user requirements – a capability that takes time to develop and must therefore be deliberately nurtured.
From the perspective of battlefield electronics, Shri Anoop Kumar Rai, Director (Marketing), Bharat Electronics Limited, highlighted the accelerating transition from conventional communications to connected, intelligent and increasingly AI-enabled systems. Imported systems cannot simply be transplanted into Indian operational environments, he noted. They require close engagement between industry and domain experts to adapt technology to specific requirements. The long-term trajectory he later suggested is towards increasingly integrated systems in which technology expands the possibilities available while decision-making remains firmly human-led.
Shri Ezhilan Nanmaran, Head of Product and Strategic Partnerships, ideaForge Technology Ltd., focused on UAVs and autonomous aerial platforms, identifying three principal defence applications: ISTAR (Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance), Combat and Logistics. While India has developed considerable expertise in smaller surveillance drones, high-altitude operations present a unique set of technological challenges. He pointed to advances in battery technology and iterative platform development but also took cognizance of a strategic imperative of developing solutions for India’s specific operating environments. “We have to build it ourselves”, he said. “That’s the only option we have”.
There may be no such thing as ‘Patient Capital’
The final panel, moderated by Kamesh Raghavendra, Kshipra Foundation, turned to the capital required to take India’s defence start-ups and MSMEs from promising technology to scaled businesses and thoroughly examined this continuum from grants and early-stage investment to growth capital and public markets.
Shri Vijay Jacob, General Partner, Speciale Invest, captured the challenge of deep-tech investing with a pointed observation: “There is no such thing as patient capital. Just less-impatient capital”. Deep-tech companies take time to mature, he noted, but investors must ultimately generate returns and recycle capital. The proposition, therefore, is not infinite patience but an informed sense of willingness to back difficult problems for long enough to solve them. For defence technology in particular, he said that an export market must enter the equation early on: India may be the first and most demanding customer, but dependence on a single customer will always remain a fundamental risk.
Shri Vikram Vaidyanathan, Managing Director, Z47 (formerly Matrix Partners India), next argued that the defence-tech market must be assessed not only through conventional measures of Total Addressable Market (TAM), but also through whether the conditions for market formation are coming together. These include a strong talent base; customers experiencing major pain points and willing to adopt and pay for indigenous solutions; commercial viability; and the potential for companies to scale beyond India. He also pointed to the growing role of Indian permanent capital, suggesting that as domestic investors begin to value and finance problems specific to India, technologies considered “unfundable” by global markets could become viable investment propositions.
Meanwhile, from the point of view of performance capital, Shri Vinay Singh, Co-Founder & Partner, Fireside Ventures, outlined two key entry points: companies with demonstrable technology and early market validation, and those that have moved beyond product validation and require capital for things such as working capital, procurement, hiring and commercial scale-up. The underlying investment question he said is whether the company has moved sufficiently far along the development curve for capital to translate into a clearly defined business outcome.
Completing this capital continuum, Shri Krishnan N. Iyer, Senior Vice President – Product, Relationships & Business Development, National Stock Exchange of India Ltd., highlighted the role of public markets in financing the next stage of growth. Defence MSMEs, he noted, typically require seed capital for prototyping, private equity or venture capital for testing and commercialization, followed by substantial working capital for serial production – at which point public markets can become an important source of scale.
He also stressed the importance of diversification. “Relying on one customer is a difficult proposition”, stating that a strong export proposition or dual-use application can both expand the addressable market and give public investors greater confidence by reducing dependence on a single defence customer.
Bringing the ecosystem together
Group Captain Sunil, delivering the vote of thanks, returned to the central thought behind Shaurya: that building a resilient defence ecosystem requires bringing together all those who contribute to it – the Armed Forces, industry, technology, academia, investors and policymakers. The one-day seminar closed by recognizing the team that brought the forum together. Vice Admiral S. R. Sarma, PVSM, AVSM, VSM (Retd.), awarded medallions to the Shaurya team members.