From Idle “Drones” to India’s Flying War-Horses: Re-imagining Unmanned Aerial Systems

These new war-horses hover over wheat fields, glacier posts and coral shoals alike—proving that in the right hands even a drone that once “did nothing” can now do nearly everything.

About the Author

Karan Bir Singh Sidhu is a retired IAS officer of the Punjab cadre and former Special Chief Secretary to the Government of Punjab. A gold medallist in Electronics and Communication Engineering, he writes at the intersection of high technology, defence research, geo-strategy, and the peacetime deployment of unmanned systems. His work often explores the civilian dividends of innovations shaped by national security imperatives.

From Idle “Drones” to India’s Flying War-Horses

In The Merchant of Venice, when Shylock declares, “Drones hive not with me,” he dismisses the idle hangers-on who consume the fruits of others’ labour. At school, many of us met that line and pictured lazy bees—or indolent people—doing nothing. Today, the word drone has shed its indolence. In Indian skies it evokes purpose, precision and the thrum of propellers safeguarding the realm. The transformation from Shakespeare’s useless drones to twenty-first-century flying war-horses mirrors India’s own journey: from importer to innovator, from manpower-heavy border patrols to cost-effective, home-grown technology.

A Make-in-India Success Story

Less than a decade ago India relied almost entirely on imported unmanned systems. A deliberate policy mix—import restrictions, the liberalised Drone Rules 2021 and a production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme—has reversed that dependence. More than six hundred domestic firms now design or assemble components ranging from carbon-fibre airframes to AI-driven autopilots, feeding a market forecast to exceed four billion dollars by the decade’s end.

Home-grown Manufacturers at a Glance

Mumbai-based ideaForge builds the fixed-wing VTOL SWITCH and the NETRA quad-copter family that the Army and police forces use for high-altitude surveillance. Chennai’s Garuda Aerospace mass-produces Kisan Drones for crop-spraying and its long-endurance SURAJ platform for maritime patrol. Bengaluru’s NewSpace Research & Technologies pioneers AI-enabled swarms and the Air Force’s loyal-wingman concepts, while Tata Advanced Systems is flight-testing the ALS-50 air-launched loitering munition. DRDO and HAL jointly field the TAPAS-BH-201 MALE UAV and the upcoming Archer-NG, whereas EndureAir Systems supplies heavy-lift Skyways logistics drones that can ferry rations to Himalayan posts. Start-ups such as Asteria Aerospace, Raphe Mphibr, and Dhaksha Unmanned Systems round out the ecosystem with micro-UAVs for policing, medical delivery and industrial inspection.

Types and Capabilities

1. Medium-altitude, long-endurance (MALE) platforms like TAPAS-BH-201 loiter for twenty-four hours, carrying electro-optical, infrared and synthetic-aperture radars that relay feeds from Ladakh’s heights to Delhi’s command rooms.

2. Tactical fixed-wing VTOL drones—the SWITCH family is emblematic—take off from jeep roofs, climb thin mountain air and map thirty square kilometres per sortie.

3. Loitering munitions and swarm drones provide the Army with precision-strike options once reserved for cruise missiles.

4. Multicopter workhorses spray fertiliser, deliver vaccines, inspect powerlines and drop relief packages after floods.

5. Counter-drone systems—radio-frequency jammers and laser dazzlers—guard airbases and public events against hostile quad-copters.

Beyond the Battlefield

Civilian ministries are eager adopters. Kisan-Drone schemes subsidise agricultural spraying, reducing chemical usage and protecting farm labour from toxins. Hospitals in the North-East fly blood and corneas over mountain roads that once cost critical hours. Survey of India uses drones to digitise cadastral maps, expediting land titles and infrastructure projects.

Drones on the Frontiers

Land borders. On the Thar desert and the Punjab plains, Border Security Force units weave fixed-wing drones into an electronic fence. A single two-hour sortie covers ground that once demanded fifty jawans on foot. Along the icy Line of Actual Control, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police tests cargo drones that lift food and kerosene to 16 000-foot outposts, cutting mule convoys from four days to two hours and saving human lungs from rarefied air.

Sea frontiers. The Indian Coast Guard pairs ship-launched multicopters with longer-range MALE drones to police a two-million-square-kilometre Exclusive Economic Zone. Maritime drones track drifting oil slicks, shadow suspect trawlers and relay coordinates to fast-intercept craft while costing a fraction of manned patrol flights.

Operation Sindoor’s ‘drone-of-drones’ moment.

India’s May 2025 cross-border strikes—codenamed Operation Sindoor—showcased what planners called a “drone of drones” architecture: high-end TAPAS-BH-201 and Heron Mk-II UAVs orbited as airborne quarterbacks while layers of autonomous assets did the heavy lifting below. The first wave used DRDO decoy micro-drones to saturate Pakistani radars; a second wave of SkyStriker loitering munitions and indigenous LMS swarm drones then punched through, attacking nine terror camps from multiple azimuths and ranges.

Because each loitering round carried its own electro-optical seeker, the mother-UAV merely assigned targets and switched to the next “child” in the stack—much like a hive queen tasking her workers. Field data show that fewer than a dozen operators controlled more than sixty airframes during the 25-minute raid, overwhelming HQ-9 batteries and jamming nodes while keeping Indian fighters safely outside SAM envelopes. The success of this nested-swarm tactic validated both the hardware (Nagastra-1, JM-1, ALS-50) and the underlying mesh-network software, giving India a proven, low-cost blueprint for future “mothership–minion” operations across land and sea frontiers.

Counting the Rupees

Patrolling one hundred kilometres of desert around the clock can consume over two hundred personnel or three manned flights a day. Replace even half that pattern with a locally built MALE drone and life-cycle costs fall by more than half: lower fuel burn, fewer engines to overhaul, and operators who train in simulators rather than harsh terrain. The economic case strengthens when manpower shortages and pension outlays are factored in.

Challenges Still to Conquer

True self-reliance demands domestic piston and turbine engines, trust-marked avionics and encrypted data links immune to jamming. Skills must spread beyond metro campuses to industrial clusters; thousands of pilots, maintenance technicians and data analysts will staff the new border battalions. Finally, secure export certification can position Indian drones as the affordable option for the Global South, reinforcing diplomacy with commerce.

Summing Up and Looking Forward

Shakespeare’s idle drones have metamorphosed into sentinels of the skies. By marrying frugal engineering with ambitious policy, India has turned a dismissive metaphor into a symbol of agility and strength. These new war-horses hover over wheat fields, glacier posts and coral shoals alike—proving that in the right hands even a drone that once “did nothing” can now do nearly everything.