Full Transcript: Top defence experts decode India’s missile and drone advancements at Network18's Powering Bharat Summit

The panel called ‘Defending Bharat’ featured Dr Sudhir Kumar Mishra, Lt. Gen. Dr. Inderjit Singh, Smit Shah and Maj. Gen. Ramesh Chandra Padhi (Retd)

In an extensive interaction with Moneycontrol's Managing Editor Dr Nalin Mehta, leading defence experts and military veterans delved into India’s rapid strides in missile and drone technology—particularly in light of the recent escalation with Pakistan.

The panel, aptly called "Defending Bharat", featured Dr Sudhir Kumar Mishra (veteran DRDO scientist and former MD & CEO of BrahMos Aerospace), Lt. Gen. Dr. Inderjit Singh (Strategic Advisor at ideaForge Technoligy), Smit Shah (President, Drone Federation of India) and Maj. Gen. Ramesh Chandra Padhi (Retd) (Vice President at IG Drones).

Here's the full transcript of the interaction:

Sonal: It's time now, ladies and gentlemen, to move on to the final session of the day. And this is something you all have been waiting for. It's got to do with something that's on our minds throughout, and it's drones. Operation Sindoor and its grand success has not only sort of propelled us and made us proud of, also reminded us to again that India's pursuit of self-reliance in defence has never been more urgent or more necessary. Now, from indigenous innovation in missile systems to AI-driven surveillance and the next generation drone technology, we are witnessing a pivotal shift, a new era of defending Bharat that is built on homegrown strength and strategic foresight. Now, to take this very crucial, very critical conversation forward, we are joined by three pioneers shaping the future of India's defence and aerospace sector.

Please join me in welcoming them with a huge round of applause. We are very happy to have with us today this evening Dr. Sudhir Kumar Mishra, Scientist and Director General at BrahMos DRDO. Huge round of applause, please. Left-Wing General Dr. Inderjit Singh, Strategic Advisor, ideaForge Technology. Please keep them coming, guys, yeah? Smit Shah, President, Drone Federation of India. And Major General Ramesh Chandra Padhi, retired, of course, Senior VP at IG Drones. And taking the conversation of this very, very interesting topic forward, let me call upon Nalin back on stage to take you through them. Please, huge round of applause for this extremely, extremely well-planned panel.

Nalin Mehta: Thanks very much, Sonal. And we couldn't, ladies and gentlemen, as Sonal was saying, the last two weeks or so, we've seen firsthand what conflict is about and what India did in that conflict. We couldn't get a better panel than this to talk about it. The two big things militarily that stood out were, A, the BrahMos missile, B, the air defence of India, where India completely dominated Pakistan on the air defence and in the skies, that was a lot to do with drones and Indian tech, and you couldn't get a better panel than this. So let me first start with you, Dr. Mishra. You are one of the key architects of the BrahMos missile. You were telling us just before we came out, came in, about the genesis of the BrahMos, because the BrahMos is a Mark III missile. That's the missile that was used to destroy the Pakistani runways and so on. And it really is of technology of a different kind. So if you can tell us a little bit, start with a little bit of history lesson. How did India come to produce BrahMos the way it did? The origin story of it, sir.

Dr. Sudhir Kumar Mishra: Thank you, Nalin. In fact, the story of BrahMos started in 1993. 1993, when Dr. Kalam and his team, they were visiting Moscow. And they were shown an engine, a supersonic combustion engine, which was half completed. And his Russian counterpart told that due to the lack of funds and dissolution of Soviet Union, we couldn't pursue our research. And Dr. Kalam being Dr. Kalam, he started thinking how to make use of this. And he returned back. Fortunately, we had integrated guided missile program under Dr. Kalam going on in the ideal Hyderabad. And several technologies for subsystems of missiles were developed. So he thought, why not we integrate some of the technologies of IGMP with this engine and come out with a completely new kind of missile. And that's how the BrahMos was born. And it was the idea in 1993, which got legalized in 1998, when inter-government agreement was signed.

In these five years, we have developed the systems which were required for the missile. Russians also developed the system which was required for this. And I would like to tell you that all the technologies for BrahMos is created, developed by DRDO. And the BrahMos was a SPV, the first FDI, which was in the defence. And we started with 250 million US dollars. And in the proportion of 50.5 being held by India and 49.5 by Russians. And the company was registered in Delhi. And we started the work. And we had the first flight of the missile.

Nalin Mehta: You were the second MD and CEO of that company, I think.

Dr. Sudhir Kumar Mishra: Yes. The first flight test we had in 2001. The founder CEO, Dr. Sivathanu Pillai, he played a major role, key role, in ensuring that the missile systems, subsystems, they are in place. And being a founder, you have the challenges, various challenges, financial challenges and rules, regulatory challenges. He has overcome all that. And it was the first ship-to-ship. Later on, when I joined in 2013, I developed this ship-to-ship to variety of versions, land-based, ship-based and again air-based. So the most challenging was integrating with Sukhoi-30 MKI.

Nalin Mehta: And that's what was used in this conflict, the Sukhoi.

Dr. Sudhir Kumar Mishra: Yes, it is reported that it is being used in the recent operations Sindoor. And that took almost 6-7 years. It was not only the redesign of the missile. It was redesign of the Sukhoi-30 aircraft, which was successfully undertaken by HAL. The original cost projected by Russians was close to 1,300 crore. And we did the same work in about 88 crore. And HAL, we really sincerely thank them. They have done fantastic work. And we created the world largest launcher in-house in DRDO. And the missile was also redesigned. The software was rewritten. And we conducted the flight test against ship, against land target. The first missile, bullseye. The second missile, bullseye on the land. So this was the credibility of the missile. And Air Force was very happy. And they have, in fact it is reported also in the newspaper, they have set up a squadron near Trichy. And this squadron is ensuring the safety, security in the Bay of Bengal, Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean.

Nalin Mehta: Sir, if I may add to, the one thing that Dr. Mishra has not mentioned in this amazing story of the BrahMos is, which he is the progenitor of. He also created the export program for the BrahMos. So the BrahMos was bought by the Philippines. And Dr. Mishra just told us about, outside we were talking about, how during COVID, he travelled constantly to ensure that this machine, that this missile, which was not tested globally at that time, became India's first missile defence export, which was then bought by the Philippines. And I think now that it has been battle tested and seen the way it is, and performed the way it is, I think that a lot of import orders will now start falling in.

Dr. Sudhir Kumar Mishra: Yes, sir. Actually, it was my dream. Everyone, we make our own professional goals. So I made a dream that before I retire, I would like to conclude the first weapon export for India. And that I could really largely reach to. I retired in November. The contract was signed in December. And I was the happiest person that we could sell it to Philippines. Because the reason is, when you try to sell the weapons in the export market, then the buyer, he compares the system with the contemporary available missile systems. And then only they, you know, price is a secondary thing. It's important, but it's a secondary thing. And that's how the buyer concludes. And we have come at number one when they compared our system to the rest of the systems in the world. And please understand, Philippines had access to the Western systems also. Because they, you know, in the international dynamics, they are using the Western systems. And compared to that, they have inducted our system. It means we are really the best.

Nalin Mehta: So, for context, and the reason I'm talking so much about, asking Dr. Mishra so much about the Brahmos is because it's a story that, it's an Indian story that must be told. And it's also a story that informs what's going to happen now with drones and everything else. And we'll come to that in a second. But for context, the Americans are the Tomahawks, which are subsonic missiles. One of the Brahmos is Mark 3. And now there is a conversation happening about building a Mark 5 missile, if I'm not wrong, sir.

Dr. Sudhir Kumar Mishra: Yes sir, DRDO has conducted a test for hypersonic engine recently, about two, three weeks back. And subsequent test also would be done. And then we would come out soon with hypersonic missile, which will have the speed of more than five Mach. And once the engine is ready, rest of the things are much easier to design and develop. So, this engine would be available, should be in about one and a half, two years. Then we can go ahead.

Nalin Mehta: I think we can give Dr. Mishra a big hand. I mean, he is a true Indian hero for having built that.

Dr. Sudhir Kumar Mishra: Thank you.

Nalin Mehta: Also, Dr. Mishra, you were also one of Dr. Kalam's boys, right? He picked you up straight out of college for DRDO. You studied in IIT Madras, but also at the Regional Engineering College, also at NIT. But what I wanted to sort of draw from that experience and broaden this conversation is that it took so long, from 1993, for another two decades to build that technology in the way that it did. And we are seeing the results now. We are also seeing very fast change in technology at the moment with drones. Let me bring in General Singh on this question, sir. Because the one thing that was a big differentiator, the second thing that was a big differentiator with Pakistan and the conflict was the control of the air defence and the skies, as opposed to the Pakistanis losing that control. A lot of it was to do with indigenous defence systems, indigenous tech, the command and control system and also with the drones. Your company, sir, you are affiliated with ideaForge, which is the largest drone maker in India. The largest listed drone making company also supplies the largest number of drones to the Indian Army. So a lot of our protection came from the drones that your company was, for example, supplying. Can you tell us how did this, because the defence services generally are very resistant to change, right? So how did this whole transformation happen and what made the difference between us and the Pakistani forces in terms of new tech this time?

Lt. Gen (Dr.) Inderjit Singh: Yeah, thank you, Nalin. You know, actually, we've all seen, we've been glued to TVs in the week before last. And whatever little information comes in, but a lot of background work has gone into this. Let me tell you that as far as drones are concerned, as a revolutionary in military warfare, India has been very much alive over the last decade or so. In fact, we have gone in a very concerted way to look at both UCAVs, which are unmanned combat air vehicles, aerial vehicles and UAVs, which are largely for ISR. Now, the technologies have been developing over the last couple of years. As far as my company is concerned, we are probably the biggest company today in ISR technologies.

As far as the UCAVs are concerned, generally, much of that we have been depending on collaboration with Israel. You heard of the name of Searcher, Herons, Herops. And you heard a large number of loitering munitions. Well, we are getting there. And I tell you, the government of India and especially the Ministry of Defence now is upping the ante to get into more and more technology. But having said that, and I think there's a question which Nalin, you would like to ask is, where do we need to go from here? I can tell you one thing.

In this particular mini operation, as far as our company is concerned, we have done extremely well. And we have drones which are, now we can call it battle tested. And we can say with a lot of pride that the companies are working like IdeaForge, NewSpace and others. We have another very senior officer here, executive from IG Drones. And all of that, I mean, we work very closely together to support the army, the Indian Armed Forces. So, as far as capability is concerned, let me assure the audience that today India has the capability. And we are amongst the best in the world. And it is proven today in the little skirmishes that have taken place.

Nalin Mehta: General Singh, and I'll come to you General Padhi in a second, but I think you raised a very important point, sir, which is about, we have shown the capability, and a lot of it was indigenous, some in partnership, but the adversity can also catch up soon, right? So, two questions. What does it take to maintain the edge with the tech that is changing so fast? What does it take to change the regulatory system? How different is it from other procurement systems? How different should it be? That's a question I wanted to ask, and I'll come to you General Padhi in a second, sir. But I wanted to ask both you and Smith. Smith is the president of the Drones Federation of India. And Smith, you've driven a lot of the pioneering work in terms of the policy side, worked closely with the government, with the Prime Minister, with various policy makers on creating this enabling environment for the drone ecosystem in this country. And we've seen the results of some of that now. So, what worked for us and what needs to change so we can scale up? And if I can come to you first, then General Singh, then General Padhi, and then I'll open it up to you, sir, about your drones as well.

Smit Shah: Thank you, Dr. Nalin. I think one thing that we need to appreciate is that when this conflict was ongoing, we didn't really have to send planes to some other countries and get stuff from there. And that was because there is a well-established plan and a thought process. And I use the word thought process because in 2021, when there were global conflicts as well as a lot of other events that were coming together, India as a nation very well understood the importance, both the strategic as well as the economic importance of this technology and started laying out a red carpet for drone companies in India. And this happened because of three, four different things in terms of the policy and creation of an environment. And why I use the word environment, you'll know when I talk about the four things.

First of all, there was a policy that was completely opened up. So we had drone rules 2021, although it's for the civilian space, but that is the primary.

Nalin Mehta: That was 2021 before the big drones summit that was held in Delhi.

Smit Shah: Exactly. So 2021, the policy opened up. Opening up of the policy motivates a lot of companies to start thinking about the sector, start building drones, even though the policy is for the civilian space. But the moment the civilian space is very well opened up and is popularized, it invites more and more people to start drone companies and who then eventually transition to the defence side as well. Once you have an easy policy, the second thing that you would require to push, of course, in India is money. So government came in and said, OK, let's bring in a PLI scheme and bring financial incentives. If you do 100 rupees of sales and 40 rupees is your purchase cost, 100 minus 40, very simple mathematics gives you 60 rupees. Government came in and gave 20 percent incentive on this. So it is direct money in the hands of the entrepreneur who is doing sales.

And when you have good policy and financial incentive, it becomes a very open ground for many companies, including foreign companies. But your government wanted to bring in disproportionate support for Indian companies. That's when the third intervention came in, which is the import ban on completely built unit and semi knockdown kit and completely knockdown kit. It essentially means that you can't really have a manufacturer building technology there, sending the drone as a whole or in parts without having a proper manufacturing base in the country. So you have this trio of the environment which gives a very disproportionate recognition and support for Indian players. And all of this was thought from a perspective of building intellectual property in India and manufacturing capability both, not just IP.

Nalin Mehta: And that's something that, because policy makers generally are reluctant about changing things. But in this case, as I understand it, Prime Minister Modi understood this and Prime Minister Modi pushed this personally.

Smit Shah: Yeah, personally. I mean, it is Honourable Prime Minister Narendra Modi who should be the only person who should take the primary credit for an intervention like this. And of course, it was industry, academy and all government coming together under this central vision. Not the vision about policy change, but about the entire vision of India becoming a global drone hub with a specific focus on creating intellectual property. What happens is in a lot of other ecosystems, we try to focus on manufacturing. And manufacturing can only take you to building production quality. But technology enhancement and cutting edge in tech only happens when you focus on IP. So that's the niche that came in. That is what worked for us.

Nalin Mehta: That is the power that sort of manifested itself in the skies in the conflict. The question now is that what next and what needs to become better? Because, and this is a question for the whole panel, sir, because there are two generals here who have served in the army, who have dealt with procurement, who have dealt with other weapon systems. We have a scientist on the panel who has built India's perhaps India's most potent weapon. You have been involved in policy, you have dealt with a lot of new tech. In terms of, explain to us, why does the current system still need a lot more reform and what are those reforms that are needed to maintain India's tech edge or defence edge on tech?

Smit Shah: Thank you so much. I really wanted this question to come up. So I am a Gujarati from Bombay, never satisfied with what is already there. So I want to bring in a flavour of what are the three things that we can do. And I think as of now, procurements are slightly slower and procurements, the nature of the process demands for more than one company to participate, which is why sometimes we see a dilution of specs and tech capabilities. The specific thing that needs to be done is that the user and the industry needs to sit together and prepare a roadmap of what is required.

And this roadmap has to be such that when a company achieves a threshold, that is the equipment that you need to procure. At that time, we can't really say where are the three bidders going to come from and how do we make sure that, you know, if I have a spec that is defined, let's say, I am going to give an example, I want a UAV that is having the capability of going 100 kilometres and doing surveillance and having jamming proof and GPS proof kind of specifications. This roadmap has to, you know, ascertain that when a company achieves this, the next thing is going to be an order. So that's how companies will be motivated to build tech and break technology benchmarks. That's the first thing that needs to happen.

The second thing that needs to happen is irrespective of what platform you are building, when we talk about conflicts, there is a requirement of, you know, building any type of platform from the smallest one to the largest one, which is electronic warfare hardened. So there are many ancillary technology areas that need to be built in where government needs to start giving in research. The outcome will not be a platform that can be procured by the defence forces, but it is going to be a lot of ancillary technologies like GPS jamming proof navigation, vision based navigation, RF communication jamming proof, you know, sort of technologies and many other types of niche technologies, which I don't want to name on a public platform right now, but these will be an input for the top 20 drone companies that are anyways building platforms. So that is the second thing that we need to work on.

And third and the most important thing, sorry, I'm just taking a little bit more time, is that we need to start planning for fast track procurement. We can't really be running around on finding a potential solution when there is a conflict. What happens right now is you have one and a half months of product, one and a half years of product development, then one and a half years of delivery. In this one and a half years of delivery, the people who did not got the order are all at zero. So what we need to do is we need to have multi-year long term contracts so that you have capacity every year.

Nalin Mehta: So, General Singh, I'm assuming that now, after the conflict, you are already India's biggest supplier of military drones, you will up your production?

Dr. Inderjit Singh: You know, the problem is not upping production.

Nalin Mehta: And orders will come in more?

Dr. Inderjit Singh: Yeah, the issue is that no company can sustain itself unless there is a regular flow of orders. This is something which Smith just brought up. We have to change our procurement procedures. You know, the lessons of the recent conflict are very, very clear. The first lesson, let me reiterate, is that use of drones is a cheap, low-cost option with getting results much out of proportion. Number two, we need to be prepared for counter-UAS technologies. We have to defend ourselves against enemy drones. In both these cases, we have a huge amount of work to do. Now, having said that, when you talk about technology, you know, you can look at the various technology pillars, whether it's resilience, whether it is swarming, whether it is going on to stealth technology, whether it's going on to communications through multi-channel, multi-modal sat-cam hacking. We have to be there.

Let me share with you that we have a little way to go. It's not that we are already there. If you talk about future technologies, we have to create that capability today. It won't happen in the current sphere.

Nalin Mehta: Let me bring in General Padhi. Sir, you have not spoken so far. Two questions for you, sir. We are talking about regulation. We are talking about a lot more armament. We are talking about the cutting edge of technology. Firstly, also there is a question of cost. And you were mentioning to us outside, sir, because your company also supplies drones to the army. They were used in this conflict. Actually, India used drones in the Kargil War too, on a much smaller level. So, how fast is the pace of change? What are the kind of drones that are currently being used? Or to the extent that you can talk to us about it? And can you give us an idea of the cost of these equipments so that people get a perspective of what we are talking about?

Major General Ramesh Chandra Padhi: Thank you and Jai Hind. Firstly, you must be aware that the government of India has identified the contribution in the recent war of Sindoor, drone companies. And IG Drone is one of them. And I think the audience will appreciate that the effort of the company. Secondly, what you said. In fact, when the conflict started on 7th night, four of my boys were trapped in Poonch sector. They were delivering drones. And I was a little worried about their safety. Then I rang up my people and somehow I could bring them back from there, from that conflict zone. And I told them that you guys are very lucky. You could be part of that particular conflict, the sounds and everything, you know. Coming back to the cost. We have got a very small drone called FPV Kamikaze. FPV means First Person View. And we have got a goggle. You can see your targets. And the speed goes up to 140 km. We have got 7 inch size, 10 inch size. And then it goes and drops directly in the target. And the cost, you said cost. It costs only 1 lakh rupees. So cheap.

Nalin Mehta: This is the kind of drone that was used on the Lahore airport, the AED battery which was used with loitering ammunition.

Major General Ramesh Chandra Padhi: We have got other drones also. We have got surveillance drones. We have got mapping drones. And everything is made by us only. Now, it is very interesting to know the journey of this company. Only five students from one of the engineering colleges in Odisha, they dreamt of something and they made something for the space industry which was appreciated by Prime Minister Modi in his Man Ki Baat. And because this same technology is also used for drone manufacturing. Subsequently, they found that probably commercially drone manufacturing will be good. So, they started that. And 2015, I super-invited and my journey also, I will also narrate a little bit. So, they came to me. I called them Panchu Pandas.

Nalin Mehta: And you had retired as the ADG in military operations.

Major General Ramesh Chandra Padhi: Yes, I was.

Nalin Mehta: And they were the young kids who had the techs.

Major General Ramesh Chandra Padhi: So, many people think that it is the Azerbaijan and Armenia that is the starting point of drones. No. We used drones during Kargil war. Not many people know about that. The Israelis, they gave us the Heron and Searchers. But the problem at that point of time was there was no digital maps. And it was my responsibility at that point of time as a colonel to provide the digital maps. So, we had to overnight digitize all the maps. The paper maps. You all know the topographical maps. Why digital maps? Because the satellite imageries were only two dimensions. The paper maps were also two dimensions. So, those contours were digitized. So, we created two and a half dimensional digital maps. Otherwise, how do you do the surveillance and reconnaissance and find out the targets. Subsequently, I worked in the DRDO also when I was a brigadier with ADE Bangalore and Dr. Jharna Majumdar, she met me and she said we should work together. And we did many things. And I was also there in the Army airport for a long time. At that time, the policy was also not very favourable.  So, that is how the journey started. Now, you see, we have got a large number of drones. Initially, we started as surveillance. Now, we have got the Kamikaze combat drones.

Nalin Mehta: General Padhi, if I can interrupt you there for a second. Hold that thought, sir. I will come back to you on this point. I wanted to bring in Dr. Mishra again into this conversation. Dr. Mishra, it is clear where India is at the moment. Now, the question is where we will go next. What lessons can we draw from the experience of the Brahmos to inform where we need to go? Because you worked with tech. You worked with very difficult technology. You worked with sanction regimes. You built tech indigenously entirely despite the sanctions. And really the top class tech in the world in this domain. What lessons should we take from the Brahmos experience to inform our next steps on the defence tech?

Dr. Sudhir Kumar Mishra: Thank you. The lesson from Brahmos, there are many. The first thing is Brahmos is a very potent universal weapon. The difference between UAV and the Brahmos is UAV will also work. But the Brahmos, it goes with brute force. Impossible for anybody to stop it. But at the same time, the cost is more. Missiles cost more. UAV costs much cheaper. In Brahmos, we have spent... You see, what happens, you cannot quantify it in the number of years or number of people or number of technology. It's very difficult. Thousands of people have contributed in the success of Brahmos in various times.

When we came up with the first version, then we came up with the second version. Second version means, again, we have upgraded the range, capability, performance, accuracy. And we conducted more than 130 tests. So in every test, some or other parameter was improved. Now, the learning lesson was, we always believed that if you go to the L1, lowest price, then you will not get the best. You should always go to the T1, the best technology. This is number one. Another lesson which we learnt in Operation Sindoor is... Sorry, I'm deviating from the main topic.

Nalin Mehta: It's a very important point you're making. Don't necessarily go for the L1, go for the T1. Go for the absolute best quality.

Dr. Sudhir Kumar Mishra: We have to be T1. In fact, there are many people, they say, but there's always a confusion that how to factor in the price. You see, as we progress, the mathematics will certainly come for the help. And we all would be able to come up with some equation which will tell that this is the best one. So we should consider technology also as a very important thing. Coming to the Operation Sindoor, we are very happy that Indian systems, not only Akash and BrahMos, but electronic warfare, communication, ammunition, our Indian-made ammunition and Indian-made radars, our AWACS, Netra, they all have been used sometime in the foreground, sometime in the background.

Nalin Mehta: And they have been used against Chinese tech, against American tech and they have triumphed.

Dr. Sudhir Kumar Mishra: Now it has given huge confidence to our armed forces that yes, Indian system, they walk, they deliver and they are state of the art. Because in the conflict, we were not fighting with Pakistan, please don't think that. We were fighting with Pakistan, China, Turkey and Azerbaijan. And of course the western supplied equipment. So fighting against these sophisticated equipments, our indigenous systems have proved their mettle. And we feel that now we will be getting more and more Indian design developed. You see, I am not talking only about DRDO, DRDO is a leader in the defence technology, but there are so many leaders in the niche technologies. They would come and they would offer their system and they would be considered positively by our users, Indian armed forces.

And another thing which I want to tell is, you see, the companies, the defence companies, they have only one user, only one buyer. And the shelf life of these companies is six months to one year, one and a half year, two year. Beyond that, it's very difficult for an individual or a group of people to fund it infinitely. And if they don't get order in one, one and a half year, they think of closing down. And people do the funding, you see, when we talk about that, if the technology is good, many funds would be available, but it doesn't happen in the practical life. So if something should be done, it should be done when the company is young, when it is in its infancy. So then we would be able to become the leader in the defence technology.  I'm talking about the world, global leader, otherwise, we would be catching up.

Nalin Mehta: It's a very important point you're making with the Prime Minister in the Adampur base with the same point that India fundamentally triumphed or did better than Pakistan and won this war or won Operation Sindoor fundamentally because of modern technology. I'll come to—Yes, General Padhi.

Major General Ramesh Chandra Padhi: I just want to tell one more very important point. We have got this online ecosystem, which is we have got the government PSUs, big private companies and small companies, startups. Now, this is the time we need to integrate them, because certain critical components are not available in India, just like sensors. One of the very important thing, whether it is a missile or a drone, the sensors play a very key role. Otherwise, a drone is just a platform. So we need a lot of varieties of sensors. So in the ecosystem, we have to strengthen that and create, wherever we have got those gap analysis we have to do, what we cannot, what we are importing from outside, we should develop it here. And then only we can have a much better on-demand ecosystem in India for the future conflicts.

Nalin Mehta: So, gentlemen, for context, when Dr. Mishra was talking about the Brahmos, we have all seen the satellite images of the bombs going into the Noor Khan base near Rawalpindi or the Raeem Khan base and all of those incisions were Brahmos, essentially, fundamentally, as we understand it. So let me put a question to the panel and starting with you, Smit, if you were to suggest one thing to the Prime Minister that should change in the drone, in the procurement systems where India maintains its DevTech edge, what would that be?

Smit Shah: Build a road map for what technology is required by the armed forces and the moment a company achieves that road map, just buy it, don't wait for L1 and three bidders and all of that. This is the only way in which we can become technologically advanced, cutting edge, because the benchmark for what is required is met, not because someone is building a new thing. So that's all.

Nalin Mehta: It's very important because we were talking just outside when we came in that if you saw in Operation Sindoor, Pakistan was using the Turkish drones which came in plane loads. India was not getting in plane loads of anybody, these were Indian drones. But if we were to have a conflict, say, another two weeks' time now and we have to increase our defence production, it won't decrease in two weeks, right, because, General Singh, if you can explain why that's important.

Lt. Gen (Dr.) Inderjit Singh: So, let me add to what Smit said. If you look at history and look at the world around you, just look at US, today we look up to US for technology. If I go six years back, Lockheed Martin was a start-up. It was the Department of Defence, US, which identified such champions and supported them. We don't have that ecosystem as of now in India. In each of the niche technologies, we need to identify champions, support them and give them long-term contracts and expect huge amount of results from them. If they don't give results, get another champion. But I can assure you, the Indian psyche, we will create and deliver if the government of India has the kind of support and confidence in us. I can tell you without any doubt.

Nalin Mehta: Dr. Mishra, I have a question for you on this and your comments. I know you were about to say something. And this is something I wanted to ask you, sir, very seriously, that we've had the experience, because in the light of the suggestion being made on the panel, we've had the experience where the Americans have denied the engine to us for the LCA. India stopped its research on the Kaveri engine, the development of the Kaveri engine, which is a problem for the LCA. It has become an issue in the India-US trade talks too. So what is your advice in terms of long-term investments for DevTech?

Dr. Sudhir Kumar Mishra: Actually, defence technology, when you invest in it, please don't expect return in 2 years, 5 years, 10 years. There are some technologies which will give you return immediately after 2 years, 3 years. But when you are talking about the platforms, you're talking about aircraft, submarine, ships, tanks, you have to do the research and development for 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, 25 years, 30 years. And I gave one example to Dr. Mehta. I told him that if you have a son and there's a potential in him, keep investing in him. Send him for bachelor's, master's, PhD all over the world, let him take the best education and come back. Now what happens, I was just giving him one example that if suppose there is an aircraft engine, hardly 2 or 3 countries in the world make even today aircraft engine, US, Russia, up to certain extent UK and China. Chinese one is Chinese one, copied from the Russian one.

So, if we work 20 years, 25 years and we don't deliver engine, don't worry, keep investing. It will happen after 30 years. It may happen after 40 years. But we all have seen, we all are very wise people sitting in this hall. Why Tejas is getting delayed? Maybe because of the supply chain problem of the engine manufacturer or maybe something else. But if we had developed our own engine, at least we wouldn't have such problems. We would have resolved the supply chain and given the priority to HAL to manufacture Tejas. So, this is one suggestion I want to give you.

Another suggestion I want to give you is from this forum that we spoke about L1 and T1. Another thing is, what happens when we, partially General also touched upon it, in every vertical if there are 3,000 companies, 4,000 companies, then it is very difficult for a single buyer to support all of them. So, why not you make a group, do the grouping? And the grouping can be changed maybe every year or every two years. So, selected companies are in a basket who are working in the drone technology. They also are able to see the end goal. And if we allow free running, then it will become like a marathon. You never know who has run, who has not run, who has become number one, who has not become number two. Today, we have 3,000-4,000 drone companies in India. Okay, let us take 400. 400 companies, how many will survive? I tell you, not more than 20-25. 20 is a very positive number. So, the rest of them will die out.

So, why not in the beginning itself you filter them out? So that you have very selected companies working in that vertical. Another suggestion, many Indian companies, private, public sector, they manufacture a system. Now, unless the system is inducted by the Indian armed forces, no foreign buyer will buy it. This is a rule, standard rule. It has to be inducted into the services. So, for example, if IdeaForge has made one kind of drone, let Army, Navy, Air Force, let them buy five numbers, let them buy ten numbers. Now, these ten numbers give huge credibility to IdeaForge, to your company.

So, once they go to the export market, they will say that, yes, it has already been purchased by Indian Army, so you please buy it. So, this minimum, this would help.

Nalin Mehta: General Padhi if you can respond to it.

Major General Ramesh Chandra Padhi: Just to add two points, there is a self-goal in our policy. DGCA said type certification. Type certification means what? So, one particular model you are freezing. But in technological innovation, next year we have got a new product. So, thanks that Indian Army don't follow the type certification thing, in the civil sector they are suffering. Because all government tenders, they will have a type certification of DGCA. But that particular kind of thing. So, many companies, they are not able to participate. Number two is that we suspect, the private sector is suspected, because I spent 36 years in the Indian Army, so I know the mindset, what happens. So, why not like in USA, you just sign a confidentiality agreement. So, that whenever I…

Nalin Mehta: Long term agreement.

Major General Ramesh Chandra Padhi: Yes, I will sign, I am an Indian after all and everything is there. So, if I violate, do any security violation or anything kind of, you can put me behind the bar.

Nalin Mehta: So, let me widen the conversation a little bit and split. So, one thing is, we talk about procurement from government and so on. But after this equipment being battle tested, after the performance we are seeing, do you expect a widening of the private funding in this sphere? How do you see that going? And also, where do you see our technological progress at the moment visibly, the Chinese?

Smit Shah: See, whereas it's about funding, there were only three things that worked in this conflict. Brahmos, drones, counter drones. You can't invest in Brahmos. Of course, the only two sectors in which you can invest is drones and counter drones. And it's quite obvious that the investment from the private side is going to increase. Especially because the effectiveness of the technology is very well proven. And we didn't talk about the counter drone space, I will just briefly touch upon it. That is also another area where there is a lot of innovation that is happening.

There are large companies as well as start-ups that are working on the domain. And that is also where private sector funding will come in. What will be interesting to see is that this conflict has taught us that there is going to be an interplay of public funding as well as private funding both coming in. Private funding will come in for the growth of the company. Public funding will come in for aspirational research and very advanced tech research. So that interplay is going to be very interesting to see of how this ecosystem evolves.

And one thing that I want to mention is that there were many companies that were trying to iterate on their technology some in two years of time, some in six months of time, some in two months of time. I am very happy to report to this audience and the viewers that there are a few companies that iterated and improved their platforms in even less than one week. So sometimes conflicts really do accelerate technology development and kick that last thing that is required.

Nalin Mehta: General Singh, as the biggest private maker of Indian drones in the military space with your company, there were issues a few months back about Chinese components and drones and things like that when something was reported. Now what do you think is the big technological challenge that you guys face when you are developing new tech?

Lt. Gen (Dr.) Inderjit Singh: I think the Chinese component was more of a red herring to tell you the truth. And I must put the record straight. In fact, this is one company which is, we talk about make in India, this is designed in India. One of the very few companies from bottoms up, they have designed everything in India. Yes, you know, there are vulnerabilities on the supply chain. We cannot go 100% indigenous today. The economies of scale just don't support it. And Smit will bear me out today. We don't have enough indigenous vendors who can supply all the components. We have to depend on beyond the market. But what is important is, countries which are inimical to us, I don't have to name them here. We certainly don't want to deal with them in terms of components, systems, subsystems. That's very important.

Now as far as we are concerned, we have started now reinventing the wheel for everything. We have realized that we have to leapfrog. How do we leapfrog? We have to do collaboration. Now, the order of the day is, if you want to be a world-beater, a global...

Nalin Mehta: You're collaborating with global players?

Lt. Gen (Dr.) Inderjit Singh: Yeah, we have to collaborate with global players. Today in the nano drones, we have already collaborated with a wonderful company, a small startup in the US by the name of Vantage Technologies. And we are moving ahead very, very fast. On the other side, you know, as Smit mentioned, we are talking about resilience in operating in GNSS-denied environment. That is the future of the day. We can't have our drones being hacked or spoofed. At the same time, they have to have resilience to go over long endurance and distances. Some of the technologies are home-grown. We are looking at foreign vendors who can supply technologies. But we are not doing off-the-shelf. We are looking at co-developed and co-manufactured.

Nalin Mehta: Major General Padhi, your final word on this.

Major General Ramesh Chandra Padhi: I'll tell you, unfortunately, the major supply of the small components is our main adversary, China. And it's a real challenge. So what is happening is, Army has very clearly said, no Chinese components. So when we import some of the key components, critical components, so let us say we imported from the Israelis, the cost becomes four times. And the Israelis also, they get it from China. The source is China. So ultimately, the challenge remains the same thing.

Nalin Mehta: So that's it. Okay. So final words, Smit, and then final word to you, Dr. Singh.

Lt. Gen (Dr.) Inderjit Singh: Actually, we have created a military industrial complex. We learned from the rest of the world. So in this military industrial complex, we created almost 200 vendors. These 200 vendors for tier 1, 2, 3. And we promoted them. You will not believe, once upon a time, around 70 to 80 engineers from our company, from BrahMos Aerospace, they were working in the factory place, in the manufacturer place. And we were paying the salary. We said, you don't need to pay the salary. Give them a table and chair. They'll work for you. And they ensured that quality and certification is done properly.

This is number one. Number two, when it comes to, let me give you a specific answer to your Chinese question. The thing is, if you are an Indian manufacturer and you are forced to buy the Indian components, you can still order to China and they will write in the Make in India, they will also write the name of your company and they'll supply it to you. So what happens, the solution is we should have our own military industrial complex. The way we have airport hotel complex, the way we have aerospace park, the way we have software park, the same way the government has to focus on the military industrial complex. The people will be, you know, there will be, now we have already initiated.

Nalin Mehta: We already have a military industrial complex. Now it's about scale it up.

Lt. Gen (Dr.) Inderjit Singh: Corridor, we have like started a defence UP corridor and in the South India we have started a corridor. Many more corridors are required. Now corridor doesn't mean that it has to be 1000 miles long or 500 kilometre long. It can be in a small space. But then the government has to promote them with the various incentives.

Nalin Mehta: Final word from you, Smit and then we will end.

Smit Shah: Let me just add one small niche to achieving this. We've divided the Chinese and the supply chain problem in two parts. What you buy, you need to diversify. So you don't rely only on China and only on one supplier, whether it is China or any other country. You diversify the supply chain and you find alternate suppliers for one particular article. That is one way to do it.

And second, till the time you start diversifying, the other way to look at it is you answer the problem from a cyber security lens perspective. You buy wherever you want to, but you battle test and you verify the cyber security perspective. You check whether there is malware or not, whether there is, you know, issues in that or not. And this has nothing to do with supply chain. You can keep buying from source A, but if you have good cyber security controls in place, this system will work to conflict with the other system and the other system will gradually work slowly. So, supply chain always takes a lot of time. It cannot happen in one day.

Parallelly, cyber security checks can be brought in very early on, very fast, so that even if you continue to rely on certain players because there is a transition phase, cyber security will ensure that some malware or some important thing is not put in by our adversary by design. So that's how you divide the problem into two parts and you still achieve it in a faster sort of turnaround.

Nalin Mehta: I just think, final word, and we are really out of time, so we have to wrap up now, but do you think at the moment, Indian DevTech is ahead of Chinese DevTech, at least in this sphere of drones and so on? Do we have to catch up?

Lt. Gen (Dr.) Inderjit Singh: No, we have to work it out. Let me not give you a categorical answer because, you know, we rely on incomplete information as far as our adversary is concerned, but they have also moved on. Let me tell you that, at the same time, I think there is huge capability in our market. I think the government now, earlier was totally depending on the public sectors. Now we have gone beyond the public sectors. We have started having more and more faiths in the private sector. The private sector has to match up. I think the private sector is always looking for a business case all the time, and maybe rightly so, but having said that, I think, let me just not commit on that.

Nalin Mehta: Ladies and gentlemen, I think we do have a military-industrial complex in this country. These gentlemen here are the past, present and the future of it. Big hand to them. Thank you very much.