The Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) is set to approve the acquisition of 87 armed medium altitude long endurance (MALE) drones for the Indian armed forces, and the Cabinet Committee of Security, the construction of six airborne early warning and control aircraft which will be based on the Airbus 319 platform -- both measures aimed at plugging key hardware and force-multiplier gaps noticed during Operation Sindoor, people familiar with the matter said .
The Defence Procurement Board headed by defence secretary RK Singh has already approved the acquisition of 87 MALE drones (General Atomics)
These will likely be the first armed drones with Indian military -- the approved acquisition of the Predator MQ 9B drones from the US will not happen before 2028 -- and India has thus far been using Israeli Heron drones for intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance (ISR) missions and not in a hunting role. The total cost of acquisition is around ₹20,000 crore.
HT learns that the acquisition of 87 MALE drones has already been approved by the Defence Procurement Board (DPB) headed by Defence Secretary R K Singh and now the apex DAC chaired by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will accord the Acceptance of Necessity (AoN) to the procurement. After AoN, the Defence Ministry will float a Request for Proposal (RFP) in which armed drone companies such as General Atomics, Israeli Aircraft Industries, European consortium (Eurodrone), Adani-Elbit, Tatas, Kalyani Forge and HAL are expected to participate.
Meanwhile, the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) is set to give a green signal to the construction of six airborne early warning and control aircraft on the Airbus 319 platform. India has fewer AEW&C aircraft than Pakistan, and the second-hand aircraft will be hardened by Airbus in France before installation of DRDO Netra IA radars, and mission control and communication systems. The project was hanging fire for quite some time over finance issues, but the people cited above said it was approved as national security needs outweigh any cost escalation. The total project cost is ₹19000 crore with an approved escalation of ₹7000 crore.
The need for armed drones was acutely felt during Operation Sindoor as Pakistan used Turkish and Chinese drones to target India military facilities along the western border. While India only targeted terrorist camps and subsequently, military bases , Pakistan used kamikaze drones to target Jammu, Amritsar, Jodhpur, Bhuj Barnala, Hisar and Bhatinda.
Operation Sindoor was India’s direct military action in response to the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack in which 26 people were killed. The operation led to a four-day military confrontation with Pakistan.
While the 87 armed drones with air to ground missiles and laser guided bombs will be acquired through the Make in India route, the defence ministry is also considering retrofitting of 200 ISR Heron ISR drones with armaments in future, the people cited above added. The upgradation project, which will be undertaken by Israel’s IAI, will not only involve hardpoints on the wings of the drones but also enhancement of their communication data capabilities so that mission control gets live images of enemy targets to be neutralized.
HT learns that the defence ministry has also asked the Indian armed forces for their urgent requirements such as long distance missiles, mid-air refuelers and long range loitering ammunition.
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades.
A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent.
Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal.
He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More
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