Revised procurement-visibility documents taking shape at the defence ministry would map out anticipated military requirements across a 10-to-15-year window — with drone technology and counter-drone capabilities among the priority areas flagged for industry — according to remarks delivered Tuesday by A Anbarasu, Additional Secretary and Director General (Acquisition).
Those comments from Anbarasu came during a ceremony unveiling Flying Wedge Defence & Aerospace, a domestically developed autonomous combat aircraft platform driven by artificial intelligence and positioned as a first-of-its-kind venture within India.
The decision by the Ministry of Defence addresses two converging pressures on the domestic defence sector: a long-held need for reliable contract pipelines to keep manufacturers viable, and the growing reality that next-generation technologies cycle through obsolescence far faster than traditional hardware.
A revised Integrated Capability Development Plan (ICDP) — one that feeds into a forthcoming Technology Perspective and Capability Roadmap (TPCR) — is intended to give private industry the foundation needed to expand research and development activity, build out production lines and assembly infrastructure, and align output with tri-services requirements within the target timeframe.
Presenting a package of measures aimed at cutting procurement timelines, streamlining testing, and building up domestic manufacturing capacity, the Director General of Acquisition noted that a reworked quality assurance framework — drawing in government bodies, industry players, and independent third-party agencies — was being developed to make the system more attuned to what the local defence sector requires. Anbarasu added, in remarks from the acquisition side, that timeline reductions, technology readiness levels, and faster innovation pathways were all being pursued, particularly to address the problem of validated prototypes that go unordered despite having cleared development hurdles.
A capped five-year ordering window has been established by the Ministry, with iterative development built into various procurement pathways as a structuring principle.
A ten-year Integrated Capability Development Plan covering drone technology and counter-drone systems was among the roadmap details the Director General of Acquisition outlined on behalf of the Ministry. A ministry spokesperson noted that a TPCR document had been drafted the previous August, with plans to publicly present the technology's strategic outlook and capability development roadmap at an upcoming event.
He added that once the ICDP framework was established, a detailed TPCR document would be produced and opened to industry stakeholders, laying out a direction of travel for the sector across the next ten to fifteen years. A formal version of the ICDP document was put into the public domain by the Ministry of Defence during September 2025.
Proposals tied to emerging technologies are now being processed by the Ministry under an expedited review pathway. A dedicated drone research hub is being set up at IIT Kanpur, with work already under way on standardisation software and automated procurement workflows intended to shorten decision timelines.
Anbarasu noted that the pace of internal operations had not kept up with the rate of change in the broader business environment, and that the organisation's processes would need to move more quickly to remain aligned with that shift. He outlined plans for a three-tier quality assurance framework drawing on representatives from government bodies, industry groups, and independent third parties, and noted that three distinct tiers of quality assurance thinking were currently being adopted.
He noted that the accumulated effect of these changes would amount to a form of reform likely to draw broad support from those with a stake in the outcome. Under the proposed DAP 2026 framework, ownership and self-sufficiency in strategically vital technologies would take precedence over the longstanding policy focus on building goods domestically.
A compulsory registration system for defence industry suppliers forms another part of the plan, with a centralised database set to underpin how vendors are vetted and brought on board — an approach the official outlined to attendees as the foundation for a reworked procurement model capable of running several evaluation phases in parallel, thereby shortening the overall timeline for purchasing decisions.
