By Nantoo Banerjee
It is a matter of concern that India is way behind the countries such as Iran, China, Russia, Ukraine and even the United States in the area of mass production of cheap, one-way attack (OWA) loitering drones while indulging in the import of high-cost traditional aerial arms to meet its defence needs. Historically, India has remained one of the world’s biggest arms importers, substantially for aerial strikes, even as modern combat increasingly relies on low-cost unmanned aerial systems (UAS). The country’s powerful arms import lobby seems to have a vice-like grip over the national government irrespective of the party or political combination in power. A persistent bias toward imports remains embedded in the procurement machinery although the official policy trajectory in recent years has been leaning toward building strategic autonomy and cutting down foreign mediation.
India’s age-old defence preferences for manned aircraft and imported high-cost defence equipment seem to be standing in the way of building-up of mass production of cheap, one-way attack loitering drones. Decades of military focus on heavy manned aircraft and traditional artillery left small, low-cost autonomous weapons underfunded. The country’s recorded arms import value for 2024 stood at $1.168 billion in Trend Indicator Values (TIV). No official information is available on the value of arms import for 2025. The country is now the world’s second largest arms importer, after Ukraine, accounting for roughly 8.3 percent of global arms imports. Russia continues to be the biggest arms supplier with a share of nearly 40 percent, followed by France (30 percent) and Israel (15 percent). India continues to lack in large-scale domestic production for critical parts like high-performance small engines, secure communication links, and optical seekers, often forcing reliance on imports or constrained local suppliers.
But nothing can explain why the country is lacking in the production of low-cost attack drones. These drones have lately changed the very war manuals in West Asia, Ukraine and Russia. Notably, Iran has perfected the manufacturing of low-cost, long-range saturation warfare with the Shahed-136 series drones. The production cost is estimated at US$20,000 to $50,000 each. Thanks to the massive use of low-cost attack drones against highly expensive US and Israeli missiles and conventional interceptors, the Persian Gulf country has spent significantly less on direct military hardware than its two adversaries, the US and Israel. Tehran relies heavily on low-cost asymmetric assets, such as Shahed drones forcing adversaries to expend expensive interceptors like Patriot ($4 million) and THAAD ($12 million) missiles.
Today, Iran has become a primary exporter and developer of low-cost OWA drones while China dominates the global commercial drone component supply chain (motors, microchips, and batteries). Chinese dual-use components heavily supply low-cost mass-produced drone operations globally, alongside expansive state production capacity. In fact, China has emerged as the world’s largest manufacturer and exporter of armed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), offering advanced strike capabilities at a fraction of Western costs.
China’s major attack drone families include Wing Loong, Rainbow (CH) and Jiu Tian Mothership. Wing Loong is built by the Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group. These medium-altitude, long-endurance (MALE) drones handle reconnaissance and precision strikes. Models like the Wing Loong II offer long flight times and heavy weapon payloads. Rainbow (CH) is built by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), the CH-4 and CH-5 series match the roles of US counterparts like the Reaper while carrying guided missiles and bombs. China recently unveiled Jiu Tian Mothership, a large airborne command-and-launch hub. It can carry and release swarms of smaller attack drones midair.
Russia mass-produces licensed iterations of imported designs (such as the Geran-2 version of Shahed) to sustain high-volume saturation strikes. Russia produces thousands of Iranian-designed Shahed-type and domestic attack drones at industrial sites like the Alabuga Special Economic Zone in Tatarstan. It has shifted toward jet-powered variants (such as Geran-4 and Geran-5) capable of speeds up to 500–960 km/h. Recent deployments include “steel-cutter” payloads (KRSN) designed to target high-voltage power lines and metal structures.
Ukraine operates a large decentralized and agile miltech manufacturing network, scaling rapid battlefield innovation and producing hundreds of thousands of low-cost tactical attack and FPV strike drones. Ukraine has transformed into a massive drone superpower, producing millions of unmanned aerial vehicles annually through an ecosystem of over 500 private and domestic defence tech companies. Ukraine produces millions of FPV (First Person View) and interceptor units annually, outputting drones at a rate six to nine times larger per working-age person than Russia. The Ukraine military relies on an agile procurement ecosystem—often described as an “Amazon for drones”—allowing individual brigades to directly order custom-configured systems from domestic developers. Leading local manufacturers source up to 70 percent of their parts domestically, building complete units with local flight controllers, frames, and thermal cameras.
The US is scaling up multi-billion-dollar initiatives like the Pentagon’s Drone Dominance programme to domestically manufactured hundreds of thousands of low-cost, one-way attack drones with target costs ranging from $2,300 to $5,000 per unit. The US Army has taken a SkyFoundry initiative this year to rapidly manufacture and field hundreds of thousands of low-cost, expendable attack drones. Managed by the Pentagon with a $1 billion plus prototyping and procurement framework targeting over 200,000 to 300,000 small, supply-chain-secure unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) and one-way attack drones by 2027. The US Army Materiel Command is into building critical drone components—targeting a production goal of 10,000 small drones per month to supply every squad. Its low-cost uncrewed combat attack system (LOCUS) has been deployed operationally in 2026. These one-way attack drones (modelled after iterative long-range Shahed concepts) serve as high-volume strike assets.
It is time that India strongly accelerates domestic manufacturing of low-cost, attritable attack drones to shift the economics of modern conflict away from expensive, high-risk conventional air strikes. The country must have a strategic roadmap to manufacture such attack drones in a big way to fully meet its domestic needs, and also emerge as a reliable exporter to friendly nations. It must expand beyond single-platform defence PSUs to a distributed private-startup manufacturing reserve and increase PLI funding allocations substantially to achieve robust industry-scale targets. It must integrate CRPA antennas and advanced IMUs to operate effectively in GPS-denied and jammed environments and deploy AI-enabled onboard targeting to ensure autonomy when communication links drop. India’s defence department must treat drones as consumable combat inventory rather than scarce capital equipment. It should accelerate technology update cycles from years down to weeks based on real-time feedback. After all, low-cost unmanned attack drones have fundamentally upended modern military economics by replacing multi-million-dollar precision weapons with mass-producible systems. (IPA Service)
