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By:

Kedar Kulkarni

28 May 2026 at 5:09:28 am

72 Hours in May: India’s Defence Ecosystem Comes of Age

Last month saw three major indigenous defence breakthroughs in three days, underscoring India’s growing ability to build strategic technologies at home. AI generated image For most of its post-independence history, India’s strategic establishment has had a peculiar relationship with military power. Major acquisitions were announced in press conferences. Sophisticated platforms were purchased abroad. The long years of design work, testing and technological development often occurred out of...

72 Hours in May: India’s Defence Ecosystem Comes of Age

Last month saw three major indigenous defence breakthroughs in three days, underscoring India’s growing ability to build strategic technologies at home. AI generated image For most of its post-independence history, India’s strategic establishment has had a peculiar relationship with military power. Major acquisitions were announced in press conferences. Sophisticated platforms were purchased abroad. The long years of design work, testing and technological development often occurred out of public view, frequently in partnership with a Soviet and later Russian supplier, and were judged only by results that emerged decades later. India’s defence story, for much of that history, was one of patient procurement. In recent years, it has begun to look rather different. Significant Milestones Between May 7 and May 9, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) conducted three separate tests of three distinct technologies. While any one of them would ordinarily have commanded headlines of its own, the tests were three significant milestones in a span of seventy-two hours. On May 7, off the Odisha coast, an Indian Air Force Jaguar dropped a 500-kilogram bomb fitted with what the Ministry of Defence calls India’s first indigenous glide weapon system, the Tactical Advanced Range Augmentation kit, or TARA. The technology is deceptively modest. It converts conventional unguided bombs already held in large numbers by the Air Force into stand-off, precision-guided munitions, reducing dependence on imported systems such as the Israeli SPICE-2000 and moving India closer to the capability long provided by America’s JDAM family of kits. A day later, from the Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam Island, India conducted a successful flight trial of an Advanced Agni missile equipped with a Multiple Independently Targeted Re-entry Vehicle (MIRV) system. The Ministry stated that multiple payloads were delivered to distinct targets distributed across a wide area of the Indian Ocean. While the missile variant has not been formally identified, defence reporting has suggested it may be the long-anticipated Agni-VI. Whatever its nomenclature, the test marked a significant progression beyond Mission Divyastra of March 2024, which first demonstrated India’s MIRV capability. Then, on May 9 in Hyderabad, DRDO’s Defence Research and Development Laboratory successfully ran a full-scale scramjet combustor continuously for more than 1,200 seconds. Twenty minutes of sustained supersonic combustion may sound esoteric, but it represents one of the essential building blocks of a future hypersonic cruise missile. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh described the achievement as laying “a solid foundation” for India’s Hypersonic Cruise Missile Development Programme. Viewed individually, none of these tests fundamentally alters the strategic balance. India had already demonstrated MIRV technology. It had previously conducted a full-scale scramjet burn. Stand-off precision munitions have been under development for years. What is new is the clustering. The timing falls within a particularly significant calendar in India’s recent strategic history. Roughly a year earlier, during the first week of May 2025, India launched Operation Sindoor against terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan. For the first time, indigenous systems including BrahMos missiles, domestic air-defence networks and a growing inventory of Indian precision weapons were employed at scale under combat conditions. Since then, the Indian government has repeatedly framed Sindoor not merely as a military operation but as a symbol of India’s political, social and strategic will. The coincidence of these three tests with the operation’s anniversary is hardly accidental. The tests also occurred amid a more complicated geopolitical backdrop. Over the past year, New Delhi has grappled with renewed tensions with Washington over tariffs, Russian oil imports and the continuing shadow of potential CAATSA-related sanctions. For decades, Russia supplied many of India's most important military platforms, from Sukhoi fighters and T-90 tanks to S-400 systems and the jointly developed BrahMos missile. Recent geopolitical turbulence has served as a reminder that excessive dependence on any single supplier carries strategic risks. Against that backdrop, the scramjet milestone deserves particularly close attention. Nearly every major Indian hypersonic headline of the past two decades has been BrahMos-derived, which is to say it has rested on technology co-developed with Moscow's NPO Mashinostroyeniya. The combustor that ran for twenty minutes in Hyderabad, by contrast, is a Defence Research and Development Laboratory design, fuelled by indigenous hydrocarbon chemistry and supported by industry partners drawn from India's domestic supply chain. It is the first major brick in India’s hypersonic wall laid without a Russian hand on the trowel. The BrahMos-II programme, originally conceived as a Russian-assisted hypersonic successor, has reportedly progressed more slowly than anticipated owing to cost and developmental challenges. Increasingly, the architecture being pursued by DRDO appears to be the one now undergoing testing in Hyderabad. The strategic significance is difficult to overstate. For the first time, India is developing a critical-path hypersonic capability whose progress cannot be halted, delayed or conditioned by a foreign partner. Industrial Backbone India’s defence production crossed Rs. 1.51 lakh crore in 2024-25, an all-time high and an increase of 18 percent over the previous year. Defence exports reached Rs. 23,622 crore, more than thirty times their level a decade earlier, while nearly 16,000 micro, small and medium enterprises now participate in the country's defence manufacturing ecosystem. Behind those figures lies a series of policy interventions whose effects are only now becoming visible. Programmes such as Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX), the ADITI initiative and the Defence Industrial Corridors in Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu have sought to connect laboratories, start-ups, private manufacturers and the armed forces into a single innovation ecosystem. The BrahMos Integration and Testing Facility in Lucknow, inaugurated in 2025, has become a particularly visible symbol of this transformation. The objective is to build increasingly sophisticated technologies within the country itself. The TARA glide kit offers a useful example. Developed by Research Centre Imarat in Hyderabad through the Development-cum-Production Partner model, it brings together DRDO laboratories and private-sector manufacturing. The Advanced Agni programme similarly rests upon a network of indigenous suppliers specialising in metallurgy, guidance systems, electronics and rocketry. The scramjet combustor, meanwhile, was designed by DRDL and realised through domestic industrial partnerships. Progress Without Illusion None of this is to exaggerate India’s current position. The TARA kit arrives years after comparable Western systems entered service. The Advanced Agni's warhead count and effective range remain undisclosed. The scramjet achievement, impressive as it is, still remains a ground test. China and Russia already field operational hypersonic weapons, while the United States has begun deploying its own. So, while the gap remains real, the significance of the seventy-two hours between May 7 and May 9 lies in what the cluster reveals about the state of India’s defence-industrial base. Three indigenous systems, spanning precision-strike capability, strategic deterrence and future hypersonic warfare, reached important milestones within days of one another. They emerged from different laboratories and drew upon different industrial networks. Yet all reflected that India’s strategic technology ecosystem has reached a level of maturity at which meaningful advances increasingly emerge on its own timetable. The message is directed not only at Beijing and Islamabad, but also at Washington and Moscow. India’s strategic capabilities will continue to benefit from international partnerships. But the country’s most consequential military technologies are increasingly being designed, tested and produced at home. When Rajnath Singh flagged off the first batch of Indian-built BrahMos missiles in Lucknow in October last year, he observed that India had moved into the role of “a giver, not just a taker.” The phrase was intended to describe defence exports. So, while the era of patient procurement is not exactly over, it certainly is no longer the whole story. (The writer is Assistant Professor at the Ajeenkya D.Y. Patil University and a doctoral scholar in geopolitics. Views personal.)

The Soul of Bharat on the Big Screen

Mumbai: April 4, 2025, my heart feels heavier than it ever has. The news hit me like a monsoon storm—Manoj Kumar, the towering legend of Bollywood, the man who painted patriotism across our screens, is no more. At 87, he slipped away at Mumbai’s Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital, leaving behind a reel of memories that flicker in my mind like a projector that won’t stop spinning. As a movie fan who grew up with his films, I’m not just mourning an actor—I’m grieving the loss of a piece of my soul, a piece of India itself. They called him "Bharat Kumar," and oh, how he earned that name.


I remember the first time I saw ‘Upkar’ (1967). I was a kid, sprawled on the living room floor, eyes glued to our old TV. Manoj ji played Bharat, the farmer who gave everything—his dreams, his love—for his country’s soil. That song, “Mere Desh Ki Dharti,” wasn’t just a tune; it was a heartbeat, pulsing with pride and sacrifice. I’d hum it walking to school, feeling like I, too, could be that noble, that selfless. He won a National Film Award for that one, and rightly so—it wasn’t acting; it was living.

Then there was ‘Shaheed’ (1965), where he brought Bhagat Singh back to life. I’d sit there, popcorn forgotten, as he roared defiance against the British, his eyes blazing with a fire that could’ve lit up the darkest colonial night. It wasn’t just a film—it was a revolution on celluloid, a call to remember the blood that bought our freedom. Manoj ji didn’t just play the martyr; he became him, and every time I watch it, I feel that lump in my throat, that sting in my eyes. It’s no wonder it snagged three National Awards—his passion was a gift to us all.


Oh, and ‘Purab Aur Paschim’ (1970)—how do I even begin? He directed and starred as Bharat again, this time wrestling with the clash of East and West, showing us the beauty of our roots while the world tried to pull us away. I’d laugh at Saira Banu’s antics, then choke up when Manoj ji stood tall, singing “Hai Preet Jahan Ki Reet Sada.” It was a blockbuster, sure, but it was more—it was a love letter to India, penned in his signature hand-over-face style. That move, mocked by some, was his shield, his quiet strength, and I adored it.

And who could forget ‘Roti Kapda Aur Makaan’ (1974)? He directed and starred as Bharat—again, because who else could?—tackling poverty, injustice, and the gut-wrenching struggle for the basics of life. I’d watch, fists clenched, as he fought for the everyman, his voice cracking with raw emotion. It wasn’t just a movie; it was a mirror to our society, a cry for change. Seven Filmfare Awards across his career, they say, but this one felt like it carried them all—his heart bled through every frame.


Then there’s ‘Kranti’ (1981), the epic that had me on the edge of my seat. Manoj ji as the freedom fighter, leading Dilip Kumar and Hema Malini through a storm of rebellion—it was grand, it was gritty, it was everything Bollywood could be. “Zindagi Ki Na Toote Ladi” still echoes in my ears, a reminder of the battles he fought on screen, battles that felt so real I’d dream of joining the fight. He didn’t just direct that film; he sculpted a monument to resilience, and I’d cheer like a fool every time he outsmarted the British.


As I sit here, flipping through these memories, I can’t help but feel cheated. Manoj Kumar wasn’t just an actor or director—he was family. Born Harikrishan Goswami in 1937, he carried the Partition’s scars from Abbottabad to Delhi, turning pain into purpose. He gave us over 50 films in a career spanning four decades, snagging the Padma Shri in 1992 and the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 2015—honors that felt too small for a man who gave India its cinematic soul. His last role in ‘Jai Hind’ (1999) might’ve flopped, but it didn’t dim his light in my eyes.


I’d read how he met Bhagat Singh’s mother before ‘Shaheed’, seeking her blessing—can you imagine the weight of that? Or how PM Lal Bahadur Shastri urged him to make ‘Upkar’ after the 1965 war, handing him “Jai Jawan Jai Kisan” like a sacred torch? That’s who he was—a man who didn’t just entertain but carried a nation’s dreams.


Manoj ji, you weren’t just “Bharat Kumar” to me—you were the uncle who taught me pride, the friend who shared my anger, the poet who sang my hopes. Your films weren’t movies; they were my childhood, my rebellion, my tears. I’ll miss you like I miss the India you dreamed of—flawed, fierce, and forever ours. Rest in peace, sir. Om Shanti.

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