Warfare is going autonomous — India must catch up

Indian Express

a day ago

The nature of warfare has undergone an irreversible shift. From boots on the ground and dogfights in the air to remote strikes from unmanned platforms and AI-driven decision cycles, war is now a contest of networks, autonomy, and lethality at machine speed. Nations that adapt to this shift will dominate; those that lag will perish in obsolescence.
In this evolving paradigm, four key assertions emerge. One, artillery (rockets/missiles) will dominate offensive operations. Two, air defence (AD) will become the primary defensive shield. Three, sappers will rise in operational relevance beyond mobility and countermobility. And four, the infantry and the armoured corps will execute decisive manoeuvres, shaped by strategic fires and autonomous systems.
However, a unifying thread underpins these shifts: All combatants and systems must become autonomous. Anduril Industries, a US-based defence tech firm, is at the frontier of this transformation, pushing the envelope in autonomous warfare — on land, at sea, and in the air.
India must urgently grasp the significance, absorb the knowledge, and accelerate its entry into this ecosystem of autonomous combat systems. The clock is ticking, and the need for rapid adaptation is pressing.
Artillery's dominance is being rewritten by autonomy and reach. It is no longer the 'support arm' but the shaper of the battlespace. In modern systems, such as the HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) and Pralay-class SRBMs (Short-range ballistic missile), target acquisition is facilitated through AI-assisted ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) networks. Real-time data from drones, satellites, or ground radars enables autonomous strike decisions with minimal latency.
Autonomous artillery must integrate target prioritisation, trajectory calculation, and dynamic retargeting — particularly in saturated battlespaces with decoys and GPS jamming. Autonomous fire units must function in near isolation with embedded computational power.
The blending of strategic missile roles with tactical rocket utility — augmented by UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) coordination — gives artillery a dual-use capacity never seen before. The future will see autonomous missile artillery regiments function as strategic tools of deterrence and tactical tools of disruption.
As the battlespace fills with drones, loitering munitions, and precision air threats, air defence has become both a shield and a sword. AI algorithms embedded in systems like S-400, Iron Dome, and the Israeli Barak-MX can autonomously distinguish threats by trajectory, speed, RCS (Radar Cross Section), and behaviour, deciding in real-time what to intercept and how.
Future AD systems must function in modular, redundant layers — each independently able to cue, track, and engage without centralised direction. Anduril's Lattice OS exemplifies this through the coordination of distributed AI sensors that facilitate cross-domain responses. Autonomous AD will increasingly combine EW (electronic warfare), jammers, EMP pulses, and soft-kill drones with traditional missiles. The AD environment will itself become a battleground of man versus machine versus machine.
Combat engineers will emerge not only as physical facilitators but also as digital architects of terrain shaping. Autonomous bridging systems, mine-clearing bots, and construction UGVs (Unmanned Ground Vehicles) will enable engineering functions without exposing troops. AI route planning will identify optimal breaching points and tunnel networks.
Sappers will deploy programmable decoys — heat-emitting dummy tanks, radar-mimicking structures, and electromagnetic spectrum obfuscation tools — to confuse enemy intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems and fire systems. AI-equipped drones will scout for chemical/radiological contamination, with autonomous decontamination robots managing zones, critical in high-threat environments like sub-conventional theatres or border skirmishes near WMD stockpiles.
The boots-on-ground forces will remain indispensable — but only as the tip of an AI-enabled, precision-shaped spear. The modern infantryman will wear integrated heads-up displays (HUDs), battle management systems, health telemetry, and real-time situational awareness feeds. Sections will carry micro-drones and deployable jammers, transforming them into digitally autonomous squads.
Tanks will still break through — but their survivability and lethality will depend on unmanned reconnaissance drones, AI-enabled fire controls, and active protection systems (APS). Platforms like Russia's Uran-9 or Germany's Rheinmetall Mission Master represent the future: Autonomous tank escorts and resupply units. Therefore, Anduril's work in unmanned submarines, AI-equipped robotic tanks, and loitering sea drones sets a precedent. These systems can autonomously patrol, detect, and even neutralise threats without a tethered control centre.
India's challenge
India lacks an integrated private defence-tech ecosystem with this level of vertical integration and autonomy. While the DRDO (Defence Research and Development Organisation), BEL (Bharat Electronics Ltd), and select private firms are developing UAVs and loitering munitions, there is no equivalent to Anduril's OS-level multi-domain integration. This is the frontier India must cross — and quickly.
The Indian military must move beyond 'support arms' and 'teeth-to-tail' ratios and redefine operational autonomy as a force structuring principle. Mission command must extend to machines, not just men.
India, therefore, needs a defence-tech incubation model integrating academia, startups, and DRDO labs; investment in dual-use AI, ML, computer vision, and edge processing; a Ministry of Defence-run autonomous warfare centre, modelled on the US DIU (Defence Innovation Unit).
The private sector must not be a vendor — it must be a strategic partner. HAL, BEL, and BDL must co-develop with entities like L&T, Bharat Forge, Data Patterns, and new-age tech firms to build indigenous equivalents to Anduril's Lattice, Ghost, and Roadrunner.
Future warfare will not wait for human consensus. Decisions will be made in milliseconds, across domains, by machines entrusted with limited but lethal authority. Artillery, air defence, sappers, infantry, and armour — all must be able to operate autonomously within the mission framework. Anduril Industries has demonstrated what is possible. It is now India's strategic imperative to match — and eventually lead — in the development of autonomous land, sea, air, and cyber combat systems.
The writer is a lieutenant colonel (veteran), former Armoured Corps officer and defence analyst