NEW DELHI: India’s belated realisation of the security vulnerabilities in its drone ecosystem—exposed starkly by Pakistani incursions and Chinese components—has triggered a reset in doctrine, procurement, and technology development. Sai Pattabiram, Founder and Managing Director of Zuppa Geo Navigation Technologies, in an interview with The Sunday Guardian, explains how Operation Sindoor has become a turning point.
A Chennai-based deeptech drone and navigation company, Zuppa is one of six global companies manufacturing micro-drones for Indian infantry and special forces, and one of seven with its own autopilot technology.
Q: In light of Pakistan’s daily drone incursions and its recent deployment of Turkish SONGAR mega swarms during Operation Sindoor, how do you assess the threat posed by such large-scale swarm deployments, and what scalable, sustained technological responses does India need to counter this asymmetric warfare?
A: The deployment of Turkish SONGAR drone swarms was a well-planned move, which was an outcome of Pakistan’s daily intrusions using hundreds of drones to deliver narcotics, arms, explosives, etc. over the past 3–4 years—practically going unanswered by India, barring a couple of instances where drones were shot down by sharpshooters.
Combined with the hacking of India’s tactical drones from across the border by Pakistan—and earlier by China—this appears to have provided our adversaries with a fairly good knowledge of India’s capabilities in this kind of asymmetric warfare, more specifically, the lack of it. Having said that, in all fairness, security agencies in India realised the vulnerabilities of Indian drones only around August 2024 and have been addressing these vulnerabilities since then, with the formulation of the cybersecurity framework as well as an audit of Chinese components in them.
India’s over-reliance in the past on open-source drone technology and Chinese components has turned out to be a major limiting factor in the development of its domestic drone ecosystem— apart from turning into a national security problem. Solving the daily intrusion problem posed by Pakistan should be looked at as an opportunity to build an effective kinetic CUAS solution that can be used both during wartime and peacetime. Swarms of AI-enabled interceptor drones, coupled with an automated network of anti-aircraft guns like the L70—which were effectively used in Operation Sindoor—will be the solution for neutralising both swarms like SONGAR and the daily intrusions by drones from Pakistan.
Such solutions will have global appeal and demand as well, given the spurt in demand for China+1 solutions across the world. Zuppa currently has developed the interceptor drones and is working closely with Army Commands in developing and integrating a comprehensive solution to address learnings from Operation Sindoor, as far as the asymmetric small drone threats are concerned.
Q: Compared to Türkiye, China, or even Pakistan with foreign tech backing, what do you think are the key gaps in India’s drone warfare capabilities—both in terms of offensive deployment and doctrinal or technological preparedness?
A: The gaps in the Indian drone warfare capabilities can be attributed to the following factors:
I. The fact that a drone is a flying computer has never been properly understood and accepted across stakeholders in India till recently.
II. The missing out of this crucial understanding of the technology prior to its large-scale adoption has resulted in their deployment across both civilian and military domains without an appreciation of their dual-use nature and their potential threat to national security.
III. Thanks to this missing link, drones have always been visualised from the outside—i.e., the focus of drone use has always been accorded more importance than their potential security threat. This could be attributed to the fact that India has always been a mass adopter of computing technologies like personal and mobile computing, where the OEMs ensure the device’s cybersecurity, while the user starts using them out of the box. a. Thus, leading to an assumption by end users and policymakers that the same would be the case with drones.
IV. Over-reliance on the open-source cyber-physical stack has been a significant contributor to a false sense of ownership of core drone technologies.
V. A procurement process of L1, coupled with reverse auctions followed in finalising tenders, has led to lack of earnings for manufacturers, leading to rampant use of Chinese components in drones supplied to the Indian armed forces to enhance earnings for Indian assemblers (traders with screwdrivers). a. The user acceptance criterion of NCNC (No Cost No Commitment) demonstrations, false declarations of imports from “non-land border countries” for both the drones and components by so-called Indian manufacturers, and lack of understanding of the core technology across stakeholders have been a major setback to the adoption of Aatmanirbhar technologies and components, leading to a complete stagnation of the ecosystem till 2024.
VI. Past procurements being done without the involvement of the Army’s technical branches have resulted in the adoption of a varied range of technical specifications—i.e., lack of standardisation—leading to severe challenges in terms of interoperability, training, etc. Thankfully, these challenges have since been identified, especially post Operation Sindoor, and efforts are being made in the right direction to address them and narrow the gap with contemporary global leaders in drone technology like Turkey, Iran, and China.
Q: Considering the learnings from Operation Sindoor—including the need to operate in GPS-denied or EW-contested environments, and the internal vulnerabilities in drones (like secure datalinks, AI cores, and resilient chips)—how is Zuppa advancing its proprietary systems to address these challenges, and what progress has been made in emerging areas such as swarming drones, autonomous targeting, and drone-on-drone countermeasures?
A: As explained above, the realisation of the “deep end” of the technology is a very recent phenomenon in the Indian drone ecosystem. The very recent realisation of the critical importance of electronics within the drone is a step in the right direction for development and adoption of the learnings from Operation Sindoor. Thankfully, the fact that it happened before Operation Sindoor is a positive aspect, because the forces were generally aware of the limitations of their equipment and hence were able to build some capabilities around them that proved effective during the war— maybe not to the extent desired, but knowing the vulnerabilities does result in better preparedness. Certain major learnings from Operation Sindoor and other wars are as follows:
I. Fixed frequency communication systems are dead; hence, pure-play frequency jammers are history. Software-defined radios (SDRs) are the way forward.
II. Drones need to be able to operate in areas where full electronic warfare (EW) suites—like jamming, spoofing, phishing, denial of service, etc.—are actively deployed.
III. Aggressive kinetic counter-drone measures are essential in the thick of action.
IV. The ability to intrude into the adversary’s lowerlevel airspace is important.
V. The ability to rapidly respond to newer and newer adaptations of drone technology is critical. The current obsolescence cycle of drone technology in the Ukraine–Russia war is 8–10 weeks. Zuppa, by virtue of being the only Indian and one among seven globally developing and manufacturing proprietary, secure cyber-physical stacks for drones—based on our patented computing architecture—is working closely with multiple technical organisations and commands within the defence forces to address many of the learnings from Operation Sindoor. The focus is on development of closed-loop visual guidance systems that adapt our autopilot technology and our technical expertise in the area of embedded electronic control systems to deliver a system that is independent of external interferences and can achieve terminal tasks even in a completely saturated EW environment. Future drones deployed in active combat zones have to be hardened to assure tactical objectives—irrespective of the electronic warfare technologies deployed by adversaries. This is where Zuppa offers a key differentiator by way of its fully indigenous computing technology.
Q: Was Zuppa’s technology used during Operation Sindoor—either operationally, in planning and testing, or postop assessments? Additionally, what specific systems or platforms is Zuppa currently building or refining for the Indian military based on learnings from the operation?
A: As mentioned earlier, the Indian ecosystem has just started realising the shift to warfare becoming technical only now; hence, the importance of core drone technology and its geopolitical relevance is in future wars going forward. Hence, Zuppa’s technology found limited use for very localised situational awareness in Operation Sindoor, with a few units using its Ajeet Mini Drones.
The full potential of our indigenous computing architecture is being leveraged now with deep engagements with various technical arms of the defence forces to develop hardened equipment for the future of ongoing Operation Sindoor.
