AI is reshaping warfare

AI is reshaping warfare: How India can keep pace

Examples from Iran to Venezuela show that the growing use of AI, military autonomy and algorithmic warfare in modern combat has created a ‘Manhattan Project’ moment, requiring India’s strategic-military establishment to urgently adopt these technologies through sovereign pathways. 

Tech in Conflict: Ukraine, Venezuela and Iran 

• Drones are being described as the greatest techno-military revolution since gunpowder and nuclear weapons.
• The integration of drones with AI has created a new form of drone warfare as both warcraft and statecraft.
• Ukraine uses an AI-enabled platform called Delta to combine radar imagery, social media feeds and battlefield data.Delta connects with drones to create a digital ‘kill web’ that reduces detection-to-neutralisation time to minutes.
• A 35-km corridor along the Russia-Ukraine frontier is called the “death zone”.In the “death zone”, artillery has been pushed back, tanks cannot move freely, and infantry is neutralised by drones.
• Surveillance drones detect infantry soldiers and FPV drones neutralise them within minutes.
• AI-supported insights were combined with electronic attacks, cyber exploits and Delta Force’s heliborne assault in Venezuela.
• In Iran, targeting packages were developed at machine speed rather than human speed.
• Machine-speed targeting enabled precise strikes that reportedly eliminated much of Iran’s leadership within minutes on February 28.

Autonomous Control

• Military autonomy is advancing rapidly and transforming the nature of modern warfare.

• Drone warfare is shifting from remote human control to algorithmic control.

• In the aerial domain, AI-powered autonomous fighter jets indicate the rise of collaborative airpower.

• The development of the YFQ-44A Fury by Anduril shows the growing role of AI in future combat aviation.

• Defence innovation is shifting from traditional defence companies to agile defence-tech startups.

Lethal Technologies and Strategic Competition

• Lethal military technologies are witnessing an unprecedented global boom.

• Mythos is described as a virtual cyber-nuke capable of disabling an adversary’s operating system.

• DeepSeek and Tau’s Law of Scaling reflect China’s growing technological ambition in AI and chips.

• Huawei’s goal of achieving 1.4 nanometre transistor density by 2031 shows China’s attempt to challenge advanced Nvidia chips.

Software-Driven Warfare

• Combat theatres are now witnessing software innovation cycles every three weeks.

• New military hardware is being deployed approximately every three months.

• The speed of technological change is making software central to modern warfare.

• The Ministry of Defence must evolve from a platform and weapons-focused institution into a software-driven enterprise.

What India Can Do- Future of Defence and Sovereignty

• India should create software capable of autonomously coordinating drone swarms. Such software should be able to identify objects of interest on the battlefield.

•India should build a diverse drone inventory with a target of five million drones by 2028, while deploying advanced counter-drone systems such as laser and microwave weapons along with dedicated drone-hunting teams. 

• These systems can help establish drone-driven and AI-enabled “kill webs” along the LoC and LAC.

• India should crowd the Low-Earth Orbit space for stronger space-based military capability.

• The focus should shift from persistent surveillance to offensive ISR — intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

• The 2027 defence budget should clearly reflect this technological transition.

• At least 40% of the ₹2 lakh crore modernisation budget should be spent on technological solutions.

Challenges

• This transition will require major cultural and structural transformation in India’s defence ecosystem.

• Defence institutions must adapt to faster innovation cycles and software-driven warfare.

Strategic Significance

Successful adoption of AI, autonomy and algorithmic warfare will be game changing for India by expanding crisis-response options, enabling combat overmatch against Pakistan and strengthening asymmetric deterrence against China.