DRDO Moves 30kW Anti-Drone Laser Toward Production After Operation Sindoor Lessons

A six-month clock on India's first anti-drone laser

DRDO will issue an expression of interest within the next six months to select an industry partner capable of taking its 30kW-class laser directed-energy weapon (DEW) to a first-of-production model, according to Dr B K Das, the organisation's Director General for Electronics and Communication Systems. The announcement, made in the third week of September 2026, marks the moment India's most powerful demonstrated laser weapon moves from the test range toward a factory floor.

"Technology is proved," Das said, while cautioning that the system still needs to clear additional stages before a production order can follow. The statement is a deliberate signal to industry: DRDO is done validating the physics and is now shopping for a manufacturing partner.

What the system does

The weapon is a truck-mounted, 30kW-class laser built to counter the kind of threat that dominated headlines during Operation Sindoor in May 2025 — cheap fixed-wing reconnaissance drones and small quadcopters that are individually inexpensive but collectively expensive to shoot down with missiles. Because a laser's "ammunition" is electricity rather than a warhead, DRDO has pitched the system's marginal cost per engagement as roughly equivalent to a few litres of petrol, against interceptor missiles that can cost lakhs of rupees each.

Within a roughly 5-kilometre engagement envelope, the laser can:

• Track and destroy fixed-wing UAVs and quadcopter swarms
• Burn through composite airframes, optics and onboard payload electronics
• Disable surveillance sensors and antennae on enemy platforms
• Re-engage multiple targets in rapid succession by electronically slewing the beam, rather than physically re-aiming a gun or launcher

Because the beam travels at the speed of light, engagement time is effectively limited by tracking and pointing accuracy rather than a projectile's time of flight — a meaningful advantage against fast, low-altitude drone swarms that current gun and missile-based air defence struggles to prioritise.

From CHESS Hyderabad to the battlefield

The system originates from DRDO's Centre for High Energy Systems and Sciences (CHESS) in Hyderabad, developed in partnership with academic institutions and Indian industry. Trials of the truck-mounted Mk-II(A) configuration concluded in August 2025, with earlier tests reported in April 2025 showing the system defeating a fixed-wing drone at range, deterring a seven-drone swarm attack, and destroying surveillance sensors and antennae — the results DRDO now says justify calling the technology "proved."

That places India in a small group of nations — alongside the United States, China, Russia and Israel — that have publicly demonstrated a laser weapon capable of shooting down fixed-wing aircraft, missiles and drone swarms.

The production question

DRDO's own laser-DEW roadmap already has a 2kW variant moving into production with Adani Defence, Astra Microwave and Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) involved, and a 10kW version that has received Acceptance of Necessity approval with BEL and Larsen & Toubro expected to take production roles. The 30kW system is the most powerful of the three, and DRDO's plan is understood to involve only a small number of technology-transfer licences — reporting around the announcement pointed to as few as three — rather than opening the design to the entire industrial base.

Likely contenders for those licences include Larsen & Toubro, Bharat Forge, Tata Advanced Systems and Alpha Design Technologies, either independently or in a consortium such as a reported BEL-Alpha combination, though DRDO has not confirmed which firms will ultimately receive licences. Whichever companies are selected will reportedly be required to stand up dedicated, secured final-assembly and laser-integration facilities within a set window after signing — underlining how tightly DRDO intends to control a technology it considers strategically sensitive.

DRDO is simultaneously working on 50–100kW laser-DEW variants and microwave-based directed-energy weapons under its longer-term roadmap, suggesting the 30kW system now heading toward industry is a stepping stone rather than DRDO's final word on directed energy.

Why it matters for India's air defence

Operation Sindoor exposed a specific and expensive problem: adversaries using disposable reconnaissance drones to locate air defence positions, forcing India to expend costly interceptor missiles on low-value targets. A laser system that can be fired repeatedly for the cost of fuel — with no physical ammunition to resupply — directly addresses that cost asymmetry, provided the beam-pointing, cooling and power-generation engineering can be made reliable enough for continuous field use, which is precisely what a production-grade first-of-production model is meant to prove out.

For India's broader defence-industrial base, the 30kW EOI is also a test case for how DRDO intends to commercialise its most sensitive technologies: through a small number of tightly licensed manufacturing partners rather than a broad tender, at a moment when the government is simultaneously pushing to open up drone and counter-drone production to a wider set of private players.

Sources

• DRDO To Seek Industry Partner For 30kW Counter-Drone Laser Weapon Within Six Months — Outlook India
• India Set To Deploy Indigenous Laser Weapon As DRDO Launches Production Push — Indian Masterminds
• DRDO Opens Door for Industry: Three ToT Licences for 30 kW Vehicle-Mounted Laser Directed Energy Weapon System — IDRW