IAF Walks 100 Drone-Industry Representatives Through Its Unmanned Systems Roadmap of 16 Platform Families
At a Vigyan Bhawan workshop with Drone Federation India, the IAF briefed around 100 industry representatives on its Unmanned and Autonomous Systems Roadmap, which spans 16 platform families in four tiers and prioritises indigenous propulsion, autonomy, resilient navigation and common interfaces.
Militaries usually tell industry what they want one tender at a time. On 21 October 2026, the Indian Air Force tried a different approach: it sat down with around 100 representatives of drone companies and associated industry partners at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi and walked them through its long-term plan for unmanned and autonomous systems.
The workshop, held in partnership with Drone Federation India (DFI), was chaired by Air Marshal Premkumar K, Director General (Weapon Systems) at Air Headquarters. Senior IAF and Ministry of Defence officials attended, along with DFI President Smit Shah. Copies of the roadmap booklet were handed out to participants.
What the roadmap covers
The document at the centre of the meeting is the IAF Unmanned and Autonomous Systems Roadmap, first released at IAF Dronathon 2026 at Pokhran on 14 September. According to reports of the workshop, it sets out future requirements across 16 platform families, grouped into four tiers:
- Strategic
- Operational
- Tactical
- Distributed/Attritable
The tiers broadly map onto how far, how long and how expensively a drone is meant to fly — from high-value, long-endurance platforms at the top to cheap, numerous systems at the bottom that can be lost in combat without crippling the force. The individual platform families have not been published in the reports.
The roadmap describes a layered, networked set of unmanned systems designed to work alongside the IAF's existing and future manned aircraft. Coverage of the workshop highlighted autonomy, manned–unmanned teaming and swarm operations as central themes.
The technology asks
The IAF flagged four priority technology areas for industry:
- Indigenous propulsion — engines and motors for drones, an area where Indian manufacturers still rely heavily on imported components.
- Autonomous software — the flight, mission and decision software that lets platforms operate with less human control, and lets one operator manage many aircraft.
- Resilient navigation — the ability to fly and find targets when satellite navigation is jammed or spoofed.
- Standardised interfaces — common hardware and software standards so payloads, data links and ground stations from different vendors can work together.
The stated purpose of the workshop was to help industry, start-ups and R&D organisations align their product development with the IAF's long-term needs, rather than guessing at them. The reports note that procurement, testing and deployment milestones remain subject to separate official announcements; no contracts or timelines were announced at the event.
Why a roadmap matters to industry
For a drone company, the hardest problem is often not engineering but demand. Building a new airframe, engine or autonomy stack takes years and capital. Without a clear signal of what the armed forces will buy, founders and investors struggle to justify the risk, and the services end up with products that do not quite fit their needs.
A public, tiered roadmap changes that. It tells companies where the IAF sees gaps, which technologies it considers foundational, and how it expects unmanned systems to fit into its wider force structure. Standardised interfaces in particular could open the door for smaller firms to supply subsystems — a sensor, a data link, a navigation module — rather than having to build entire aircraft.
Where this fits
India's drone industry has grown quickly over the past five years, helped by liberalised drone rules in 2021, a production-linked incentive scheme for drones and components, and restrictions on imports of foreign-made drones. The armed forces have since become major customers, placing orders for surveillance drones, loitering munitions and counter-drone systems with private Indian firms, many of them start-ups that came through the iDEX innovation programme.
Recent conflicts — from Ukraine to the Middle East — have shown that cheap, attritable drones used in large numbers can change the balance on a battlefield, and that resistance to jamming decides which ones survive. The IAF's choice of priorities, with resilient navigation and autonomy near the top, reflects those lessons.
The September Dronathon at Pokhran, where the roadmap was released, put industry systems through field trials. The October workshop is the follow-up: turning a document into a conversation about what industry can build, and how quickly.
What to watch
The real test will come in the procurement pipeline: requests for information and proposals that draw on the roadmap's platform families, and development programmes that fund indigenous propulsion and autonomy. If those follow, the roadmap could do for military drones what clear demand signals have done for other parts of India's defence industry — give start-ups the confidence to invest in the hard, slow technologies that India still imports.
Sources
- ANI: IAF engages industry on unmanned & autonomous systems roadmap at workshop hosted in partnership with Drone Federation India — https://aninews.in/news/national/general-news/iaf-engages-industry-on-unmanned-amp-autonomous-systems-roadmap-at-workshop-hosted-in-partnership-with-drone-federation-india20261021164641/
- Asianet Newsable: IAF holds stakeholder meet, unveils unmanned systems roadmap to industry — https://newsable.asianetnews.com/india/iaf-holds-stakeholder-meet-unveils-unmanned-systems-roadmap-to-industry-articleshow-r8fsz0i
- Indian Masterminds: IAF engages 100 drone industry representatives — https://indianmasterminds.com/news/indian-air-force-unmanned-systems-roadmap-244533/
- Bharat Shakti: IAF Lays Out Long-Term Requirements for Indigenous Drones, Autonomous Systems — https://bharatshakti.in/iaf-lays-out-long-term-requirements-for-indigenous-drones-autonomous-systems/
- Life of Soldiers: IAF engages Industry Outreach Programme on Unmanned and Autonomous Systems Roadmap — https://www.lifeofsoldiers.com/2026/10/23/indian-air-force-engages-industry-outreach-programme-on-unmanned-and-autonomous-systems-roadmap
- The News Mill: Indian Air Force shares unmanned systems roadmap with industry — https://thenewsmill.com/2026/10/indian-air-force-shares-unmanned-systems-roadmap-with-industry/