Kamal Shah
The North Tech Symposium 2026 spotlights a decisive, upbeat shift in India’s defence sector—from a build‑to‑print era to a robust, design‑and‑develop ecosystem focused on self‑reliance. In an exclusive conversation with Indian Aerospace & Defence Magazine, Arun T. Ramchandani, SIDM President and & Senior Vice President & Head, Precision Engineering and Systems (PES) IC, Larsen & Toubro Limited, highlights how the industrial base has matured: private firms, PSUs, startups, academia and DRDO are now collaborating across the value chain to deliver increasingly complex indigenous solutions. Key enablers include DRDO’s technology transfers and mentorship, a vibrant defence startup community, lessons from recent operations that exposed capability gaps, and policy plus investment flows that fuel long‑term R&D and innovation.
Arun T. Ramchandani also calls out the crucial industry challenge of turning lab successes into dependable field systems. The main execution gaps are the lab‑vs‑field mismatch, weak end‑user insight, and inadequate authentic field testing. To bridge these, he urges user‑centric development (developers embedded with operators), structured support for rigorous field trials (funding, logistics, access), and early, iterative resolution of deployment issues. The overall tone is optimistic: with focused collaboration, policy support and persistent testing in real environments, India can rapidly consolidate an indigenous defence design ecosystem that meets operational demands and secures strategic autonomy.
Q. North Tech Symposium 2026 reflects a strong push toward defence self-reliance. From your vantage point, how is the Indian industry transitioning from a build-to-print mindset to a design-and-develop ecosystem?
A. The Indian defence industry is undergoing a substantive and strategic transition from a predominantly “build‑to‑print” or licensed‑manufacturing paradigm to an indigenous, design‑and‑develop ecosystem centered on self‑reliance. This transformation is multi‑faceted and driven by technological, institutional and geopolitical imperatives.
Over the past decades, the industrial base has matured from a small set of firms largely engaged in licensed production to a broader, more capable ecosystem. Domestic private firms, public sector undertakings, academic institutions and new entrants now participate across the value chain — from systems integration and subsystems to platforms and software — enabling progressively complex indigenous solutions.
Enabling factors
Several elements have enabled and accelerated this shift:
– DRDO’s role: The Defence Research and Development Organisation has been instrumental in transferring technology, co‑developing systems with industry, and providing technical mentorship that has uplifted domestic design capabilities.
– Startup ecosystem: Policy measures and financial support have fostered a vigorous defence startup community. Startups contribute agility, niche technical expertise, and rapid prototyping capabilities that complement established industry players.
– Operations Sindoor (watershed): Operational experiences and exercises that exposed capability gaps have underscored the necessity for indigenous systems tuned to local requirements, catalysing policy and procurement reforms favouring self‑developed solutions.
Geopolitical drivers
Contemporary geopolitical dynamics reinforce the imperative for true self‑reliance. Dependence on foreign licences and supply chains can constrain strategic autonomy; indigenous design capability is essential for developing systems optimized for national operational environments, ensuring secure supply, and maintaining lifecycle control.
Acceleration through R&D & investment
The industry’s trajectory is being further accelerated by concentrated investments in R&D supported by government schemes that incentivize in‑country development, along with private equity and venture capital flows into defence tech. These financial and policy levers are enabling longer‑term technology development, enhancing competitiveness, and spawning a sustainable innovation ecosystem.
Q. One of the Symposium’s key objectives is bridging the gap between operational needs and technological solutions. Where do you see the biggest gaps today—from an industry execution standpoint?
A. There is a persistent and critical challenge: translating laboratory-proven technologies into reliable, effective solutions in operational field settings.
Three principal gaps are identified:
(1) a pronounced lab-versus-field discrepancy, where controlled demonstrations do not reflect real-world conditions;
(2) inadequate understanding of end-user operations and requirements; and
(3) insufficient testing under authentic field conditions.
To close these gaps, we propose a bold, connected set of remedies:
– Adopt user-centric development practices that embed developers within actual operational contexts so they comprehend real workflows, constraints, and priorities.
– Create deliberate enablement for field testing by allocating time, funding, logistical support, and access to representative environments and users so equipment is exercised under realistic stresses.
– Prioritize early identification and resolution of deployment challenges through iterative trials and staged rollouts.
– Institutionalize a “fail fast” mentality: encourage rapid prototyping, honest assessment of failures, and quick iteration to accelerate learning and convergence on workable designs.
– Invest in sustained testing and refinement to attain the level of maturity and reliability evident in more advanced deployments.
The historical note on initiatives such as “Operations Sindoor”—which yielded both successes and failures—reminds us that innovation alone does not ensure operational success. Systematic, user-informed field testing and an organizational commitment to iterate on failures are required to close the gap between technological possibility and dependable real-world performance.
Q. How can companies ensure that solutions are not just technologically advanced but also rugged, scalable, and sustainable in real battlefield conditions?
A. Absolutely — rigorous testing is the linchpin that turns cutting-edge military ideas into dependable battlefield capabilities! Ensuring solutions are not just technologically advanced but also robust, scalable, and sustainable under real combat conditions demands a serious, disciplined approach to validation.
– Core requirement: Comprehensive testing across both high-fidelity simulations and authentic field conditions is essential. Only this dual approach reveals true operational performance and failure modes.
– Major challenge: Delivering that level of testing is a great, resource-intensive effort that requires sustained commitment and coordination from government, defence organizations, and end-users.
– Role of laboratories: Institutions like DRDO are indispensable, providing technical expertise, testing infrastructure, and program management to bridge lab prototypes to field-ready systems.
– Strengthening DTIS: The Defense Testing and Innovation Scheme must be enhanced and made more effective. A stronger DTIS would expand access to genuine field trials for more developers, accelerating maturation, ensuring interoperability, and improving overall readiness and reliability.
In short, invest in scalable, realistic testing programs, empower labs like DRDO, and revamp DTIS and we’ll turn promising technologies into dependable force multipliers on the ground.
Q. India has made strides in assembly and integration—but how far are we from achieving true deep manufacturing sovereignty?
A. The core message is simple but important: building genuine, deep manufacturing and deep-tech capability for high‑tech systems is hard, and it takes more than goodwill or occasional contracts. Right now, there are real gaps — countries and companies may be good at assembling complex systems and integrating subsystems, but when the mission depends on a handful of specialized components (ring‑laser gyros, high‑end semiconductors for electro‑optical detectors, precision photonics, etc.), the supply and the know‑how often don’t exist domestically. That’s dangerous for strategic autonomy, and it’s expensive and time‑consuming to fix.
Why is it so tough
– The technologies themselves are inherently complex. Making precision inertial sensors or advanced detector chips isn’t just “smaller parts” — it involves unique materials, cleanrooms, ultra‑precise machining, metrology, and manufacturing processes developed over decades.
– Economies of scale matter. Many of these manufacturing processes only make sense if you invest heavily and produce at significant volume; without that, per‑unit costs and failure rates stay high.
– Integration expertise is necessary but not sufficient. You can be brilliant at assembling a system from parts you buy overseas, but if those parts are suddenly unavailable or embargoed, the whole system is at risk.
– Talent and institutional memory are fragile. Skills in these domains are scarce, and the training pipelines and industrial ecosystems to sustain them take years to build.
What’s needed to close the gap
– Big, sustained R&D investments. Short bursts of funding or pilot projects won’t cut it. You need long‑term money for basic research, process development, prototyping, and scale‑up.
– National missions that set clear goals and align incentives. A focused national effort (with measurable milestones and accountability) helps coordinate resources across ministries, labs, and industry and signals commitment to private partners.
– Structured collaboration between defence research bodies, academia, and industry. Each brings something critical: government labs and defence agencies bring mission needs and long‑term funding; universities supply fundamental research and talent; industry brings manufacturing know‑how and scale. Formal consortia, public‑private partnerships, and shared testbeds help reduce duplication and accelerate learning.
– The right enablers: funding, skilled people, patient capital, infrastructure (fab facilities, precision foundries, metrology centers), and a regulatory and procurement environment that rewards domestic capability development rather than only lowest‑cost procurement.
Practical implications
– Expect high upfront costs and time horizons measured in years or decades, not months. Policymakers must be willing to tolerate early inefficiencies to achieve strategic resilience later.
– Prioritize chokepoints. Not every component needs to be made domestically; identify critical technologies where dependence is unacceptable (e.g., certain sensors, microelectronics, or optical assemblies) and focus resources there.
– Build ecosystems, not just factories. Manufacturing sophistication arises from networks of suppliers, training programs, test and validation facilities, and standards — all of which need deliberate cultivation.
– Leverage imports strategically. While building domestic capability, continue selective imports to meet short‑term needs and to learn from partners, while protecting intellectual property and ensuring transfer of know‑how where possible.
Bottom line: Achieving deep manufacturing and deep‑tech independence for high‑tech systems is achievable, but only with sustained R&D funding, mission‑level coordination, and close collaboration among defence labs, academia, and industry. It’s a marathon that requires patient capital, focused priorities, and persistent effort to turn complex, capital‑intensive technologies from imported black boxes into home‑grown strengths.
Q. From L&T’s experience in complex defence platforms, what are the key enablers required to scale high-end manufacturing within India?
A. High-tech manufacturing faces two interlinked, fundamental obstacles: inadequate R&D funding and insufficient operational scale. First, R&D Funding & Infrastructure: developing cutting-edge products requires sustained capital for research, prototyping, testing, and specialized facilities and equipment that underpin high-tech manufacturing. Without access to reliable financing and built-out infrastructure hubs (labs, pilot lines, advanced tooling), promising technologies stall before they can prove technical and commercial feasibility.
Second, Operational Scale: many high-tech investments are economically viable only at a large scale and across multiple markets. Small, domestic-only production runs often leave fixed costs and capital-intensive facilities underutilized, pushing unit costs too high. To succeed, manufacturers must “think big” — building production and commercialization strategies that reach international customer bases and leverage global supply chains. Without scale, many otherwise attractive innovations remain unprofitable.
To bridge this viability gap, there can be two complementary levers:
1) Government Support — targeted public interventions can materially change the economics of early-stage high-tech manufacturing. Capital subsidies (direct grants, low-interest loans, equity co-investment) reduce the initial financing burden and de-risk investments for private actors. Guaranteed product off-take (advance purchase agreements, public procurement commitments) provides revenue certainty during the critical ramp-up period, enabling firms to justify large capital expenditures and attract further private investment. These tools help overcome the “first mover” barrier and accelerate the transition from prototype to volume production.
2) Global Market Access — securing routes to international customers multiplies the addressable market size and enables firms to reach the volume thresholds needed for cost competitiveness. Open trade channels, export support programs, international partnerships, and integration into global value chains let manufacturers scale sales, diversify demand risk, and benefit from economies of scale. Access to global markets also attracts strategic private capital, as investors see clearer paths to revenue and returns.
Closing the viability gap requires coordinated public-private action. Strategic government support—financial de-risking and guaranteed demand—paired with policies and partnerships that enable global market access, creates the scale and stability high-tech manufacturing needs to thrive. These measures unlock investment, speed commercialization, and turn promising technologies into competitive, export-ready industries.
Q. How should the Indian industry prepare for the increasing convergence of cyber, electronic, and kinetic warfare domains?
A. There has to be a pivotal transformation in the technological and operational environment driven by the convergence of advanced electronics, sensing systems, and cyber/non‑kinetic warfare capabilities. This can be summarized in four interrelated, actionable propositions:
1. Integration as the Central Challenge
– The essential problem is not the individual maturity of electronics, sensing, or cyber tools but the ability to integrate them into interoperable, resilient systems. Seamless integration determines operational effectiveness, decision-making speed, and the capacity to exploit cross‑domain synergies.
2. Dual Emphasis on Specialization and System Integration
– Specialist firms must continue to push depth in discrete domains—high‑performance electronics, advanced sensor modalities, and sophisticated cyber/EM techniques—so that each element advances on its own performance and reliability metrics.
– Equally critical are integrator organizations whose mission is to combine these domain‑specific components into coherent architectures. These integrators require interdisciplinary engineering capability, systems‑of‑systems design expertise, and rigorous validation and verification processes to ensure end‑to‑end performance and security.
3. Enabling a Scalable, Collaborative Ecosystem
– Scalability depends on an ecosystem that facilitates trust, information exchange, standardized interfaces, and modular architectures. Public‑private partnerships, consortia, and open but secure standards play central roles in enabling multiple suppliers to contribute interoperable modules at scale.
– Investment in shared tooling—common simulation environments, secure data exchange fabrics, and certification regimes—reduces integration friction and accelerates fielding.
4. Accepting Distributed Expertise and Composability
– No single organization can realistically master every relevant technology at the cutting edge. Strategic success, therefore, rests on intentionally composing capability from specialists and ensuring that their outputs are connectable, auditable, and maintainable across the lifecycle.
– Policy and acquisition approaches should reflect this reality by incentivizing modularity, mandating clear interface standards, and rewarding demonstrable integration performance rather than monolithic self‑sufficiency.
Implications and Recommended Actions
– Prioritize funding and policy that balance deep domain R&D with programs explicitly dedicated to systems integration and interoperability testing.
– Develop and mandate open, secure interface standards and certification pathways to lower the cost and risk of multi‑vendor integration.
– Build centers of excellence and integrator partnerships that combine domain experts with systems architects, cybersecurity professionals, and rigorous test capability.
– Encourage commercial models that allow specialist innovators to scale via integrator relationships rather than attempting to become vertically complete.
The technological shift described requires a cultural and structural pivot: cultivate deep, domain‑specific innovation while simultaneously investing in the integrative capabilities, standards, and collaborative frameworks that allow those innovations to operate together as effective, scalable systems.
Q. Events like North Tech Symposium generate momentum—but often struggle with follow-through. What mechanisms can ensure that ideas presented translate into funded projects and inducted systems?
A. Events spark action, but strategy sustains success. Events are powerful catalysts. They concentrate attention, bring people together, and create surges of momentum: innovators meet users, ideas are tested, partnerships form, and industries briefly accelerate. That burst of energy is invaluable — it motivates, validates, and showcases possibilities. But by themselves, these episodic highs are fragile. Without follow-through, the enthusiasm wanes, relationships slacken, and promising initiatives wither.
That’s why a deliberate, long-term strategy is non-negotiable for building a resilient civil defence industrial base. The real work is steady, often unseen, and relentlessly practical: continuous investment in R&D and manufacturing capacity; rigorous, repeatable testing and validation pipelines; iterative “spiral” product development that evolves capability over time; and targeted workforce development to cultivate and retain specialized talent. Funders and policymakers must identify and fill capability gaps, ensuring resources are available not only for flashy demonstrations but for sustained capability maturation.
The backbone of this system rests on four interlocking pillars:
– Continuous development: ongoing projects that mature technology incrementally, keeping momentum between events.
– Talent cultivation: skilling programs, career paths, and incentives to attract and keep experts.
– Opportunity creation: pathways for innovators and companies to scale, partner, and field solutions.
– Stable funding: predictable, gap-focused investment that underwrites long-term capability and readiness.
Events and long-term strategy should be complementary. Use events to accelerate adoption, surface needs, and celebrate progress, then feed that energy into structured programs that institutionalize gains. Treat events as replenishing sparks, not the primary fuel. When the episodic excitement is harnessed and channelled into persistent development, testing, workforce growth, and resourcing, the civil defence industrial base becomes robust, agile, and sustainable.
Q. Finally, what message would you like to convey to young innovators, engineers, and entrepreneurs who aspire to contribute to India’s defence ecosystem?
A. I’ve been part of India’s defence ecosystem for the last 40 years, and what I’ve witnessed is nothing short of transformational. Over these decades, the ecosystem has grown multifold, and more importantly, its approach and intent have shifted decisively toward technology adoption and homegrown innovation. It’s now crystal clear: the future belongs to innovators, and our nation’s security will increasingly depend on smart, timely adoption of technology and the imaginative deployment of new solutions.
For the youth of India, this is an extraordinary moment. The security market is opening up vast opportunities for students, startups, engineers, and entrepreneurs to apply their skills and creativity where it truly matters. If you’re driven to build, experiment, and solve real-world challenges, there’s no better place than India today. I’m deeply optimistic, the future is bright, and India is poised to be the launchpad for tomorrow’s innovators. Seize the opportunity and help secure our nation with your ideas.
