By A Correspondent

New Delhi: India must urgently raise its defence research and development (R&D) spending if it aims to become a global leader in military technology, Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) Chairman Samir V. Kamat said on December 15, 2025, even as a Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence pressed the Ministry of Defence to ensure full utilisation of allocated funds to accelerate indigenous innovation.

Speaking at the 40th Air Chief Marshal (Retd) P. C. Lal Memorial Lecture organised by the Air Force Association, Kamat warned that India’s current R&D investment is far below global benchmarks.

“We want to be a technology leader, but our R&D budget is very low. India allocates only about 0.65% of GDP to R&D, while our competitors spend over 2%. In defence, R&D accounts for just 5.75% of the defence budget, compared to over 10% in the United States,” he said.

Kamat underlined that the nature of warfare is rapidly evolving across land, air, sea, space, cyber, and information domains, making sustained investment in cutting-edge research essential.

Linking defence innovation to national goals such as Aatmanirbhar Bharat (Self-Reliant India), Make in India, and India’s vision to be a developed nation by 2047, he said the country faces persistent challenges, including limited control over global supply chains, shortage of high-end R&D talent, weak civil-military fusion, and procedural hurdles that affect ease of doing R&D.

To bridge these gaps, the DRDO chief called for deeper participation from industry, start-ups, MSMEs, and academia. He highlighted DRDO’s push for development-cum-production partnerships, noting that the organisation has signed over 2,000 technology transfer agreements and opened its test facilities to more than 600 industries since 2022.

Programmes such as Dare to Dream and the DRDO–Ministry of Education PhD collaboration are designed to build a future-ready defence R&D workforce.

On future capabilities, Kamat said DRDO is prioritising areas such as underwater and space situational awareness, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), man-unmanned teaming, cyber defence, secure communications, AI-enabled command and control, and ballistic and hypersonic missile defence—initiatives aligned with Operation Sudarshan Chakra outlined by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

He added that several indigenous weapon systems, including guided Pinaka rockets, advanced torpedoes, air defence missiles, and next-generation anti-tank and anti-ship missiles, are expected to be inducted over the next one to three years.

Panel Asks DRDO To Use Full R&D Funds

Backing DRDO’s thrust, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence, chaired by BJP MP Radha Mohan Singh, has taken a positive view of the organisation’s deep-technology work and urged the Defence Ministry to ensure complete utilisation of budgetary allocations.

The committee, in an Action Taken Report last week, highlighted DRDO’s efforts in hypersonics, UAVs, drones, directed energy weapons, lasers, and artificial intelligence, and reiterated its recommendation for assured funding at all stages of the budgetary process.

In the current financial year, DRDO has been allocated INR 26,816 crore, with an additional INR 500 crore approved to support deep-tech projects under the Technology Development Fund (TDF).

Significantly, the funding cap per TDF project has been enhanced fivefold—from Rs 10 crore to Rs 50 crore, aimed at enabling more ambitious and high-impact research and signalling stronger institutional backing for India’s defence innovation ecosystem.

The committee noted that DRDO has identified a wide range of deep-technology focus areas such as artificial intelligence, cognitive and quantum technologies, neuromorphic computing, military cyber systems, and compound semiconductors.

These domains are seen as foundational to next-generation warfare and long-term strategic autonomy. Responding to the panel’s observations, the Ministry of Defence assured that adequate budgetary support would be extended to both the armed forces and DRDO, reiterating the government’s commitment to defence innovation.

Over the past three years, 12 projects worth INR 23.61 crore have been sanctioned under the TDF in emerging areas such as quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and robotics.

DRDO has also strengthened academia-industry collaboration by establishing 15 DRDO Industry Academia Centres of Excellence (DIA-CoEs) across IITs, IISc, and central and state universities.

So far, 285 projects worth INR 1,037.48 crore have been approved as grants-in-aid, with outcomes expected to feed into future defence research programmes.

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