UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

[uddu]

https://x.com/VivekSi85847001/status/19 ... 1792296447
@VivekSi85847001
The next big thing in India's Loitering drone development

Sheshnag-150 Loitering drone by New Space during trial. Will be fun to see wave of this low cost drone towards enemies

1000+ Km Range, 5 hrs endurance
25-40 Kg Payload of different Kind.

@joe_sameer
Sir

[Rakesh]

India's next-gen military drones poised for a combat edge
https://www.indiatoday.in/india-today-i ... 2025-11-08
08 Nov 2025

[A Sharma]

Indian Army, IAF ask DRDO for 16 laser anti-drone systems with upgraded range to counter Pakistan’s suicide UAVs

[saip]

They are talking of producing MILLIONS of drones per year by Russia and Ukraine. So where are we in that?

Drones have already revolutionized warfare. They’re about to do it again
CNN

[pravula]

They are talking of producing MILLIONS of drones per year by Russia and Ukraine. So where are we in that?

Drones have already revolutionized warfare. They’re about to do it again
CNN

We don't even produce hundreds of infantry rifles per decade. We still import...talk of drones...

[stephen]

They are talking of producing MILLIONS of drones per year by Russia and Ukraine. So where are we in that?

I guess drones, especially the ones that are not MALE or HALE, are evolving a bit too fast, where, one tactic would work for a maximum of a week or for just a few days and then suddenly the other party would know how to jam or make the drones operationally useless. In this fast evolving scenarios I dont know how our defense forces would allocate funds for mass production of a particular type and keep them in storage.
Where we seriously lack drones are for our troops performing CI duties as well as the BSF, and CRPF and other forces deployed in Anti naxal operations.
These troops need all kinds of drones from Kamakazi FPVs to drones mounted with TI and night vision. Our troops in the border need them by the thousands.

[saip]

To make drones jam proof they are using fiber optic cables. But how do you take down drone swarms if they come at you in thousands? Conventional weapons can't do it or would be too expensive. Only directed energy weapons could do it.

[Manish_P]

To make drones jam proof they are using fiber optic cables. But how do you take down drone swarms if they come at you in thousands? Conventional weapons can't do it or would be too expensive. Only directed energy weapons could do it.

Won't directed energy weapons be too costly as compared to traditional AAA ?

Also with current DEW you need to paint the drone for some time to fry it before moving to the next target.

With traditional AAA you can fire air burst rounds with each shells projectile fragment spread covering several feet

[Rakesh]

After Op Sindoor, India goes in for more Heron Mk IIs; Israel frontrunner for mega MALE drones deal
https://theprint.in/defence/after-op-si ... l/2795656/
01 Dec 2025

Order for 87 MALE drones will be split between 2 Indian firms in 64:36 ratio to ensure there are 2 independent manufacturing lines with at least 60% indigenous components.

[Tanaji]

Is Aura and those related projects still in development?

No doubt they have gold plated specs attached to them which will cause them to never see light of the day. In this space, we need to follow the SpaceX philosophy of iterate and fail fast - its unmanned so we can afford to fail.

[Amber G.]

To make drones jam proof they are using fiber optic cables. But how do you take down drone swarms if they come at you in thousands? Conventional weapons can't do it or would be too expensive. Only directed energy weapons could do it.

“Fiber-optic tethered drones” do exist, but they are a very small subset of drones and only work for niche missions (short-range, persistent surveillance, ship-based ISR, etc.). They are not the model for large offensive drone swarms, can’t range far, and are not scalable to "thousands".

For others..

EW and AI-enabled defenses are more scalable and cost-effective than purely kinetic or purely directed-energy systems against very large swarms.

Even “jam-resistant” drones have vulnerabilities:

- GPS/GNSS dependence — spoofing or degrading navigation can break swarm coordination.
-Inter-drone communication — swarms rely on mesh networking; disrupting timing / bandwidth c
-Control links / telemetry — even autonomous drones need updates or supervisory control.
(some discussion in GPS spoofing thread)

(EW has the advantage that one emitter can affect dozens or hundreds of drones at once. This makes it naturally more scalable than shooting things one-by-one)
(AI-enabled sensor fusion will probably do more to make swarms survivable or defeatable)
irected-energy weapons help, but they’re not the silver bullet)

DEW (Enegy) -Lasers and high-power microwaves are low cost per shot, high engagement rate and unlimited magazine (as long as you have power) but they have some limitations.

All works best when combined.. EW and AI.. etc....

This electronic-warfare (EW) + AI + layered-defense approaches have had brilliant success in Operation Sindoor. Low-level air-defense guns, counter-UAS measures, performed “with exceptional synergy,” creating what was described as an “impenetrable wall.”

>>>Operation Sindoor: Indian air defence units thwarted more than 600 Pakistani drones