India recently has barred domestic manufacturers of military drones from using components made in China over concerns about security vulnerabilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The measure comes amid tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours and as New Delhi aspires to modernise its armed forces with India-made drones and other high-tech platforms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But as the nascent Indian industry looks to meet the military’s needs, the defence and industry figures said India’s security leaders were worried that intelligence-gathering could be compromised by Chinese-made parts in drones’ communication functions, cameras, radio transmission and operating software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
India’s approach complements phased import restrictions on surveillance drones since 2020 and is being implemented through military tenders, documents show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A senior defence official told publicly that Indian industry had become dependent on the world’s second-largest economy despite concern about cyberattacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Beijing has denied involvement in cyberattacks. China’s commerce ministry announced last week some drone-related equipment export controls, while the U.S. Congress in 2019 banned the Pentagon from buying or using drones and components made in China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
India has set aside $19.77 billion for military modernisation in 2023-24, of which 75% is reserved for domestic industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the ban on Chinese parts has raised the cost of making military drones locally by forcing manufacturers to source components elsewhere, government and industry experts said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sameer Joshi, founder of NewSpace Research and Technologies, a supplier of small drones for India’s military, said 70% of goods in the supply chain were made in China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
India relies on foreign manufacturers for both parts and entire systems as it lacks the know-how to make certain types of drones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A government-funded program to produce an indigenous Medium Altitude Long Endurance unmanned system is delayed by at least half a decade, said Y. Dilip, director of the state-run Aeronautical Development Establishment (ADE).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To fill these gaps, India will buy 31 MQ-9 drones from the U.S. for over $3 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, India is ambitious aiming to develop its domestic drone production. It is expected to reach a value of $10 billion by 2026, and to create over 100,000 jobs in the next five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Source: Reuters, grdiplomatic.com<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" India recently has barred domestic manufacturers of military drones from using components made in China over concerns about security vulnerabilities. The measure comes amid tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours and as New Delhi aspires to modernise its armed forces with India-made drones and other high-tech platforms. But as the nascent Indian industry looks to meet the military’s needs, the defence and industry figures said India’s security leaders were worried that intelligence-gathering could be compromised by Chinese-made parts in drones’ communication functions, cameras, radio transmission and operating software. India’s approach complements phased import restrictions on surveillance drones since 2020 and is<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4921,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76,95],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-defence","category-home-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grdiplomatic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grdiplomatic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grdiplomatic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grdiplomatic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grdiplomatic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4920"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/grdiplomatic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4920\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4923,"href":"https:\/\/grdiplomatic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4920\/revisions\/4923"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grdiplomatic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grdiplomatic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grdiplomatic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grdiplomatic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}