The vulnerabilities of acquired drones have existed for a long time in India.
The secured military drone framework is still awaiting approval from the Ministry of Defence, nearly 18 months after its draft was first published way back in March, 2025. The Army Design Bureau (ADB), which authored the framework, resubmitted it to the Ministry more than a month ago after incorporating the latest of repeated feedback from the industry and other stakeholders, which was put in public in March of this year.
Sources said that the final draft of “Framework for Testing Security Vulnerabilities in Drones”, prepared after several rounds of consultations with internal and external stakeholders, is with Director General Acquisition for the last round of approvals ahead of its release.
The Ministry had swung into action after a series of investigative stories by businessline starting August 27, 2024, which exposed that domestic defense firms were passing off Chinese hardware and software as “Make in India” in drones supplied to the armed forces, prompting national security scare alerts. This was despite India having banned the import of complete Chinese drones and their spares in February 2022.
Drone Federation of India (DFI) president Smit Shah told businessine that the finalisation of military drone framework, as far as his understanding goes of discussions taking place sometime back, is taking time because of certain reservations the industry has over, for instance, on the mandated requirement on design of Integrated Circuits (ICs) or microchips, which they believe is not practical. Likewise, the deliberations are also taking place over certifications and cyber security keys.
Ops Sindoor
He said that since Ops Sindoor tactical drones worth ₹3000-4000 crore have been delivered so far, while the armed forces are expected to acquire in next over two years more unmanned systems valued at least at Rs 15,000 crore.
Globally, governments are waking up to emerging potential threats posed by Chinese components in unmanned systems, which is surprising to militaries as they defy their security compliance architecture.
On August 9, 2026, the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence discovered an undisclosed vulnerability in a drone fleet — Chinese-origin camera components on Royal Navy K3 Scout vessels which were quietly sending “heartbeat” signals to an IP address in China, recent news reports highlighted. While nobody could prove that sensitive data leaked from the data centres, the UK MoD took action within days, investigated and made public what it found.
The vulnerabilities of acquired drones have existed for a long time in India. The switch drone compromise in August 2024, coupled with jamming and spoofing of the unmanned systems during Operations Sindoor, further intensified the call for implementing military drone framework.
Industry sources said India cannot remain aloof to events like K3 Scout, which demonstrates that Chinese have the ability to surprise with. “A component does something it was never declared to do. It clears every check that looks at who supplied it and fails the one check that looks at what it does. It’s discovered almost by accident,” narrated industry sources who closely follow the country’s own drone security drill vis a vis Chinese threats.
Compliance mechanism
However, DFI president Shah assured that the government has put in place a compliance mechanism to carry out deep major security assessments and checks against vulnerabilities. Firstly, a Board of Officers do strip down checks of active parts like flight controllers in drones at the time of tendering to weed out sneaked Chinese spares in the platforms.
Secondly, they also do cyber security checks on the US and Europe based standards, he pointed out.
Industry sources are of the view that stripping down and checking of a drone by a board of officers is a very subjective because they wouldn’t have the tools and the equipment that an organisation like STQC has to verify and validate both hardware components and backdoors in the document submitted to it by the supplier.
The draft framework demands more than 20 tests from accredited labs to ensure only genuine indigenous drones are manufactured in the country to meet security standards.
Published on August 17, 2026
