Sudarshan Chakra reflects India’s ambition for defence, strategic autonomy

Strategic autonomy will remain elusive unless innovation is prioritised over low-risk, incremental practices.

India’s decision to build a missile shield over the subcontinent is a proportionate response to the increasing danger of missile strikes from across the western and northern borders.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the outline of the missile defence system, called ‘Sudarshan Chakra’, in his Independence Day speech. “By 2035, I want to expand, strengthen, and modernise this shield,” he said, adding that “.... the entire system should be researched, developed, and manufactured in India.”

The proposed 'multi-layered framework' would integrate advanced surveillance, cyber security, and physical safeguards “to protect citizens and infrastructure” from enemy strikes.

This seems to be more than just a defence concept as each of its layers — spread across air, sea, land, and cyber domains — also comprises counterstrike capabilities. In other words, the armed forces will have reciprocal response options to launch targeted attacks even against perceived threats, which include anti-cyber warfare measures to detect and isolate digital incursions such as hacking and phishing.

Since World War II, when strategic ballistic missiles became the weapon of choice for major militaries across the globe, defence planners have spent countless hours trying to perfect their missile defence systems. Today, the most advanced anti-missile systems around include Russia's S-400/500, the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) and Patriot systems, Israel’s Iron Dome and David's Sling platforms, and China’s HQ-9 long-range, surface-to-air system. The ambitious Golden Dome (a land, sea, and space-based missile defence shield) that the Donald Trump administration is toying with is the latest addition to the list. In an increasingly edgier world, it makes sense for even smaller nations to field anti-missile batteries of their own.

India’s defence policymakers, too, have for years been trying to find an effective way to deal with the growing missile menace from Pakistan and China. In 1999, New Delhi launched its Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) programme to make a multi-tiered system designed to intercept incoming ballistic missiles both within and outside the Earth's atmosphere. It comprises the Advanced Air Defence (AAD) to target incoming projectiles at lower altitudes and the Prithvi Air Defence (PAD) for high-altitude interception.

The AAD focuses on endo-atmospheric interception of missiles with ranges up to 200 km, while the PAD uses hypersonic interceptor missiles (which travel at six to seven times the speed of sound) to foil multiple, simultaneous missile attacks outside the atmosphere.

The BMD functions as a network-centric warfare platform, with sensors, interceptors, and control centres working together to neutralise aerial threats in real time. It is complemented by the air defence assets of the three services: the combat jets, radars, Airborne Warning and Control Systems and command centres of the Indian Air Force’s Integrated Air Command and Control System (IACCS), the Indian Army's indigenous Akashteer network — which kept droves of Chinese missiles and Turkish drones at bay for nearly 100 hours during the recent Operation Sindoor — and the Indian Navy’s AI-driven Trigun system for maritime domain awareness.

This means the Sudarshan Chakra already has many of its building blocks in place, and it should not be difficult to operationalise the system within a decade if new missiles like the 500-km range Pralay, the 1,000-km range subsonic land-attack cruise missile Nirbhay and the 800-km range BrahMos supersonic cruise missile are inducted soon.

Space surveillance being a crucial part of any missile defence, India must also move quickly to augment its capabilities in this strategically key domain with the help of the Indian Space Research Organisation. New Delhi acknowledged this recently when it fast-tracked the final phase of its Space-Based Surveillance project, which aims to put 52 surveillance and communication satellites into low-Earth and geostationary orbits from where they can monitor the enemy’s military movements.

The contours of missile defence articulated by the government go far beyond their stated aim of defending the subcontinent from missile barrages. The effort has enormous potential to spur indigenous capability development and to give industry and private players an unprecedented opportunity for deepening their participation in the ‘Make in India’ initiative. This could not be happening sooner, considering that, even with 65% of military equipment currently being made indigenously, India still retains the tag of being among the world’s largest arms importers.

The country has hiked its defence budget from ₹2.53 lakh-crore in 2013-2014 to ₹6.81 lakh-crore in 2025-2026, and the government is rightly promoting start-ups and research laboratories. But it is doubtful if steps like these alone are enough for the country to reach the declared target of ₹3 lakh-crore in defence production by 2029.

There are no shortcuts to self-reliance in defence, and India’s military planners should not hesitate to boldly carry out defence structural reforms without delay. While forming strategic global partnerships to absorb cutting-edge technologies, the government must redouble its efforts to support increased investment in defence research and development at home. It should ensure innovation in industry literally goes ‘ballistic’ in imagination and not be restricted to low-risk practices that hamper the indigenous development of core technologies.

Only by biting the bullet can India have a robust defence manufacturing ecosystem which is indispensable for the country’s strategic autonomy.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.

(Prakash Chandra is former editor of the Indian Defence Review. He writes on aerospace and strategic affairs.)