We were engineering students building racing drones in a hostel room when the Pahalgam attack and Operation Sindoor unfolded. It was then that we realised how quickly warfare was changing. Strategically, unmanned systems were becoming central to modern militaries, and India needed to accelerate, especially given hostile neighbours. From our own hands-on work, we knew fast, inexpensive, rebuildable drones shouldn’t be treated like manned aircraft. If something is cheap, agile, and expendable, it should face uncertainty first — not a human. The core problem we saw was speed — of programmes and platforms. Defence drone development cycles are slow, often lagging behind shifting battlefield needs. At the same time, many drones prioritise endurance over time-critical missions, where speed equals survivability. Through high-performance FPV drones and continuous engagement with forces, we focused on closing that gap: fast programmes, fast platforms, and real-time operational feedback shaping design.

It wasn’t really confidence” it was a necessity. We didn’t have access to traditional defence networks or established suppliers. As students, there was no formal pathway to present what we were building to the people who actually understood the problem. What we did have was a working system and a clear idea of the gap it addressed. We reached out directly because we believed that if the capability was genuinely useful, the right people would be willing to look at it, regardless of who built it or where it came from. We weren’t trying to sell a product; we were asking for feedback from practitioners.

When we were invited by a colonel to Chandigarh, it wasn’t a lab test or a college demo” we were standing in front of officers who would judge our work purely on performance. There were no slides or promises to fall back on. We demonstrated several drones, including “Ahuti”, and each one had to do exactly what we said it would. The real risk wasn’t embarrassment, it was credibility. If the systems underperformed, the conversation would have ended there. When the drones flew as intended: fast, stable, and consistent. The tone in the room changed. The questions stopped being “Does this work”? and became “What variants can you build”? and “How can this be modified for different missions”? That shift was the moment we knew it had worked. We weren’t pitching anymore, we were collaborating on operational problems.

Commercial drones are designed to be reused. They’re built around stability, endurance, and protecting the platform. Our ?kamikaze” drones are designed for speed, precision, and agility, at the cost of almost everything else. There is no excess weight, no recovery-oriented design, and very little tolerance for inefficiency. The systems are intentionally unforgiving: every component exists to serve a single mission in a very short time window, with no expectation of return. You can think of a commercial drone as a general-purpose tool. Ours are purpose-built systems — optimised to move fast, stay hard to counter, and complete the mission even if they don’t survive it. When we started out, there was no generic platform. We built drones to custom specifications given by different units. Each requirement was slightly different — terrain, range, speed, payload, launch method — so we adapted designs case by case instead of forcing a single solution. That approach gave us a very practical understanding of how conditions actually vary on the ground, and how quickly requirements can change.

The gap was adaptability at the frontline. Drones were being used in fast-changing conditions, but manufacturing and repair were still happening far away. If a drone was damaged, lost, or needed modification, units had to wait for spares, replacements, or approvals while the operational situation kept moving. We saw that requirements were changing faster than logistics could support them. The Mobile Drone Manufacturing Lab came from that mismatch. Instead of sending drones back to factories, we moved assembly, repair, and modification closer to the unit. That way, systems could be rebuilt, adapted, or replaced in hours instead of weeks. In short, the lab exists to remove distance between the battlefield and the ability to respond to it.

When drones are assembled on the move, soldiers can customise them very directly for the mission they’re about to fly. That can mean adding or removing payload-dropping mechanisms, changing landing gear to suit rough or confined terrain, or mounting different sensor packages like day cameras, night cameras, or low-light systems depending on the situation. Because this is done close to the unit, there’s no need to settle for a generic configuration: the drone can be built around the mission instead of the mission being shaped around the drone.