India cannot reach a genuinely high level of defence-technology innovation by incremental reform of DRDO alone. What Israel did was institutional, not just technological. The Israel Innovation Authority (IIA) model offers strong lessons, but India must adapt it to its scale, security environment, and political economy. What I propose is an institution—autonomous, passionately led by leaders who are capable and harbour a vision for advanced technologies and without narrow ministerial/bureaucratic oversight, but directly under the highest authority for the speed, scale, and risks for the ideas of advanced tech for India.
Why India’s current defence innovation model falls short
India’s defence R&D ecosystem suffers from structural constraints, not a lack of talent: DRDO’s design limits it in many ways.
Firstly, ministerial control is about slow decision cycles and line-item budgeting with no financial autonomy. Low tolerance for failure is about risk-averse research. Weak startup integration leads to innovation staying inside labs.
DRDO behaves like a production-oriented applied lab, not a national innovation engine.
Market failure in defence deep tech is because of long gestation periods, a single buyer (government), classified requirements, and high capital intensity. Private capital alone will not fund breakthrough defence technologies at scale.
What Israel got right, and why it matters
Israel’s success is not just about funding—it is about architecture.
Let me put the core design principles of the Israel Innovation Authority.
So, Israel treats innovation as national infrastructure, not a departmental activity.
Can India Follow the Israel Innovation Authority Model?
Yes — but not by copying it wholesale.
India needs an Indian Defence Innovation Authority (IDIA), inspired by IIA but adapted to India’s size and strategic needs.
Proposed model: Indian Defence & Strategic Innovation Authority (IDSIA)
India’s defence innovation problem is routinely misdiagnosed. The issue is not talent, funding, or intent. It is institutional design. Israel did not become a defence technology powerhouse by dismantling its legacy institutions; it did so by building a new, autonomous innovation authority that complemented—and ultimately strengthened—them. India must draw the same lesson.
DRDO should not only be restructured, but rather it should be repositioned.
The future lies in a dual-institution model. DRDO remains mission-oriented—focused on applied R&D, incremental upgrades, and system integration for the armed forces. Alongside it, India needs a new entity—an Indian Defence Strategic Innovation Authority (IDSIA)—designed for high-risk, pre-competitive, breakthrough research.
Where DRDO operates as a government laboratory system, IDSIA would function as a portfolio-based innovation engine—working across startups, academia, and industry. Its role would be to generate and validate disruptive technologies, then feed mature outputs into DRDO, the armed forces, and private manufacturers.
This division of labour mirrors Israel’s approach: one institution for reliability and delivery, another for speed, risk, and technological surprise.
Institutional Placement should be a statutory, autonomous authority directly under the PMO.
It must have parliamentary oversight, not ministerial micromanagement, with fixed-term leadership insulated from transfers. This is crucial. Innovation cannot survive inside normal bureaucracy.
IDSIA must embrace its own financial autonomy & risk capital. Experts indicate a dedicated annual corpus (e.g., Rs 25,000–50,000 crore over 5 years). Funding instruments may include the conditional grants (repayable only on success) and matched funding with private VC.
It must follow a challenge-based defence approach, with moonshots involving equity participation via a sovereign deep-tech fund.
Unlike DRDO, IDSIA must approve projects internally, kill projects fast, and scale winners aggressively.
Focus areas (Like “spark to scale”)
India should prioritise platform technologies, not individual weapons: AI-native warfare systems and autonomous swarms (air, sea, land).
Secondly, the area must be under the secure semiconductors & trusted fabs.
Next, the departmental focus could be under quantum sensing, comms, and navigation. DRDO has made some good progress in directed energy (DEW). It could be branched under the DEW and hypersonics.
Importantly, it must include the bio-defence & human performance in its key realm
Additionally, the cyber-physical and space systems should be together in the divisional framework.
These technologies will dominate 2035–2050 warfare, not just current conflicts.
Building the ecosystem: Real advantage
A major fact for the technological advancement is not about weapons—it is ecosystem design.
Widely lacking in India is the deep integration of startups and academia, barring a few IITs. Somehow, Indian R&D policy must address this malaise. There is so much academic wastage in India as it screams of bold intervention, regulation and standards.
Specific to defence-focused research must be directly funded. Innovators retain dual-use IP, ensuring civilian spillovers. Startups operate in classified sandbox environments, while procurement roadmaps provide long-term visibility rather than ad-hoc tenders.
Second, a deliberate talent strategy. This is a proven policy from China to Israel to Korea to enable lateral entry from global technology leaders, create military technologist career tracks, and systematically engage its scientific diaspora—most famously through mechanisms like the Yozma effect. This is not brain drain management; it is strategic talent arbitrage.
Third, inclusion at scale. Innovation clusters extend beyond metros into Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities. Women and underrepresented groups are actively brought into deep-tech pipelines. This is not social policy—it is talent maximisation in a high-stakes domain.
Why PMO control is non-negotiable
Defence innovation cannot be governed like a line ministry programme.
It cuts across the Ministry of Defence, MeitY, Space, and Atomic Energy. It demands secrecy and speed. It requires continuity beyond electoral cycles. Only the Prime Minister’s Office has the authority to break silos, protect institutional autonomy, and align innovation with national priorities.
Israel understood this early. India must too.
Without PMO anchoring, any defence innovation body will eventually succumb to bureaucratic risk-aversion, fragmented authority, and short-termism.
Strategic payoff
If designed correctly, an autonomous, PMO-controlled IDSIA could fundamentally alter India’s strategic trajectory.
It would deliver technological deterrence, not just numerical force. It would create export-ready defence platforms rather than import dependencies. Civilian spillovers—in AI, advanced materials, biotech, and electronics—would feed directly into economic growth. Defence technology would become a contributor to GDP, not merely a fiscal burden.
Most critically, import dependence would fall while modernization timelines would compress—closing the gap between threat perception and capability deployment.
As in Israel, Korea and even in China, defence innovation would become a growth engine, not a sunk cost.
The bottom line
India does not lack scientists, engineers, capital, or strategic urgency. It lacks the right innovation institution.
Israel’s lesson is not technological—it is institutional. Governance, not gadgets, made the difference.
If India creates a fully autonomous, risk-tolerant, PMO-anchored defence innovation authority, DRDO reform and private-sector participation will follow naturally. If it does not, India will continue importing the future—even while funding the past.
The choice is no longer about policy intent. It is about institutional courage.
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
END OF ARTICLE
