Pranav Raghunath Gurav
Director, Prayanam Industries Private Limited
23 February, 2026 – India’s relative lag in advanced indigenous defence technology is not because of a lack of talent, intent, or strategic necessity.The country has capable scientists and engineers and a clear national security imperative.The real constraint is structural and institutional.At its core, the difference between India and the United States lies in how the two systems treat theoretical research, risk, failure, and time within defence innovation.In the Indian defence ecosystem, funding and legitimacy are closely linked to tangible deliverables such as hardware prototypes, near-term induction plans, or visible production outcomes.Even early-stage research should provide justification by showing a clear path to deployment.
The US defence establishment treats theory itself as a strategic military capability and supports it with sustained funding, even when there is no immediate product.This single philosophical difference leads to very different technological outcomes over time. Organisations such as the Air Force Research Laboratory, DARPA, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Office of Naval Research, and the Army Research Office regularly provide funding for purely theoretical and analytical research.These institutions do not require a prototype at the proposal stage. Instead, they actively seek mathematical models, physical theories, simulations, and exploratory frameworks that may take a decade or more to develop into hardware. This allows the US to systematically explore high-risk, high-payoff ideas long before competitors even recognize their military relevance. A key enabler of this approach is the Pentagon’s formal 6.1–6.2–63 research funding structure. Basic research involves studying fundamental principles and theories to increase knowledge without immediate practical application. This type of research often lays the groundwork for future advancements and can lead to new ideas or innovations over time. It is essential for a deeper understanding of various fields and supports the development of more applied studies. It explicitly encourages abstract theoretical work with no immediate application. Applied research focuses on practical questions, aiming to solve specific problems or improve processes based on observations and data. It differs from basic research by targeting immediate applications in fields such as medicine, engineering, and education where the findings can be directly used to address real-world issues. Then it moves on to experimental or computational validation, typically occurring at the advanced development stage 6. Prototypes and production pathways are expected.
India, by contrast, starts at a 6.3-equivalent mindset. Even early-stage programmes are required to show clear hardware, manufacturing, and induction logic. This compresses timelines unnaturally, raises bureaucratic and audit risk, and discourages genuinely novel ideas. The US system reinforces this advantage through flexible contracting mechanisms such as Broad Agency Announcements (BAAs), SBIR/STTR programmes, and Other Transaction Authorities (OTAs). These instruments are explicitly designed to fund uncertainty. Under them, a laboratory like AFRL can fund a theoretical idea simply because it is internally consistent, grounded in fundamental laws of sciences, and potentially transformative.Failure is expected, measured, and budgeted for, not penalised. In India, failure in defence R&D often leads to audit scrutiny, reputational damage, or career risk. This creates a culture where both decision-makers and researchers rationally prefer incremental, proven technologies over disruptive ones.
Another fundamental divergence lies in how intellectual and financial risk is shared. In the US system, the government takes on early-stage scientific risk by funding theory and exploratory research. This approach often allows researchers and companies to keep their intellectual property. This encourages universities, startups, and private firms to explore new ideas and expand their conceptual boundaries. In India, private industry is expected to self-fund large portions of R&D, create IP, and still face deep uncertainty around procurement, payments, certification, and future orders. The outcome is predictable: companies avoid deep, foundational research and focus instead on low-risk, derivative development.
Systems that link scientific progress only to short-term deliverables and immediate utility cannot produce ideas that truly change the world.Ideas often begin as abstract theories and speculative insights before they become products or business cases.History shows that such ideas go on to shape industries, global economics, and geopolitical power. Nations that suppress high-risk, long-horizon thinking may achieve incremental gains, but they forfeit the ability to define future technologies. In doing so, they become followers in a world shaped by others’ ideas.
The absence of time-based accountability for decision-makers worsens these issues. In India, time is generally viewed as a contractual obligation only for vendors. Officers and officials involved in acquisition, trials, quality assurance, and certification in Service HQs, MoD directorates, or agencies like CEMILAC often take months or years beyond the stipulated timelines to clear files, approve test plans, or issue certifications. These delays may stem from risk aversion, frequent postings, diffusion of responsibility, or simple indecision. Yet while the private vendor continues to bear the full economic cost of time burning capital, retaining engineering teams, and losing market opportunity, the individual decision-maker faces no corresponding consequence. Their appraisal, promotion, or career progression remains unaffected. This asymmetry creates an improper incentive structure. The safest personal strategy for an officer is to delay decisions. On the other hand, acting decisively is the riskiest approach. Over time, such a system kills indigenous innovation because development-heavy programmes are more sensitive to delay than import-based procurement. Without public, stage-wise timelines and attribution of delay to responsible authorities, time remains an invisible, unpriced cost imposed entirely on industry.
Ultimately, India does not lack defence technology because it lacks scientists or engineers. It lags because its system undervalues time, uncertainty, and theory, while penalising failure and rewarding procedural caution. Advanced defence capabilities such as satellites, stealth, precision navigation and quantum sensing begin years before the hardware is built. They start with equations, simulations, and conceptual models. The US defence ecosystem recognises this reality and institutionalises patience, failure tolerance, early funding of ideas, and accountability for time. Until India clearly separates theoretical research from immediate procurement outcomes, shares early-stage risk, and applies time-based accountability to decision-makers as strictly as it does to vendors, it will keep importing breakthroughs instead of creating them.
