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India has taken a major step towards opening one of its most sensitive areas of defence production to private companies.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh approved the transfer of technologies developed by the state-run Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) for all conventional missile systems to Indian industry for domestic production, the country’s Ministry of Defence said on Tuesday.

The move marks a significant shift for the sector dominated by government-run firms and research laboratories. Private companies will be able to compete for the technology and production rights, subject to technical qualifications, certifications and other regulatory requirements, the ministry said.

The Narendra Modi-led government says the aim is to move missiles from development into mass production faster, increase domestic manufacturing and reduce India’s dependence on imports.

So, does India’s private defence industry have the capacity to manufacture sophisticated missile systems at the scale and reliability the military needs, is the country moving towards developing its own military-industrial complex, and are there security risks involved?

What did the government announce?

India’s Defence Ministry said Singh had approved the transfer of DRDO-developed technology for all conventional missile systems to Indian defence companies for production inside the country.

“The objective is to enhance domestic manufacturing capabilities, strengthen the defence industrial base, and create opportunities for the participation of Indian MSMEs (micro, small and medium-sized enterprises) and other technology partners in the supply chain,” the ministry said in a statement.

The measure would enable the “successful transition of missile system development to industrial production” and create opportunities for MSMEs and other technology partners, the ministry added.

“DRDO remains committed to working closely with Indian industry to facilitate the transfer and absorption of advanced defence technologies and to further strengthen the country’s indigenous defence capabilities.”

The announcement spans a wide range of missiles, said Aditya Ramanathan, a research fellow with the Bengaluru-based Takshashila Institution.

“It will include surface-to-air missiles, air-to-air missiles, anti-radiation missiles, antitank systems, and so on. It will also include more heavy-duty hardware like land-attack cruise missiles,” he told Al Jazeera.

Why is India doing this?

India has traditionally relied heavily on state-owned defence companies to turn weapons developed by DRDO into large-scale production. Bharat Dynamics, one such state-owned company, has long held a monopoly in missile production.

Tuesday’s announcement is a “big change” because it ends that monopoly, said Ramanathan.

“Private companies have been making missile components for years, but what this decision does is allow them to move up the value chain and become prime integrators for these systems,” he said.

While India largely relies on domestically made missiles, it also imports missiles — especially from Russia and Israel, two key weapons suppliers to the country.

But under Modi, India has attempted to both encourage self-reliance in defence — a concept that the government calls Atmanirbhar Bharat or self-reliant India — and prod foreign defence majors to manufacture in India.

At a time when geopolitical allegiances are changing fast, and India faces uncertainties on both major borders — with rivals Pakistan and China — the country under Modi has more than doubled its defence budget, from $38bn in 2014 to $86bn in the current financial year.

The brief four-day conflict with nuclear-armed rival and neighbour Pakistan last year has injected fresh urgency into India’s defence preparedness plans. This year’s defence budget is 16 percent higher than the previous year’s.

Other geopolitical events have forced the government’s hand too, suggested Ramanathan.

“I don’t think this move would have happened as soon as it did if not for the experience of recent wars. Indian decision-makers have been looking at Ukraine, they’ve been looking at the US war with Iran, and of course they’ve been imbibing the lessons of operations from last year,” he said.

“One reason you’re going to need large stockpiles is that, as we’ve seen recently, you’re going to burn through your inventory pretty quickly. The other reason is that your adversary could also degrade your stockpiles using their own precision-strike systems.”

China, he said, was a major factor in India’s calculations.

“India believes that to deter China, which is its most capable adversary, it will need to demonstrate that it can both inflict and absorb really punishing attrition over weeks of gruelling warfare,” Ramanathan said.

To that end, India is also creating a tri-services conventional missile force. “To be a viable and effective force, it’s going to require serious magazine depth, and this cannot be achieved without the active involvement of the private sector,” he added.

What is India’s defence industry already manufacturing?

In June, India announced that it was preparing to spend more than $2bn on military drones from domestic manufacturers, reflecting the rapid expansion of the country’s private defence industry.

More than 600 companies were involved in India’s drone industry, including major groups such as Adani, Larsen & Toubro, and Tata Advanced Systems, as well as startups.

In July, India also approved the purchase of a range of military equipment for its defence forces worth $5.46bn, including missiles, electronic warfare systems and Kamikaze drones.

India is also pushing to rapidly modernise its navy with an eye on Beijing’s growing influence in key Indian Ocean shipping lanes. In December, New Delhi announced plans to procure at least 75 ships and submarines, with most expected to be constructed domestically.

At the same time, India is trying to diversify the foreign sources of its weapons. Over the past decade, New Delhi has worked to move away from its longstanding reliance on Russia for military hardware, expanding defence ties with countries such as the United States, France and — increasingly — Israel.

Does the private sector have the capacity to build missiles?

Private arms manufacturers in India have been increasing spending on bolstering military production in the past few years.

Major conglomerates have invested heavily in ammunition, drones, aerospace and military electronics. Of late, they have started to invest in facilities that aim to manufacture missiles.

Adani Defence & Aerospace, owned by business tycoon Gautam Adani, a close associate of Indian Prime Minister Modi, announced plans in 2024 to invest more than 30 billion rupees ($315m) in ammunition and missile manufacturing facilities in Uttar Pradesh.

The facilities would include capabilities for handling explosives used in missiles and precision munitions.

But commitments and intent don’t build missiles.

“Ultimately, I think the success or failure of this move will depend on how the Indian government places orders,” Ramanathan said. “Making missiles is an incredibly complex and costly affair, and companies are going to have to invest a lot in infrastructure, technology and people. These sorts of investments will only pay off if the government places large enough orders to justify them and also, hopefully, leave these companies with some profits that they can pour back into research and development.”

What missiles does India have?

India has a range of cruise and ballistic missiles, several of which are also capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

In May, on the anniversary of the 2025 war with Pakistan, India successfully test-fired the Agni-V, its most advanced nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile that can reach a distance of 5,500km (3,418 miles) — a range that covers all of China, the Middle East and even parts of Europe.

Its other ballistic missiles have ranges from as little as the Prithvi-1 (150km or 93 miles) to the Agni-IV (4,000km or 2,485 miles), again covering everything from border skirmishes with Pakistan to India’s extended neighbourhood.

It also has powerful cruise missiles, like the BrahMos, co-developed with Russia, which has a range of up to 500km (311 miles), and was used in last year’s war with Pakistan.

Is India also exporting missiles and other weapons?

India has dramatically ramped up its military exports in recent years, from just $72m in 2014-15 — when Modi came to power — to $4bn in 2025-2016.

Paras Defence, one of India’s fast-growing defence manufacturers, said this month it expects its exports to more than double in the 2026–27 financial year, up to $14m, driven partly by increased demand linked to conflicts in the Middle East.

Indian arms makers have also been involved in joint ventures with companies abroad. Adani Defence, in partnership with Elbit Systems – Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer – produces the large Hermes 900 armed drone systems.

A 2024 investigation by Al Jazeera exposed how India was exporting rocket parts and ammunition to Israel, even as the Modi government was publicly calling for diplomacy to end the war on Gaza.

In June 2026, Amnesty International said in a report that India’s weapons exports to Israel made it complicit in the genocide in Gaza.

But it isn’t just Israel that has sought and received weapons from Indian manufacturers. Nor is it just bullets and weapons parts that India is exporting today — complete missiles are in demand, too.

In 2022, the Philippines bought three batteries of the BrahMos missiles from India. Since then, Vietnam and Indonesia have signed deals with India for the purchase of these missiles. And India has submitted a proposal to the United Arab Emirates offering to supply the Gulf country these missiles, too.

Is the latest move a step towards building a military-industrial complex?

That appears to be the intention.

While Tuesday’s announcement marks the first time that India’s state-run research and manufacturing facilities will transfer missile technology to the private sector, the government earlier this year shortlisted private firms to manufacture the country’s next-generation fighter jets.

Tata Advanced Systems, a subsidiary of Tata Sons, and Bharat Forge are among companies to be shortlisted, and are emerging as major makers of artillery systems, ammunition and aerospace systems. India has its homegrown jets, but imports the most cutting-edge planes in its arsenal, including the Rafale fighters from France. The Indian Air Force also relies heavily on Soviet-era jets.

Still, while India “wants to build a wider defence industrial base”, said Ramanathan, “it is very far from developing the sort of military-industrial complex that [former US President Dwight] Eisenhower worried about. Power in India still resides overwhelmingly with the government.”

What about India’s military imports?

Despite the surge in domestic manufacturing and exports of specific weapons systems and parts, India on the whole remains a major military importer.

India was the world’s second-largest importer of weapons between 2021 and 2025, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI): Russia was its biggest source, accounting for 40 percent of India’s imported weapons.

Are there risks in transferring sensitive technology to the private sector?

As the US and Israel bombed Iran in March this year, a group of Iranian hackers claimed it broke into the servers of major US defence manufacturer Lockheed Martin, stealing blueprints of components used in the F-35 fighter jets.

The alleged data breach exposed the risks of private companies — which often have lower security standards and oversight than top-secret government laboratories — holding sensitive information.

But Ramanathan pointed out that in India’s case, “the companies that are most likely to get the missile contracts are all old hands”.

“They’ve been involved in the defence sector in some capacity for decades, and they have experience in dealing with confidentiality and secrecy,” he said.

The Indian government, on its part, also “doesn’t want the technology or its missile secrets to go to its adversaries, and it also wants to abide by its commitments to the Missile Technology Control Regime, which gives India several advantages,” he said, referring to one of the world’s major export-control regimes.

“So India has good reasons, in its own self-interest, to ensure that missile technology doesn’t leak.”

One of Russia’s biggest advantages in the war against Ukraine is its ability to launch tactical airstrikes from bases largely out of reach of kinetic responses. While we have frequently reported about Ukrainian attacks on these bases, they aren’t sustained enough to stop Russia from generating devastating sorties.

Now Ukraine and NATO are looking to the private sector for ways of changing that equation through what is being called the Airfield Denial Challenge. It offers a 250,000 Euro award to companies or individuals who come up with workable ideas to prevent Russia from being able to use its air bases.

“The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) operational experience has firmly established that the ability of the adversary to project air power from secure rear-area airfields remains one of the most consequential asymmetries in the current conflict,” according to NATO’s Headquarters Supreme Allied Commander Transformation (SACT). “Enemy tactical aviation, operating from bases beyond the reach of conventional Ukrainian strike assets, continues to conduct strikes using guided aerial bombs, cruise missiles, and stand-off munitions against friendly forces, critical infrastructure, and civilian population centers.”

The goal of this program is lofty.

“Each sortie originates from an airfield. Every airfield is a node of vulnerability: if it can be persistently denied, the adversary’s air campaign is fundamentally disrupted at source,” SACT suggested.

You can see video from one of the Ukrainian attacks on Russian tactical aviation bases below.

Ukraine’s ongoing efforts to halt these attacks are insufficient, SACT posited.

“Current workarounds: manned strike aviation, ground-based long-range fires (MLRS, ballistic missiles), and conventional single-unit loitering munitions have demonstrated limited effectiveness against defended airfield targets,” SACT argued. “They lack the mass-effect, persistence, and EW (Electronic Warfare)-resilience required to simultaneously suppress airfield infrastructure across multiple aim points in a contested environment.”

The “battlefield logic is clear,” the NATO subcommand added. “Point-defense and reactive interception of individual weapons must be complemented by persistent denial at the source.”

“We must find technologies that will help to permanently limit the enemy’s use of aviation infrastructure: aircraft, runways, fuel and ammunition storage facilities, and ground support infrastructure,” the Ukrainian Defense Ministry (MoD) explained. “Ukrainian miltech companies, startups, and engineering teams are invited to participate.”

SACT said the challenge is technically agnostic and that it is looking for ideas that include, but not are not limited to, the following:

• Uncrewed aerial systems of any configuration or range class

• Autonomous or semi-autonomous munitions and loitering systems

• Swarming and mass-effect approaches

• Alternative delivery mechanisms beyond conventional aerial platforms

• Hybrid solutions combining multiple technologies

Regardless of what type of solution is presented, it “must be capable of operating in GPS-denied and EW-contested environments, across all weather conditions and seasons, and must demonstrate a credible path to rapid fielding.”

In addition, SACT is looking for systems that can conduct sustained strikes deep into contested airspace, operate without “continuous human control,” be fully autonomous and deliver “sufficient mass and precision to suppress multiple aim points across an airfield simultaneously.”

SACT also wants systems that require minimal training, and have AI-assisted target acquisition that “reduces reliance on expert judgment.”

The solicitation comes with the understanding that whatever solutions are presented won’t be proven, but should be at least in the mid-to-upper tier of the military technology readiness level (TRL) scale. It includes systems ranging from those having “high fidelity” laboratory integration of components to those with prototypes “near, or at, planned operational systems.”

Meanwhile, any solution that will take more than a year to be fielded won’t be considered.

The deadline for submissions is July 20. Ten finalists will be selected on August 11 and will be invited to a “pitch day” on Sept. 3, tentatively in Poland, to showcase their designs.

Whether this ambitious program will actually lead to the fielding of any systems that can persistently deny Russia the ability to launch aircraft is very much in question.

As we have frequently reported, Ukraine has one of the world’s most innovative defense technology infrastructures that has created drones, missiles and other weapons designed, tested and fielded under intense wartime conditions. However, it has still been unable to achieve the goals being sought by this challenge. 

One of the big issues Kyiv faces is the limited amount of funds to pursue some of these advances and what the Atlantic Council has described as “Ukraine’s inability to mass produce sophisticated weapons or sustain stable military supply chains.” 

Getting an idea into the hands of NATO, which has developed a half-billion dollar fund to develop weapons for Ukraine, could ultimately help turn an idea into a workable weapon to keep Russian tactical aviation at bay. Even if that happens, though, the time it would take to develop these weapons at a scale large enough to make a real difference would be a formidable endeavor.

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

NEW YORK — A nationwide network of charitable foundations is encouraging its members to emphasize their positive contributions to American life, a 250th anniversary campaign aimed at quelling what it calls the “greater intensity” of scrutiny felt from the federal government and populist movements.

Popular notions of philanthropy as merely a game for the ultrawealthy to fund partisan projects and commit fraud have left the sector vulnerable to political attacks, as the Council on Foundations sees it, influencing policies that hamper essential community services. The advocacy group, which represents about 1,000 nonprofits, hopes to overcome what CEO Kathleen Enright calls the sector’s “perception gap” with its “Generosity Builds” campaign, launched Monday.

Enright believes most Americans don’t recognize their reliance on the charitable sector. Just about 1 in 20 adults said they or anyone in their immediate family received nonprofit services in the past year, according to a 2023 Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy report.

“This week, I got an MRI at Georgetown University Hospital, I participated in my church at St. Columba’s, my daughter was inducted into National Junior Honor Society. Four or five nonprofits have been instrumental in my life this week,” she said. “Folks just aren’t putting that tag on it.”

And that tag is growing increasingly important, Enright said. Last year, negotiations over President Trump’s tax and spending bill included proposals to levy new taxes on private foundations that Enright said would have taken resources from communities if they made it into the final law.

The battle over defining what nonprofits actually do has recently been amplified from the highest rungs of the Trump administration, which has upended decades of partnerships built with nonprofits. Trump froze, cut or threatened a sweeping range of social service grants characterized by the White House as “government largesse that’s often riddled with corruption, waste, fraud, and abuse.” More recently, the Department of Justice charged the Southern Poverty Law Center — a civil rights nonprofit accused by Republicans of targeting conservatives in its work tracking extremists — with defrauding donors through payments to informants.

Vice President JD Vance described the Ford Foundation, the Gates Foundation and the Harvard University endowment as “cancers on American society” back as a 2021 U.S. Senate candidate, telling Tucker Carlson that “we are actively subsidizing the people who are destroying this country and they call it a charity.”

“All across our country, we have nonprofits — big foundations — that are effectively social-justice hedge funds,” he said in a talk that year on “woke capital.”

Narratives about nonprofits being “overly politicized” or wasteful are “extreme minority stories” that don’t reflect how philanthropy operates, according to Enright.

Across many surveys, trust in the nonprofit sector has remained higher than most others. But its impact is sometimes difficult to measure and explain. The sector hasn’t faced an environment this challenging in almost six decades, according to Kathryn Thomas, the vice president of communications for the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation in Flint, Michigan.

She cited the congressional effort to increases taxes on foundations’ investment incomes and acknowledged the Trump administration’s federal funding cuts.

“In an era when everything is under partisan attack and there’s so much polarization, we really have to do a better job of emphasizing why we exist,” Thomas said.

Enright said the story of philanthropy is not one where a rich person “saves the day.” She sees growing concerns about billionaires’ influence fueling suspicion about philanthropists’ motivations. Some argue the charitable sector allows moneyed interests to decide how tax dollars are spent rather than elected officials.

The campaign will emphasize that most donors “have just a little bit more than they need and therefore want to give back,” she said, especially at the local level.

“Money does not solve problems. It’s a tool that creative people and institutions inside communities use to solve problems,” she said. “The real heroes of most of these stories are nonprofit leaders, religious leaders, civic leaders who just roll up their sleeves and get something done — but do it with some financial underpinning by charitable foundations.”

That’s the story told by the Gulf Coast Community Foundation in Sarasota, Florida. A 10-apartment affordable housing complex for military veterans opened last year with the foundation’s support.

The area has an “embarrassingly high” number of veterans without housing, according to Jon Thaxton, the foundation’s director of policy and advocacy. Many are priced out in Sarasota, increasingly a luxury destination with high real estate prices.

Local donors had been trying to build a similar project when they approached the foundation in 2020 for help. Thaxton secured land already vested for affordable housing, corralled $2.2 million in donations, got $800,000 from the city and won the backing of their U.S. representatives.

The foundation’s leaders believe their track record made that possible. Phillip Lanham, the president and CEO, noted the project was completed across multiple election cycles and a pandemic, suggesting that community foundations are well situated to “play the long game.”

“Most people think that foundations like us deal with money and donors. We really don’t. We deal with relationships and trust,” Thaxton said. “That’s our commodity. That’s what we earn. That’s what we save. And that’s what we contribute back to the community.”

The Council on Foundations will also elevate examples of early, ordinary philanthropists as part of its case for philanthropy as an integral “part of the American story.” Enright credited a formerly enslaved man with donating land in North Carolina that became an African Methodist Episcopal church that endures as a pillar of the local community.

Lillian Kuri, the president and CEO of the Cleveland Foundation, welcomed the focus on everyday philanthropists. The Cleveland Foundation is considered the first community foundation, established in 1914 by lawyer Frederick Harris Goff as a way to fund durable change in the city.

The foundation aims to find new ways to expand today’s tent of philanthropists dedicated to improving their surrounding areas. It announced new investments this week in a fund dedicated to turn vacant industrial land into job-ready work sites. They’ve also launched a fund that allows donors to invest in major Northeast Ohio companies, supporting local business growth while that money increases into a sizable amount that can be donated to nonprofits.

“Generosity cuts across everybody,” she said, adding that community foundations offer “a way for everyday people — not just the largest, wealthiest people — to participate in the change they want to see in their communities.”

Pollard writes for the Associated Press.