Operation Sindoor, launched on April 22, 2025, was a swift retaliation against a terror attack that killed 26 people in Pahalgam. The strike hit nine sites across Pakistan, five in the occupied Kashmir region and four in mainland Pakistan, all suspected of harbouring Lashkar‑e‑Taiba and Jaish‑e‑Mohammad camps.
Dr Samir V Kamat, former DRDO chairman, told the NDTV Defence Summit that the short conflict underlined an urgent need for "Atmanirbhar" defence capabilities. He warned that while India’s science base for drone manufacturing is solid, the current scale falls far short of the numbers deployed in global wars. The call was for a whole‑nation approach, fusing industry, academia, MSMEs and start‑ups to innovate at speed.
Ashish Kansal, CEO of SMPP Limited, added that soldiers today are wired with modern combat systems, sharing real‑time feeds that give them a collective "multiple‑eye" view of the battlefield. He argued that such connectivity turns individual fighters into a networked force, making terrain control less about possession and more about information dominance.
The summit ended with a pledge to accelerate drone and missile production, with industry and government promising tighter coordination to translate lessons from Sindoor into tangible capability gains.