India Army fields SAKSHAM counter-drone grid to secure tactical airspace above frontline units

On October 9, 2025, the Indian Army began fielding SAKSHAM, a real-time counter-UAS command and control grid designed to detect, track, classify, and defeat hostile drones across the “air littoral” above frontline units. The networked system, developed with Bharat Electronics Limited, plugs into the Army Data Network to deliver a unified, recognised UAS picture and orchestrate both soft-kill and hard-kill responses. The roll-out follows lessons from recent cross-border drone incursions and the Army’s evolving concept of a Tactical Battlefield Space that extends up to roughly 3,000 meters above ground level.

Situational Awareness for Kinetic Soft and Hard Kill Assets Management (SAKSHAM), functions as the backbone layer that fuses inputs from radar, electro-optical, and other surveillance nodes, then pushes automated decision aids to counter-drone batteries and manoeuvre commanders. The grid is indigenous, AI-enabled, and intended to present a single, latency-tight operating picture across sectors so units are not fighting drone threats in isolation.

It is sensor-and effector-agnostic, allowing current and future jammers, spoofers, directed-energy options, and kinetic interceptors to be cued through a single command layer. By operating on the Army Data Network, it can scale horizontally across formations while maintaining secure data paths and a common ruleset for target identification to minimise blue-on-blue risk for friendly quadcopters and loitering munitions. An open-architecture approach enables rapid onboarding of new detection payloads, RF libraries, or effectors without disruptive backbone rewrites, a critical requirement as threat classes diversify from hobbyist quadcopters to attritable fixed-wing drones and low-signature loiterers.

SAKSHAM has been cleared under a fast-track route with induction objectives measured in months rather than years, aligning with India’s broader digitization drive and reflecting operational urgency after swarm and single-drone penetrations along the western frontier. Early operationalisation suggests the grid will be fielded to multiple echelons, from sector headquarters down to forward brigades, with standardised playbooks for detection-to-defeat and the ability to exploit local emitters and cameras already present in the battlespace.

In tactical terms, SAKSHAM is about compressing the kill chain against small, low-RCS targets that are cheap, numerous, and often autonomous. By fusing multi-sensor tracks into a single truth source and automating parts of the decision loop, the grid should shorten handoff times from detection to engagement and allow sector commanders to apply the least costly effect that works, conserving interceptors for massed raids. The “air littoral” concept treats the 0 to 3,000-metre band as manoeuvre terrain, protecting logistics nodes, artillery positions, armoured columns, and air defence radar sites from quadcopter-borne IEDs and FPV strike drones while keeping friendly UAS lanes deconflicted.

SAKSHAM is being nested into a larger national architecture. The grid is expected to feed the Army’s overarching Sudarshan Chakra enterprise, a multi-layer air and missile defence construct now moving through early tenders. If implemented as intended, thousands of sensors and layered effectors would be knitted into a contiguous shield, making SAKSHAM’s standardised data outputs and interfaces consequential beyond the tactical fight. The result would be a more resilient counter-UAS posture at the forward edge and a cleaner gateway for strategic-level air defence integration on the home front.

India and Pakistan are in a rapid drone-counter-drone competition, with both sides fielding combat and ISR UAS and experimenting with swarming tactics along a tense border. The introduction of SAKSHAM signals an intent to dominate the near-earth battlespace and deny cheap aerial asymmetries to adversaries. For New Delhi, hardening the air littoral is not simply about downing hostile drones; it is about safeguarding operational tempo, preserving artillery mass, and ensuring that any crisis along the Line of Control or the international border does not tilt in favour of low-cost unmanned threats.

Team Maverick