IIM-B hosts national seminar on Indian Military-Industrial Complex

IIM Bangalore hosted Shaurya 2026, a national seminar on the Indian Military-Industrial Complex, conceived and organized by Batch 5 of the Business Management Programme for Defence Officers (BMPDO), an Executive Education Programme for officers of the Indian Armed Forces, and sponsored by the Kshipra Foundation, on September 12. By bringing together the Armed Forces, defence industry, technology leaders, investors and policymakers, the seminar examined the many layers of India’s defence-industrial transition, from evolving operational requirements and emerging technologies to manufacturing, MRO, supply chains, talent and the capital required to take indigenous capabilities from development to scale.

Air Marshal Awadhesh Kumar Bharti, SYSM, AVSM, VM (Retd.), former Deputy Chief of the Air Staff delivering the keynote address on the topic, ‘Changing global battlefield dynamics and the capability roadmap for India’, , traced the role of disruptive technology in warfare through history, from the English longbow to the first Battle of Panipat, and argued that the character of conflict today is being shaped by the same forces: war, he said, is being normalized as smaller powers are incentivized by technology to go kinetic, and the boundary between peace and conflict is becoming increasingly ambiguous, with wars beginning through cyber degradation and cognitive operations rather than a first shot fired.

He outlined a capability roadmap for India built around persistent, real-time intelligence, including investment in low-earth-orbit satellite constellations; long-range precision-strike capability supported by seeker and quantum-navigation technologies; and manned-unmanned teaming, cautioning that unmanned systems alone “can avoid a defeat but cannot give you victory.” On artificial intelligence, he called for India to invest in its use for operations, maintenance and sustenance while building in ethics and regulation from the outset, rather than confronting its risks only after the technology has matured.

The industrial foundations of strategic autonomy The first panel of the day on ‘How Technology Is Redefining the Battlefield and Doctrine of War?’ moderated by Rear Admiral Deepak Bansal (Retd.), examined how technology is redefining the battlefield and the doctrine of war.

Delivering the welcome address, Prof. U Dinesh Kumar, Director-in-charge, IIM Bangalore, pointed to the ongoing conflicts around the world as proof that no country can now consider itself invulnerable, and that militaries must prepare for forms of warfare that cannot yet be fully anticipated. Turning to artificial intelligence, he cautioned delegates against overstating its reliability, noting that AI models are probabilistic systems that are only as good as the data behind them.

Maj Gen Bhutani, introducing Shaurya 2026 on behalf of the organizing BMPDO-05 batch, described the seminar as a conversation between those who understand the battlefield and those who build for it. Drawing lessons from recent conflicts, including the Armenia-Azerbaijan war, the Russia-Ukraine war and the India-Pakistan conflict, he pointed to the growing centrality of technology, the criticality of domestic production, and the need to scale production rapidly once a capability is proven.

Kamesh Raghavendra of the Kshipra Foundation told the delegates that India stands at an inflection point comparable to the software services boom of the 1990s, pointing to the shift toward lower-cost, high-volume systems, the growing unreliability of satellite-dependent designs, and the mismatch between the pace of technology and defence procurement cycles.

Jayant D. Patil, President of the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE), Member of the Board of IN-SPACe, and Dr. Atul Dinkar Rane, former Director General of BrahMos Aerospace, spoke on the occasion.

Dr L. Venkatakrishnan, Chief Scientist at CSIR-National Aerospace Laboratories (CSIR-NAL), Bengaluru, closed the panel with an address on ‘High-Altitude Pseudo-Satellites: Building an Indian HAPS Industrial Base for Persistent Surveillance’.

Rear Admiral Deepak Bansal (Retd.) Air Vice Marshal Ashutosh Shrivastava, VSM, ACAS (Maintenance Planning), Mani Padagalingam, Executive Director, Aerospace India Association (AIA), Former Director (Quality) UTC Aerospace (now Collins Aerospace, Air Vice Marshal Vikas Dwivedi, VSM (Retd.), Former Assistant Chief of Air Staff (Engineering – Transport & Helicopters), Indian Air Force, Vice Admiral S. R. Sarma, PVSM, AVSM, VSM (Retd.), Former Chief of Materiel, Indian Navy, Ezhilan Nanmaran, Head of Product and Strategic Partnerships, ideaForge Technology Ltd, Vijay Jacob, General Partner, Speciale Invest, Vikram Vaidyanathan, Managing Director, Z47 (formerly Matrix Partners India), Krishnan N. Iyer, Senior Vice President – Product, Relationships & Business Development, National Stock Exchange of India Ltd also gave valuable inputs on the subject.