"Rafale is a proven aircraft... France has agreed to our mandate that they make it in India with significant levels of indigenisation. It enables us to create a second production line for fighter aircraft in the country, which is why we are going through with it," the Defence Secretary said.

Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh at the NDTV Defence Summit said that importing additional Rafales will not slow down indigenous fighter development.

"Even as we continue with the Rafale deal, the indigenous LCA Tejas Mark 1A program will continue. It will be a spiral development model where we increasingly perfect it, fitting in indigenous radars that are better than global peers alongside indigenous weapons," Singh said.

Detailing the Indian Air Force's strategic priorities, Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh outlined progress made on fighter fleet size, airborne surveillance, and refuelers over the last two years.

"When I first came to the ministry, the Air Force had three major concerns: the depleting size of the fighter fleet and multipliers like AEW&C aircraft and refuelers. All three gaps are on the way to being filled. It won't happen overnight, but once contracts are signed, delivery expectations are locked in," he said.

"The call for peace articulated by Prime Minister Modi should also be addressed to the Europeans, who have been the most belligerent party. They try to create a security space excluding Russia, which is nonsense. Europe will never feel secure with an insecure Russia by its side, and Russia will never feel secure with an insecure Europe," Envoy Alipov said.

Drawing a historical parallel, Russian Ambassador Denis Alipov compared the Russia-Ukraine war to the strategic threat the US faced during the Cold War.

"Remember the Cuban Crisis of 1962 and the US reaction? The same is happening to us at present in Ukraine. We will never allow that," Alipov said, maintaining that decades of attempts to agree on common European security principles with NATO were dismissed, leaving Russia with no alternative to defend its strategic equilibrium.

Speaking on efforts to end the Ukraine conflict, Russian Ambassador Denis Alipov stated that Moscow maintains a candid dialogue with New Delhi and remains receptive to constructive peace proposals.

"We are having a very candid and frank dialogue on the Ukraine conflict, and President Putin and Prime Minister Modi have discussed this in detail. We are open to any realistic, practical ideas from India or anyone on how to proceed," Ambassador Alipov said, adding that any resolution must be long-standing rather than a temporary fix.

Addressing India’s growing defence engagements with Western nations and participation in multinational drills, Ambassador Denis Alipov reiterated Moscow’s non-exclusive approach to New Delhi.

"We have never conditioned our relationship with India on your relationship with other countries," Alipov emphasised, adding that Russia respects India’s strategic autonomy and sovereign choices in defence procurement.

Responding to questions about the US showcasing F-35 fighter jets during Exercise Tarang Shakti in India, Russian Ambassador Denis Alipov said, "The US is welcome to promote its product. It’s a good aircraft, no doubt about that, but way too expensive. If India goes for that, well, that would be India's sovereign decision."

Russian Ambassador Denis Alipov said that while the Su-57 offer is a major milestone, bilateral defence relations do not depend on a single deal.

"If India doesn't go for Su-57, our defence relationship will not stop," Ambassador Alipov said. "But it is certainly a landmark offer, a huge step for us as we offer not only our most advanced product, but also technology transfer and open-source code sharing, which is very important to India."

Russian Ambassador Denis Alipov said that measures like the Lindsey Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act are aimed at curbing India's economic and geopolitical growth.

"A top US official publicly revealed at the Raisina Dialogue that the US will never allow India to become the next China as a competitor. It was like a Freudian slip," Alipov said. "As India becomes stronger and eventually a superpower, which is inevitable, the US will do everything possible to contain India. We regard the Graham Act as such a measure," he added.

Speaking about international platforms like BRICS, Russian Ambassador Denis Alipov said that recent meetings between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Vladimir Putin confirmed a broad, promising bilateral roadmap.   

"BRICS itself has shown that member countries aspire to a more prominent voice in global affairs -- to be at the table of decision-making and have a fair, alternative platform for discussion that is open and inclusive. This is something we, together with India and other partners, stand for," Alipov said.

Ahead of the upcoming 80th anniversary of diplomatic relations between India and Russia, Russian Envoy Denis Alipov said that their ties remain unaffected by global geopolitical shifts.

"Throughout all these decades, we have been friends who have been reliable partners to each other -- both ways. We have never conditioned our relations on any immediate global disposition or regarded our relationship as a zero-sum game," he said.

"Trust and respect are the very qualities that characterise our relationship. You don't do business with untrustworthy partners," Ambassador Alipov said. He noted that India and Russia have been reliable, mutual partners since the Soviet era and India's independence.

Indian Ocean region has emerged as one of the world's most militarised maritime spaces, Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral Krishna Swaminathan said. 

"Between 40 and 50 warships from extra-regional navies maintain a presence in the region almost perpetually. The threat spectrum in the region has transformed and includes ballistic and cruise missiles and unmanned systems. Democratisation of technologies has enabled these to be held even by small non-state actors," he added.

Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral Krishna Swaminathan warned that the rules-based maritime order is significantly weakened.

"In an economically interconnected world, distance from conflict does not isolate us from its consequences. Disruption in a distant sea eventually reaches our shores, our homes, our industry, and our economy," he said, adding that AI, quantum tech, space, and autonomous systems are rapidly altering the future character of naval warfare.

Admiral Krishna Swaminathan noted that over 60 per cent of India's GDP originates in coastal states and nearly 18 per cent of the population resides within 50 km of the coast.

"Nearly 90 per cent of our trade by volume and over 70 per cent by value moves through maritime routes. The fuel for our automobiles, cooking gas, daily consumables, and even undersea internet cables travel through the sea. The seas are our gateways to prosperity," he noted.

Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral Krishna Swaminathan emphasised that viewing India merely as a continental landmass with a coastline is incomplete.

"A coastline is just a geographical feature, whereas India is a maritime nation -- an economic, civilizational, geopolitical, and psychological concept all by itself," Admiral Swaminathan said, highlighting India's 5,000-year-old maritime heritage stretching from the ancient Lothal dry docks to modern trade networks.

Admiral Krishna Swaminathan, PVSM, AVSM, VSM, Chief of the Naval Staff, on commanding the maritime future. Watch LIVE:

Skyroot Aerospace Founder Pawan Chandana in a fireside chat at the NDTV Defence Summit 2026. Watch LIVE:

"We will never be a Viksit Bharat till we actually have enough owned-in-India IP, IP-wise, technologies," Samtel Avionics CEO Puneet Kaura. 

Puneet Kaura, MD & CEO of Samtel Avionics, in a fireside chat at the NDTV Defence Summit 2026. Watch LIVE:

Rafal Modrzewski, Co-Founder & CEO, ICEYE in a fireside chat at the NDTV Defence Summit 2026. Watch LIVE:

"Even if France is very far from India, perhaps we also have a big national interest in the Indo-Pacific region because we have French territories in the ocean, in different oceans: in India, Indonesia, we have La Réunion Island (not so far from Madagascar). We also have some Antarctic territory that is French in the Pacific: New Caledonia, Wallis and Futuna, and French Polynesia. We have a big responsibility in the Indo-Pacific, so we are concerned with all the different stuff related to defence, security, and strategy across this very large region," Vice Chief Of French Air And Space Force Dominique Tardif on France's interest in the Indo-Pacific region.

Dominique Tardif, the vice chief of the French air and space force, in a fireside chat at the NDTV Defence Summit 2026. Watch LIVE:

Tapan Rishi Bhatnagar, SAAB FFVO India Chief Operating Officer, in a fireside chat at NDTV Defence Summit 2026. Watch LIVE:

Former Deputy NSA Pankaj Saran, while addressing the NDTV Defence Summit, said that Operation Sindoor "marked a leap of faith".

"When it comes to the Pakistani threat, I think, despite all the bluster and the rhetoric coming out from Pakistan, everyone in the world understands that Operation Sindoor marked a leap of faith. It did something that no previous government in the history of India had done. I think we have a new doctrine in place, whether anyone likes it or does not like it. That doctrine has come to stay," he said.
 

"Today, the Trump administration is showing everyone what strategic autonomy means. America is pursuing a lonely path, keeping in view its national needs and objectives. So, it is a lesson for all of us," Pankaj Saran, former deputy NSA, said.

Pankaj Saran, former Deputy National Security Adviser, while speaking at the NDTV Defence Summit, said that currently, the world is not going through an incremental change but a quantum shift.

"The earlier we, as a country, recognise that we are in a different world already, the better it is for us. And what is the new world? This is a world where you have the US with a certain strategic orientation which is going to outlast Trump - as I said, they have chosen to walk it alone. Trump has decided that he will engage and find how he could stabilise the relationship with China. He is heavily invested in finding a peace agreement in the Russia-Ukraine war. Where you have a situation where the US is closely talking to the Chinese and the Russians at the level of the White House, then you know that there is a different world at play that is going to be determined by the dynamics between the US, China, and Russia," he said.

Saran further added, "It would be so myopic for us not to engage either China or Russia in this new world that we live in. That's where the diplomatic skills of India and the inherent strength of India are going to show up because we are in this world."

Panjak Saran, the former Deputy National Security Adviser (NSA), in a fireside chat on fault lines and firepower: India's strategic calculus. Watch LIVE:

Arvind Lakshmikumar, MD and CEO of Tonbo Imaging, said that their focus currently is on changing the targeting and underlying subsystems completely.

"Our focus has been: if you want to build new-age battlefield end systems, the underlying subsystems, the imaging systems, the computer vision systems, the targeting systems, and the utilization systems have to change completely," he said.

Lakshmikumar added, "By change, it cannot be: how do you reduce the cost of an existing system? It's: how do you rethink them completely? Our focus is: how do you change optics? How do you change the imager? What kind of embedded computer vision do you need to do? How does size, weight, and power and cost play a significant role here? Because ultimately, if you don't change that, there's no point changing the end system at all.

Bodhisattwa Sanghapriya, the founder and CEO of IG Defence, told NDTV that the kind of shift that India observed after Operation Sindoor in the drone industry is "phenomenal".

" All our products, drones, completely shifted to an offensive series of products...India doesn't lack engineers, India doesn't lack startups, and India also doesn't lack the capital to get into defence and do something incredible in defence. What we lack is the speed of execution and the speed of innovation, and that's why modern-day drone warfare is the talk of the town," he said.

Sanghapriya added, "During Operation Sindoor, we focused more on small tactical drones, small kamikaze drones, but the warfare had changed. What we learned from the US-Iran conflict and from the Russia-Ukraine conflict is that we need deep penetration, deep strike drones."
 

Bodhisattwa Sanghapriya, Founder & CEO, IG Defence; Brigadier Devasheesh Chowdhury (Veteran), Senior GM, Zen Technologies; Veddika Dalmia, Director, Hyper Stealth Technologies Pvt. Ltd; Rear Admiral R Sreenivas, VSM (Retd.), Chief Executive Officer, Bondada Group; and Arvind Lakshmikumar, MD & CEO, Tonbo Imaging on building Bharat's Arsenal of innovation - AI, drones, and beyond. Watch LIVE:

Air Marshal Tejpal Singh, the Deputy Chief of Air Staff, told NDTV that while India may not be able to jump generations of aircraft, it should certainly attempt to jump generations of combat architecture.

"...That is what we should aim for. We can begin by building autonomy, distributed sensing, resilient communications, and open mission systems before the aircraft normally associated with 6th generation warfare when it actually arrives," he said.

Air Marshal Tejpal Singh, the Deputy Chief of Air Staff, spoke about how to shape the thinking of fifth-generation and beyond at the NDTV Defence Summit.

"Before the transition to fifth generation and the next generation of battlespace, it is important to address immediate operational requirements. Therefore, we cannot stop inducting capability today while we wait for that ideal future forced to emerge 20 years from now. Our challenges are actually more demanding. Firstly, we have to find what we have, induct what we urgently need, and at the same time build the architecture for what is going to come next - and that is how we should shape how we think about fifth generation and beyond," he said.

Air Marshal Tejpal Singh, the Deputy Chief of Air Staff at NDTV Defence Summit. Watch LIVE:

Raj Shukla, a former army commander, told NDTV that the adaptation and the structural corrections that we need to make are bigger than the China challenge.

"There is no distinction between combat and non-combat. It is impacting squad-to-company battles and it is impacting generals now. Therefore I say this: today the adaptation and the structural corrections that we need to make are bigger than the China challenge. Unless we get this adaptation right, we will not be able to measure up to other challenges like China and all," he said.

Sameer Joshi, the CEO of Newspace, said that "swarming is pushing autonomy to next level".

"Swarming is taking a large number of humans out of the loop and putting one or two humans in the loop, where they are commanding the drones and not controlling them. This shift is going to make a huge difference. It is on the verge, on the bounds of autonomy, trust, ethics, and how you want to use it but whether we like it or not, these technologies are here to stay. Autonomy is here to stay," he said.

According to Joshi, India is likely to absorb fully autonomous drones with automatic target recognition from next year. "But India, like many other countries, is also a signatory to a pact where it conveys that if we use drones ethically, hence the requirement largely will center around the human in the loop. This is the future of autonomous drones as far as India is concerned," he added.

Sameer Joshi, CEO, Newspace; Lt. Gen. Raj Shukla (Retd.), Former Army Commander; and Suresh Kamate, General Manager, Aerospace & Defence, dSPACE India on how when AI takes the field, is mankind still in command. Watch Live:

Colonel Jayaram M (Retd), CEO, Kalyani Rafael Advanced Systems Pvt. Ltd., said that scaling is the key when it comes to Operation Sindoor.

"I think it was a very short conflict. We could just be active for 4 days or something. What we could do in that time is precision. What we saw is clinical precision and the effect: how it shifted from volume and numbers to fewer numbers with more precision. When you look at all this it becomes very important that we have to sustain this kind of precision for a long duration. That's where scale comes in. It is a known fact that our production capacities are quite low," he said.

Rakesh Ojha, the director of Munitions India Ltd, said that the national defence manufacturing ecosystem is taking place at a very rapid pace in India. 

"The startups, the MSMEs, academia, R&D organizations, and DBS have come together, which has never happened in the past. We are synergizing our energies in terms of production, innovation, partnerships, and things which we are producing right now. The targets and the kind of quantum we are producing are nowhere near what we produced in the past," he said.

SMPP Ltd CEO, Ashish Kansal, told NDTV that one of the changing defining factors has been the "connectivity we've been able to give to a soldier with our modern suits".

"They stay connected, they're wired, and they know what each other is seeing. You now are not looking with two eyes but you're looking with multiple eyes, not just on the ground but in the air as well. That is something which makes them much, much more aware of what's happening around them," he said.

Former DRDO Chairman, at the NDTV Defence Summit, said that Operation Sindoor has taught India to have 'aatmanirbhar' capabilities.

"Op Sindoor was a good learning experience for all of us. Though it was a very short conflict, this conflict ongoing with other ones, has taught us that we have to have aatmanirbhar capabilities. These have to be in the emerging domains of cyber security, info warfare, space capabilities, manufacturing drones and missiles in numbers, but also the ability to innovate and modify them when the opponent comes up with a solution or a counter. This can only happen if you use a 'whole of nation' approach," he said.

Dr Samir V Kamat, Former Chairman, DRDO & Secretary, R&D, Department of Defence; Ashish Kansal, CEO, SMPP Limited; Rakesh Ojha, Director, Munitions India Limited, and Col. Jayaram M (Retd.), CEO, Kalyani Rafael Advanced Systems Pvt. Ltd on the threatre matrix - rewriting India's rules of deterrence. Watch Live:

Chief of Army Staff Dhiraj Seth told NDTV that 'aatmanirbharta' must mean " designed in India, developed in India, manufactured in India, sustained in India, upgraded in India, and also made for the world."

"When we make for the world we build the capacity to sustain ourselves through a long war. After all the export capacity in peacetime is surge capacity in war," he said.
 

Chief of Army Staff Dhiraj Seth told NDTV that land victory is the "only indisputable marker" of war territory.

"One reality that does not change: Land will always be the one and only tangible and useful factor of success. Victory was, is, and will always be measured in territorial terms and that territory will be occupied, secured, and defended only by the force," he said.

The future of warfare will not be about replacing old weapons, but giving old weapons new technology makeovers, the Chief of Army Staff Dhiraj Seth told NDTV at its flagship Defence Summit.

Chief of Army Staff Dhiraj Seth said that technology, in these times, is no longer the preserve of a few.

"What is available to us can be available to our adversary as well. Having the technology is only the very beginning. The real advantage lies in how quickly we can innovate, adapt, and find ways to counter what the adversary brings to the battle," he said.

Chief of Army Staff Dhiraj Seth, at the NDTV Defence Summit, said that technology and modern military strategy are causing "wars with pause".

"Technology is certainly shortening the battles but it is not necessarily shortening the war. These millennium wars therefore can best be described as wars with pause. Pause, in fact, is becoming a part of military strategy, with the pause representing not the domination of conflict but merely a change in its intensity and manifestation," he said.

According to him, when a crisis becomes prolonged, being self-reliant will be the winning factor that will make the difference between the victor and the vanquished.

"Atmanirbharata therefore must be about ensuring that we can endure without being constrained by what others can or cannot provide. That gives us a good reason to take a hard look at the very pathways of our indigenous capability," he said.

Chief of Army Staff, Dhiraj Seth, delivers an address on self-reliance (Aatmanirbharta) in an era of transformative wars. Watch LIVE:

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, in a big message to Pakistan, said that India will be ready for any strikes against terrorism.

"India believes in peace, does not want war. India does not want to take over another land, does not want to threaten anyone. But there is a difference between silence and weakness. India wants peace, but it will not compromise on its security...Till the time our neighbouring country propagates terrorism, we will be ready for any strikes against terrorists - we want to tell them and the world," he said.

Singh added, "India believes in dialogue, but if any country propagates terrorism, the dialogue will end then and there...India wants cooperation but not at the cost of national interest."

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh at the NDTV Defence Summit has called for India to be self-reliant in defence.

"From chips to ships, from screw to complete weapon systems, India must be self-reliant in defence...Made in India is not a manufacturing label. Made in India is turning into 'Trust India'," he said.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, at NDTV's Defence Summit, said that India's defence strategy is "future-ready".

"Energy resources have been diversified...If you want peace, prepare for peace ---there's an English saying; another is: the more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war. We have kept both the batons in mind, prepare for war. The modern soldier is not merely a soldier; they operate within a multi-domain environment," he said.

The minister added, "In the future, the battlefield will be tech-driven; the country ahead in tech would be ahead on the battlefield."

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said, "We are currently in the fifth generation of warfare."

"Contact or non-contact, kinetic or non-kinetic warfare, Indian forces are bolstering themselves," he added.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, at the NDTV Defence Summit, said that we are not limited to the current needs. "We are 'aatmanirbhar', future-oriented. We have made groundbreaking and structural reforms. Defence manufacturing has got a huge push," he said.

Defence Minister Rajanth Singh, as he began his keynote address at the NDTV Defence Summit, said that the global scenario is "changing rapidly" currently.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has begun his keynote address at the NDTV Defence Summit - Watch Live.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will deliver a keynote address at NDTV's flagship Defence Summit today.

NDTV Defence Summit 2026 - India's New Defence Edge, which is NDTV's flagship, high-level defence forum, is back again with a new edition. The one-day conclave will begin shortly and will bring together senior defence officials, military officers, and industry leaders.