Air Marshal A K Bharti, SYSM, AVSM, VM (Retd) was Director General Air Operations during Operation Sindoor and later Deputy Chief of the Air Staff. In this keynote at Shaurya 2026, IIM Bangalore, he lays out how the battlefield is changing and what India must build to win the next war: persistent intelligence, long-range precision strike, unmanned systems with manned–unmanned teaming, AI with ethics, quantum, and an aero-engine of our own. Then he gives industry some blunt advice: deliver on time, indigenise fully and be ready to scale.

"The wars of the future will not be won by the strongest alone, but by those who innovate faster, integrate better and have the residual capacity to scale up production in times of crisis."

Shaurya 2026: a national seminar on the Indian military-industrial complex, 12 September 2026, IIM Bangalore. Organised by IIMB with the Business Management Programme for Defence Officers (BMPDO) Batch 5, and supported by Kshipra Foundation.

CHAPTERS
0:00 The lines that matter
0:35 Introduction: Air Marshal A K Bharti
1:56 "If I let out the beans…": opening remarks
5:07 Ch 1: War, normalised
7:02 Ch 2: The disruptors: from the longbow to gunpowder
8:24 Panipat 1526: gunpowder was the difference
9:22 Nagorno-Karabakh 2020: drones change the ratio
11:17 Ch 3: A race against time: 5th/6th gen, hypersonics, unmanned
12:14 Ch 4: War without warning: from the Mahabharat to ambiguity
14:41 Starlink, cyber and regime change without a bullet
15:47 Both ends of the spectrum: lessons from Op Sindoor
18:11 Ch 5: India's capability roadmap
18:23 1. Intelligence: "call it our own Starlink"
21:56 2. Long-range precision strike and BrahMos
24:07 3. Unmanned systems: "like jalebis and samosas"
26:26 4. AI, ethics and the Manhattan Project warning
29:09 5. Quantum technologies
29:39 Ch 6: The Achilles' heel: aero-engines
33:09 Air-defence grid, counter-UAS, cyber and space
34:08 Ch 7: Indigenise, indigenise, indigenise
36:07 16+ years waiting for a radio
37:13 90% of IAF capex on Indian products
38:20 Why 99% indigenous is not enough
40:10 Ch 8: Scale up: 10x when war comes
42:56 Ch 9: Be ready: RFPs and the Make in India fine print
45:49 Who wins the wars of the future
46:11 Join the Shaurya Community

Figures shown on screen are as stated by the speaker.

CREDITS
Keynote footage and event photographs: Shaurya 2026, IIM Bangalore × Kshipra Foundation.
Archival images and footage via Wikimedia Commons: Government of India / PIB / Ministry of Defence / IAF / ADGPI (GODL-India); US DoD, NASA, US DOE, Library of Congress, IWM (public domain); and CC-licensed works by: Press Service of the President of Azerbaijan, Ukrainian Ground Forces, 59th Yakiv Handziuk Motorized Brigade, State Border Guard Service of Ukraine, Support Forces of Ukraine Command, The U.S. Army, OLCF at ORNL, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, CSIRO (CC BY); Hanay, Marcin Konsek, Milrem Robotics, PiDatacenters, Trikutdas, Hunini, Arshsangh, Ank Kumar, Nockson, Bundesarchiv/Hebenstreit, Rama, European Space Agency (CC BY-SA); The Official CTBTO Photostream, Jean-Pierre Dalbéra, OJB Quantum, Marek Ślusarczyk (CC BY). Licences: creativecommons.org/licenses. Full source list available on request.
Maps: Natural Earth (public domain).

Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...
"Impending Boom", "Long Road Ahead", "Shiny Tech", "The Complex", "Hitman", "Undaunted", "Industrial Revolution", "At Launch"

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