Draft DAP-2026 Pivots Defence Buys to ‘Owned by India’, Backs Design-Led Make in India

By
Ravi Shankar
-
0
Make in India

The Defence Ministry’s draft Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP-2026) signals a
shift in India’s military procurement philosophy, moving the focus from merely
manufacturing equipment in India to owning the technology behind it. The new
rules place Indian-held intellectual property, source codes and design authority
at the centre of future capital acquisitions, as the government seeks to turn the
country into a global defence design hub.

Released on Tuesday for public consultation, the draft DAP will guide how the
armed forces spend their annual capital budget of about $23 billion. Officials
describe it as a doctrinal move away from the earlier phase of indigenisation,
which largely involved licensed production of foreign platforms, towards an
“Owned by India” model that emphasises domestic design, development and
long-term control over systems.

Under the proposed framework, priority in capital procurement will go to Indian
companies that retain source codes and critical design data and enjoy full
freedom to upgrade and modify equipment over its life cycle. The familiar L1
system, where the lowest technically compliant bidder automatically wins, has
been refined to factor in technical merit and the degree of indigenous design,
alongside cost.

The draft also seeks to ease entry barriers for startups and new technology firms.
Assured orders, protection from costly trials conducted earlier on a “no cost, no
commitment” basis, and clearer pathways from prototype to production are
meant to strengthen the domestic innovation ecosystem.

“For the next decade, the metric of success is not just ‘Made in India’, but ‘Owned
by India’,” the Ministry said. It added that the emphasis is shifting from the
transfer of technology (ToT), which often locks users into legacy dependencies, to
co-development and ownership of intellectual property within Indian entities.

At the same time, the draft acknowledges that capability gaps cannot be bridged
overnight. It allows for critical imports through foreign routes while mandating
parallel development of domestic alternatives. The Ministry said this twin
approach would help sustain cutting-edge military capability while ensuring
defence spending circulates within the Indian economy, from semiconductor labs
to precision engineering units.

A major concern flagged in the draft is technological obsolescence, not budgetary
constraints. Rapid advances in areas such as artificial intelligence, quantum
technologies, autonomous systems, and directed-energy weapons are outpacing
traditional two- to three-year acquisition cycles. To address this, DAP-2026
introduces special procurement protocols for fast-evolving technologies and
treats software and upgrades as integral to acquisition rather than afterthoughts.
The Ministry has invited comments from all stakeholders by March 3 to finalise
the procedure by the end of March. The Department of Defence said the draft has
been framed to promote jointness, self-reliance, faster acquisition and scalable
production, while integrating the needs of the armed forces with the growth of
the private defence industry.

Describing the document as a roadmap for the middle phase of India’s journey to
2047, the ministry said the DAP-2026 is intended to align force modernisation
with the development of a complete defence manufacturing and design
ecosystem. By the end of the next decade, it said, India should be in a position not
just to aspire to great-power status, but to exercise it.

Ravi Shankar

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Dr Ravi Shankar has over two decades of experience in communications, print journalism, electronic media, documentary film making and new media.
He makes regular appearances on national television news channels as a commentator and analyst on current and political affairs. Apart from being an acknowledged Journalist, he has been a passionate newsroom manager bringing a wide range of journalistic experience from past associations with India’s leading media conglomerates (Times of India group and India Today group) and had led global news-gathering operations at world’s biggest multimedia news agency- ANI-Reuters. He has covered Parliament extensively over the past several years. Widely traveled, he has covered several summits as part of media delegation accompanying the Indian President, Vice President, Prime Minister, External Affairs Minister and Finance Minister across Asia, Africa and Europe.

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