In the conflicts of the future machines would play an increasingly significant role across all the domains. Autonomous systems, artificial intelligence, and robotics will be frontline warriors; whereas, compute-power will dictate force-generation capacity of a military force. Unmanned aerial vehicles and collaborative combat aircraft will share the airspace with manned aircraft; ground robots, low flying drones and autonomous combat vehicles will fight in the trenches alongside the ground troops; surface and undersea unmanned vessels will sail together with capital ships.

Indian military is acutely aware of this development and is fielding these systems in large numbers. However, at this stage, these systems are being developed, prototyped and fielded as per the requirements set forth by individual Service. Unless we set some ground rules now- very likely these systems will face the same challenges as we experience with traditional military- lack of interoperability. These systems will fight as isolated tools, unable to form interconnected mesh that could sense, decide, and act synergistically under a single operational purpose. For that to happen, they need a common language- a shared technical foundation that allows them to interoperate, exchange data, and adapt without friction.

The United States Air Force (USAF) has offered a clear example of what this foundation can look like. In July 2026 it released two reference architectures: the Autonomy Government Reference Architecture (A-GRA) and the Agile Mission Suite Government Reference Architecture (AMS GRA). These standards deliberately separate mission software and autonomy from the underlying hardware and safety-critical systems. The result is portability. An autonomy package developed by one company can be moved to a different airframe from another vendor seamlessly. Upgrades would become as simple as software updates requiring much lesser down time. Since the government owns the core interphase, which would be made available to all eligible entities- competition would increase. Smaller, more agile enterprises would not have to spend on the core architecture and can focus on building mission critical applications.

Although, this approach........

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