The Indian Air Force (IAF) inaugurated the first Dronathon-2026 at the Pokhran Field Firing Range in Jaisalmer on 14 September 2026. Air Marshal Ashutosh Dixit, Vice Chief of the Air Staff, inaugurated the three-day event, which is being conducted from 14 to 16 September.
The inaugural ceremony was attended by senior officials from the Ministry of Defence, Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff, the Indian Army and the Border Security Force. The event brings together more than 20 leading defence companies, start-ups, MSMEs, DPSUs and innovators from India’s rapidly growing unmanned systems ecosystem.
Dronathon-2026 is an IAF initiative designed to engage directly with the Indian unmanned systems industry and evaluate emerging technologies under realistic operational conditions. Participating organisations are demonstrating a wide range of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) and associated technologies, covering capabilities such as surveillance and reconnaissance, autonomous operations, swarm technologies, electronic warfare and Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems (CUAS).
The key objective of the event is to move beyond conventional technology demonstrations towards achieving tangible operational effects. The participating systems are being assessed for reliability, effectiveness in demanding and contested environments, and their ability to adapt to evolving operational requirements and emerging threats.
On the occasion, the Vice Chief of the Air Staff also released the ‘IAF UAS Roadmap’, providing greater clarity to Indian industry on the IAF’s future capability priorities. The roadmap is intended to encourage focused innovation and enable industry, academia and research organisations to align their efforts with the emerging requirements of the Indian Air Force.
A key highlight of the opening day was the successful real-time demonstration of ‘Vayu UTtaM’, an indigenously developed multi-mode Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) system of the IAF. During the demonstration at Pokhran, the system successfully detected and tracked both military and civilian UAS.
Vayu UTtaM is designed to enable coordinated management of UAS operations in increasingly congested airspace while supporting the identification and timely mitigation of unauthorised or rogue drones. With the growing proliferation of unmanned systems, the technology also has potential applications in airspace safety, critical infrastructure protection, civil aviation and public safety.
Dronathon-2026 reflects the IAF’s commitment to Atmanirbharta in unmanned systems, with the focus extending beyond airframes to the broader ecosystem, including propulsion, sensors and payloads, communications, autonomy, electronic warfare, countermeasures and airspace management.
