Op Sindoor's Air Ops Chief on Future War & India's Roadmap | Air Marshal A K Bharti | Shaurya 2026

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" #OperationSindoor #IndianAirForce #Shaurya2026