Defense

The K-15 is also known as Sagarika, B-05 or PJ-08. It belongs to India’s K-series family of underwater-launched missiles. It was developed by DRDO as part of the long effort to complete India’s nuclear triad: land-based missiles, air-delivered weapons and sea-based missiles. The land and air legs give India visible deterrence. The sea leg gives India hidden deterrence. A submarine carrying ballistic missiles can remain concealed beneath the ocean, making it harder for an enemy to destroy India’s retaliatory capability in a first strike.

The strength of SURGE lies in its modular design. Armory has presented the system in handheld, tripod and vehicle-mounted forms. This gives commanders flexibility. A handheld or manpack version can move with soldiers in difficult terrain. A tripod version can protect gates, checkpoints, camps and perimeters. A vehicle-mounted version can move with convoys and patrol columns. This modular approach is important for India because drone threats appear across deserts, mountains, plains, coastal zones, cities and border belts.

The new jammers are meant to protect Indian Navy warships in a maritime battlespace where satellite navigation, precision weapons, drones, unmanned platforms and networked sensors are becoming central to modern combat. Global Navigation Satellite Systems are used for positioning, timing, navigation and target coordination. In a high-threat environment, an adversary’s dependence on such signals becomes a point of vulnerability. The ECGNSS jammers are designed to degrade hostile satellite signal acquisition and tracking, while also supporting spoofing or deceptive jamming against enemy receivers.

The reported deployment of 12 warheads should be read in this doctrinal frame. It is not a move toward reckless nuclear signalling. It is a readiness adjustment inside a changing security environment. India faces two nuclear-armed neighbours, Pakistan and China, with live border disputes, expanding missile inventories, and increasingly complex military technologies. A credible deterrent requires survivability, secure command, reliable delivery platforms and the ability to respond after absorbing a first strike.

GBMES also intercepts and analyses communication signals. This expands its value from radar intelligence to wider battlefield awareness. Communication intercepts can reveal movement patterns, command activity, operational tempo and the intensity of enemy coordination. When radar intelligence and communication intelligence are fused, the Army gains a more complete view of the adversary’s posture. This supports better planning, better deception, better targeting and better defensive preparation.

DRDO’s proposed indigenous cybersecurity LLM fits into this wider transformation. A Large Language Model trained and tuned for cyber defence can examine vast volumes of technical information at a speed beyond human teams. It can read vulnerability databases, malware reports, threat advisories, exploit descriptions, log files, code repositories and incident reports. It can connect scattered clues and help analysts identify where a system may be weak. In simple terms, it can become an intelligent assistant for finding digital cracks before an adversary uses them.

India’s sea-based deterrent adds the most important layer of survivability. Nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines give a country the ability to hide its retaliatory force in the ocean. This reduces the risk of a successful first strike by an adversary. The Arihant-class submarine programme and submarine-launched ballistic missile development are therefore central to India’s long-term nuclear posture. A secure sea-based leg strengthens the nuclear triad and gives India a more reliable second-strike option.