Kolkata Startup AvionX Advances ‘Vajra’ Naval Loyal Wingman Concept for AI-Enabled Maritime Combat

India’s rapidly expanding private defence-technology ecosystem is beginning to move beyond conventional surveillance drones toward a much more ambitious class of unmanned aircraft: autonomous combat platforms designed to operate alongside manned fighters. Kolkata-based AvionX Aerospace is pursuing this field through its Vajra Collaborative Combat Aircraft, a proposed jet-powered unmanned platform conceived for maritime combat, manned-unmanned teaming, electronic warfare, reconnaissance and precision-strike missions.

The programme has gained fresh relevance after AvionX secured a ₹5-crore pre-seed funding round on 26 August 2026. The company says the capital will support the development, manufacturing and field testing of its autonomous UAV platforms as well as further work on artificial intelligence, guidance and onboard decision-making technologies. The funding is not described as being exclusively for Vajra, but it strengthens the financial base from which AvionX intends to move its unmanned systems from engineering development toward deployable hardware.

Vajra is particularly significant because its proposed mission closely resembles the direction in which the Indian Navy itself has been moving. Rather than merely developing another remotely piloted aircraft, AvionX is attempting to build what is increasingly called a Collaborative Combat Aircraft, or CCA — an unmanned aircraft capable of operating as part of a combat formation with crewed fighters while taking on missions considered either too dangerous, too expensive or too demanding for manned aircraft alone.

A Naval Loyal Wingman Built Around Manned-Unmanned Teaming

AvionX describes Vajra as a Naval Collaborative Combat Air Vehicle, or N-CCAV, intended to increase combat mass and extend the reach of crewed aircraft in heavily defended maritime environments. The company envisages the drone operating alongside fighters while carrying out intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, electronic-warfare support, air-to-surface attack and potentially air-to-air missions.

The principle behind such a loyal-wingman aircraft is fundamentally different from that of a conventional drone controlled continuously from the ground. A collaborative aircraft must be able to receive broad mission instructions, interpret data from its sensors, maintain formation or tactical separation from other aircraft, respond to changing threats and continue performing useful tasks even when communications are degraded.

AvionX therefore places considerable emphasis on onboard autonomy. Its stated Vajra architecture combines artificial intelligence with data from an AESA radar, electro-optical/infrared sensors and an electronic-warfare suite. Sensor fusion would allow information from several onboard systems to be converted into a common tactical picture from