Drone Warfare in South Asia • Stimson Center

By Betzalel Newman • Jupiter Huang

December 10, 2025

India and Pakistan both used drones in a major combat role for the first time during their May conflict. Why did drones become so prominent in the region, and how will they shape future conflicts? Experts from India, Pakistan, and the United States weigh in on these questions and more.

Drones have reshaped the battlefield in several recent conflicts, most notably in the Russia-Ukraine war, but also in the May India-Pakistan crisis. Over their four days of fighting, India and Pakistan used a variety of drone systems for gathering intelligence, carrying out attacks, and playing other supporting roles.

This conflict marked the first time India and Pakistan used drones in major combat roles, and unmanned systems are likely to remain a key component of both sides’ arsenals for years to come. To make sense of these capabilities, the Strategic Learning team interviewed five drone warfare experts on drone technologies, their current and future role in South Asian security, and their potential consequences for strategic stability and escalation dynamics in the region.

Introduction to Drone Warfare

Drones are unmanned systems that are either remotely controlled or operate autonomously. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which range from large, plane-like, fixed-wing systems to small quadcopters, are the most common types of military drones. Drones also exist in other domains, including unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) and uncrewed ground vehicles (UGV).

Military drone technologies trace back to U.S. aerial reconnaissance programs in the Cold War, such as the U-2 spy plane. A major source of political risk for U-2 missions came from the capture or loss of pilots over Soviet airspace. In the late 1960s, the U.S. military began using jet-powered drones for surveillance missions over China and Southeast Asia, mapping adversary missile sites on pre-programmed routes without putting pilots at risk. These platforms served as precursors for research and development programs in the 1990s that led to expensive, long-endurance drones such as the Predator and Global Hawk.

Proliferation of Military Drones

Military drone technologies have proliferated rapidly in the past two decades. James Patton Rogers, Executive Director of Cornell University’s Brooks Tech Policy Institute, explains how armed drones have evolved from a high-end capability unique to the United States to a platform deployed by many of world’s militaries today.

Note: One-way attack drones, also known as “kamikaze drones” or “loitering munitions,” are UAVs intended to fly directly into their target and self-destruct on impact.

Types of Military Drones

Drones can be equipped with both non-lethal and lethal payloads. Unarmed drones, subject to less stringent export controls, are far more widespread than armed drones. These unarmed drones often carry sensors and electronic warfare suites that enable intelligence collection, jamming, and other missions in support of military operations. Armed drones, in addition to conducting surveillance, include both reusable aircraft that strike targets with munitions (e.g., bombs or missiles) and one-way attack systems.

Drones vary in capability, with the U.S. military categorizing drones by size. However, as James Patton Rogers highlights, a range of armed and unarmed drones can be highly dangerous on the battlefield.

Military Advantages of Drones

Most drones are still dependent on human operators that command them remotely. Military analysts often refer to Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) as a “complete package” for aerial drones that includes ground-based communications and control stations, remote terminals, and logistical equipment. Some drones are semi-autonomous, meaning that they can perform some or all of their missions without human control, but an operator remains “in the loop.” Fully autonomous systems operate without any human input.

Consistent across all drones is the absence of a human operator onboard the vehicle itself. Rajiv Kumar Narang (Indian Air Force, Ret.), Senior Fellow at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, explains the advantages of unmanned systems over manned aircraft.

Drones in Southern Asia

Both the Indian and Pakistani militaries have been working on their drone programs since the 1990s. Though they initially sought drones for reconnaissance and logistical missions, more recently both countries have also prioritized acquiring armed combat drones.

India largely relies upon Israeli-made drones. It first purchased Israeli unarmed reconnaissance drones (Heron) and later Israeli one-way attack drones (Harpy and Harop). India has also been investing in indigenous drone production and has developed its own reconnaissance and one-way attack drones.

Pakistan similarly relies on foreign cooperation and imports for its smaller drone fleet. Pakistan indigenously developed drones with Chinese support for reconnaissance and attacking missions; Islamabad also possesses Chinese-made drones capable of carrying missile and bombs for air-to-ground strikes. Pakistan also acquired a variety of mostly cheap Turkish combat drones that have seen effective use in other global conflicts.

The South Asian Battlefield

As combat drones introduce a newer and previously untested system in South Asia, they have raised questions over when and how they might be used in regional crises. Dinakar Peri, a fellow in security studies at Carnegie India, explains some ways drones are now changing the region’s battlefield.

May 2025 India-Pakistan Crisis

During the May conflict between India and Pakistan, drones played a major role not only for surveillance but also as combat weapons for striking adversary targets. Yet the two sides used different types of drones for divergent battlefield aims, as Dinakar Peri describes in detail.

Note: MALE refers to “medium-altitude long-endurance drones” and HALE refers to “high-altitude long-endurance drones.” These are both categories of advanced drones that can remain airborne for up to dozens of hours.

Future South Asian Crises

Though the use of drones in the May conflict received significant international attention, uncertainty over which systems saw combat and their impacts has made it difficult to judge their overall effectiveness.

Despite this uncertainty, Adil Sultan, Dean of Faculty of Aerospace and Strategic Studies at Air University in Islamabad, explains why drone use in future South Asian crises may prove more dangerous.

Implications for Escalation and Crisis Stability

The use of drones represented one of several new developments in the May conflict as compared to past India-Pakistan crises. So how did drones contribute to shifting the usual patterns of these crises, and what does that mean for how future regional conflicts may unfold?

Misperception Risks

Drones can accurately strike distant targets at a lower material and human cost than missiles and aircraft. Some experts argue that states can therefore use drones to retaliate effectively in a crisis without adding significant pressure for further escalation. On the other hand, perceptions that drone warfare raises fewer risks than using other weapon systems could also lead states to be less cautious with their drone attacks and cause greater damage, thereby incentivizing a forceful response and contributing to an escalation spiral.

Expanding on this debate, Salma Malik, professor at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, cautions audiences on the risks associated with the lack of shared understandings on drone warfare as technology continues to evolve.

Offense-Defense Balance

Another unique advantage of combat drones is that because they can be cheap to produce, they can be used in swarms to overwhelm an adversary’s more sophisticated air defenses. Given ongoing efforts to deploy these and other capabilities in South Asia, Rajiv Kumar Narang evaluates the implications of drones for the future of the region’s balance between offensive and defensive capabilities.

Challenges of Counter-Drone Defense

Given drones’ autonomous flight paths, precision strike potential, and ability to be used in large quantities, states have encountered significant difficulties developing reliable defenses against them. James Patton Rogers describes some of these challenges and why different strategies to counter drones have fallen short.

Looking Ahead

Drone technologies are likely to become ubiquitous across modern battlefields, and in all domains. In South Asia, both India and Pakistan have looked to strengthen their drone capabilities in the wake of the May crisis.

India has invested heavily in procuring additional counter-drone defenses and loitering munitions and expects to acquire 31 MQ-9B Reaper drones from the United States in a deal signed before the crisis. The Pakistani military is likely to “intensify collaboration” with China and Turkey for domestic drone production.

Future Drone Employment Strategies

Looking further ahead, states around the world are innovating to develop new ways to make drones more effective. So far, combat drones have not conducted fully autonomous missions. Instead, militaries have used “partial autonomy” by incorporating AI capabilities to navigate, identify targets, and fuse large amounts of drone data without human input. Drone technologies have also been coupled with long-range strike systems to make existing military forces more deadly.

Dinakar Peri explains why military drone swarms have not yet been developed, and how drones operate alongside traditional military capabilities such as manned aircraft, missiles, and long-range artillery.

Future Drone Technologies

Cheap, precise, and massed drone swarms would be very difficult and costly for militaries to counter. This makes them an appealing capability, but not one without tradeoffs. The development of true drone swarms would require militaries to cede significantly more autonomy to large groups of drones designed to “stay in sync” with one another without the need for a human operator.

James Patton Rogers analyses these and other major improvements to drone technologies that the current drone battlefield is foreshadowing, and the legal and ethical risks that they raise.

Risk Reduction

Though drones are expected to play major roles in any future operation, the risks of drone warfare have not been incorporated into existing confidence building measures (CBMs) between India and Pakistan.

One such CBM, the 1991 Agreement on Prevention of Air Space Violations, could be tested by drone incursions across the Line of Control (LoC) and the international border between India and Pakistan. Adil Sultan explains how improved measures could reduce tensions, provided there is political will for dialogue.