Indian Air Force Air Defence: Detect, Decide, Engage

Who Defends the Sky: Air Force, Army and Navy

The Air Force is responsible for defending Indian airspace as a whole. The Ministry of Defence's 2025 year-end review says air-defence radars were deployed for active monitoring of Indian airspace and fighters on ORP (operational readiness platform, aircraft kept ready to scramble) were manned round the clock. The job runs command by command: PIB's official biography of the current Chief lists "Air Defence Commander at Southern Air Command" among his postings.

The Army has its own arm, Army Air Defence, whose guns and missiles protect formations and vulnerable points on the ground; its college is at Gopalpur in Odisha. The Navy's ships carry their own missiles and guns. The three keep separate weapons but share one air picture.

The Army's arm is on combat arms and its weapons, Akash and Akash Prime among them, are on Army weapon systems. Ship-borne air defence sits with the escorts on surface ships.

The Layered Idea: Detect, Decide, Engage

No single weapon stops every threat. A fighter, a cruise missile and a small drone fly at different heights and speeds, so defence is built in layers. The Director General of Military Operations described the defensive layers at the 12 May 2025 briefing, and PIB's note of 14 May 2025 lists them from the International Boundary inward: counter-unmanned aerial systems, shoulder-fired weapons, legacy air-defence weapons and modern air-defence weapon systems.

Every engagement follows one chain. Detect: ground radars and airborne early-warning aircraft find the target, and a radar on an aircraft sees past the curve of the Earth to low flyers. Decide: the network separates friend from foe and picks the weapon; this is IACCS. Engage: the weapon suited to the range fires, and if the target survives the next layer takes over. The table gives the main systems by layer. Range classes follow PIB wording; the Ministry rarely publishes exact kilometres, so book figures differ.

The detail on each missile belongs to the child page: our surface-to-air missiles page covers S-400, MRSAM, Akash and SPYDER one by one and who operates what, and the radar networks page explains how radar works and how the sensors join IACCS.

PIB's 2025 note describes Akash as a short-range system that can engage multiple targets at once, in group or autonomous mode, with built-in electronic counter-countermeasures, on mobile platforms.

IACCS: The Network That Joins It All

The Integrated Air Command and Control System is the Air Force's automated, net-centric network. PIB's 2025 note says it brought the Army, Navy and Air Force elements together. The Ministry of Defence's 2025 year-end review, which carries the Air Force's own account, says IACCS integrated the air-surveillance picture from all sensors in the country and passed it to the Army through Akashteer and to the Navy through IMSAS (the review's name for the Navy's feed; the Raksha Mantri and PIB use Trigun), building one Air Situation Picture across the country.

The Raksha Mantri said on 30 September 2025 that IACCS worked in unison with the Army's Akashteer and the Navy's Trigun as a joint operational backbone, and that the unified real-time picture reduced the risk of fratricide: a friendly aircraft being engaged by mistake. The more weapons from three services are in the sky, the more that picture matters. The Ministry's review also records that from 7 May 2025 a total of 32 airports west of a stated line were closed to civil flights, with normal operations back from 12 May.

The sensors behind the network are on radar networks.

Operation Sindoor: The Air-Defence Facts

Operation Sindoor was launched on the intervening night of 6 and 7 May 2025 after the Pahalgam terror attack of 22 April 2025 (Ministry of Defence year-end review). This section gives only what PIB and the Ministry have stated about air defence. The wider story is on Operation Sindoor.

• 7 and 8 May 2025: PIB's note says military targets in northern and western India were engaged with drones and missiles and that these were neutralised by the Integrated Counter UAS Grid and air-defence systems.
• Systems named officially: battle-proven Pechora, OSA-AK and low-level air-defence guns, and the indigenous Akash. PIB says Army, Navy and, primarily, Air Force assets performed with exceptional synergy, with IACCS bringing them together.
• 12 May 2025: the DGMO said the multi-tier defence prevented attacks on airfields and logistics installations on the night of 9 and 10 May, and that civil and military infrastructure remained largely unaffected.
• Counter-drone effort: counter-UAS assets from across the country were mobilised along the borders within a short span (Ministry review).
• Airborne warning: the Deputy Chief of the Air Staff spoke of the operational use of Netra AEW&C during the operation (PIB, 25 June 2026).
• Later statements: the Ministry's 2026 Republic Day note said Akash and S-400 "provided a protective shield", and on 12 June 2026 the Raksha Mantri said air defence "completely thwarted the enemy's intentions".

Mission Sudarshan Chakra and Ballistic Missile Defence

Mission Sudarshan Chakra was announced by the Prime Minister in his Independence Day address on 15 August 2025. As PIB's English text records, he said that over the next ten years, till 2035, he wanted to expand, strengthen and modernise the national security shield. His three basic points: research, development and manufacturing all in India; a system that works out the possibilities of future warfare; and precise, targeted action.

The official statements describe the aim and the principles. The releases checked give no cost, system list or deployments, so neither does this page.

Counter-Drone Systems

Small drones are cheap, slow and hard to see, so they get their own layer. Counter-drone systems work by soft kill (jamming or spoofing the drone's control and navigation, an electronic warfare job) or hard kill (destroying it with a missile, gun or laser). The officially announced pieces are these.

The Army's drone and counter-drone kit is also on Army weapon systems.

Pages in the Air-Defence Branch

Two child pages go deeper; the rest show where related topics live.

The Air Force commands page shows the headquarters that run the air-defence battle region by region.

Exam pins

Asked in past papers

Questions are short and factual: which country supplies a system, which institute is where, what a term means.

Practice MCQs (with answers)

1. The Integrated Air Command and Control System (IACCS) is run by the
   1. Indian Army
   2. Indian Navy
   3. Indian Air Force
   4. Defence Research and Development Organisation
2. Which one is the Army's air-defence control and reporting system that works with IACCS?
   1. Akashteer
   2. Trigun
   3. Netra
   4. Kusha
3. DRDO's long-range surface-to-air missile that made its maiden flight test in July 2026 is
   1. Akash-NG
   2. VSHORADS
   3. QRSAM
   4. Kusha
4. Which of these belongs to the outermost, long-range layer?
   1. Igla-S
   2. S-400
   3. L-70 gun
   4. Akash
5. In PIB's wording, the Akash weapon system is a
   1. very short range, shoulder-fired system
   2. long-range missile
   3. short-range surface-to-air missile system
   4. ballistic missile defence interceptor
6. The Integrated Air Defence Weapon System tested on 23 August 2025 combined QRSAM, VSHORADS and
   1. a high-power laser weapon
   2. an anti-ship missile
   3. BrahMos
   4. Pinaka rockets

Where to Go Next

Rehearse a three-minute answer on "layered air defence" with our lecturette topics for SSB, then revise AFCAT defence awareness. If you want to wear the Air Force blue, our career in the Indian Air Force page shows the branches, and Cavalier's AFCAT coaching batches cover general awareness, military aptitude, reasoning, numerical ability and English, and prepare you for the Air Force Selection Board.