Indian Army Weapon Systems: What the Army Fields and Who Makes It

The Eight Weapon Families

The Army's weapons fall into tanks and infantry combat vehicles, artillery guns, rockets, air defence, infantry small arms, helicopters, drones and loitering munitions, and surveillance and locating systems. The picture shows six of them, from armour on the left to the helicopter and drone above. The arms that use them are on the combat arms page.

Armour and Artillery: Headline Systems

Tanks and infantry combat vehicles. The fleet is built around the Russian-pattern T-90 and T-72, with the Arjun as the Indian-designed tank.

Artillery. In a name like "155 mm/52 cal", 155 mm is the bore and 52 cal is the barrel length as a multiple of it. A longer barrel gives longer range, so the move from 39 to 45 to 52 calibre is the story of the Army's gun modernisation.

Gun-by-gun detail is on artillery guns, and tank generations on main battle tanks.

Air Defence, Small Arms and Army Aviation

Air defence. Older guns such as the Bofors L-70 and the upgraded Schilka (PIB lists the Schilka among the Army Day 2026 displays) now stand beside DRDO missiles and Akashteer, an indigenous control system that fuses the air picture. The Air Force's own layers are on IAF air defence.

Infantry small arms. The Army is moving on from the 5.56 mm INSAS; detail is on infantry weapons.

Army Aviation. The Army flies its own helicopters; Army Aviation explains why.

Drones, Loitering Munitions and Surveillance

This is the fastest-moving family. A loitering munition is a drone with a warhead that circles over an area and dives onto a target it has picked, so it sits between a missile and a surveillance drone. PIB records:

• Artillery gets its own drones. On 14 August 2026 the Ministry signed contracts of about ₹1,577 crore with Tata Advanced Systems and NIBE for Loiter Munition Systems for Artillery Regiments, under Buy (Indian) through the Fast Track Procedure. Our explainer on the contract shows how it changes the gunner's job.
• New units. PIB names Rudra Brigades, Divyastra Batteries and Bhairav Battalions as new force multipliers. The 2026 Republic Day parade showed Shaktibaan and Divyastra, the new unmanned-warhead systems, and counter-drone gear such as the Prabal system and the Corps of EME's Drone Shakti lorry.

A weapon-locating radar like Swathi tracks an incoming shell or rocket back to its source, so the gunners know where to reply. Surveillance also covers battlefield radars and the aerial surveillance system cleared in March 2026.

The Indigenisation Picture: Positive Lists, DAP and Production

The tables above are mixed: some systems are wholly Indian, some are foreign designs built here, a few are still bought abroad. PIB's account is that the first group is growing and that policy now pushes every new purchase towards it.

1. Positive Indigenisation Lists. Items on them will, after a stated date, be bought only from Indian industry. Two departments issue them, and the difference is a common trap.

A PIB factsheet of August 2026 counts 10 lists (five each), covering 5,521 items, up to May 2026. Our explainer on the sixth list shows why it works as an import ban in effect.

2. Defence Acquisition Procedure. DAP 2020 ranks purchase routes, with Buy (Indian-IDDM), meaning Indigenously Designed, Developed and Manufactured, on top at a minimum 50% indigenous content. The draft DAP 2026 (February 2026) proposes simpler acquisition categories and indigenous content requirements of up to 60%, as PIB puts it. K9 Vajra-T, a licence-built gun, was bought under plain Buy (Indian), so the label matters.

3. Production and exports, from PIB:

4. Joint ventures and industry reform. The Ordnance Factory Board was split into seven companies in 2021; AVNL (armoured vehicles, at Avadi and Medak) and AWEIL (guns and rifles, at Jabalpur, Kanpur and Korwa) are two of them. Indo-Russian Rifles Pvt Ltd makes the AK-203: the Indian side (AWEIL and Munitions India) holds 50.5%, Russia's Rosoboronexport and Concern Kalashnikov 49.5%. FDI is allowed up to 74% automatically and 100% with approval. The DPSU map is on defence PSUs, the research side on DRDO, and the policy story on indigenisation and exports.

A Note on Missiles

The Army also fires missiles: BrahMos, Akash, Nag and Pinaka's guided rockets. How they work and how ranges are classed belongs to the missile section: missiles of India, anti-tank missiles and BrahMos. Warship equivalents of this page begin at surface ships, and the combined view is on tri-services.

Guided Tour: Pages in the Weapon Systems Section

The wider ecosystem is on defence organisations and the money behind it on the defence budget. Our daily defence notes track new contracts as they are signed.

Exam pins

Asked in past papers

Weapon questions are mostly matching: system to type, or system to maker.

Practice MCQs (with answers)

1. The K9 Vajra-T self-propelled gun is built in India by
   1. Hindustan Aeronautics Limited
   2. Larsen & Toubro, at Hazira
   3. BEML Limited
   4. Gun Carriage Factory, Jabalpur
2. In the description "155 mm/52 cal", the "52 cal" refers to
   1. the maximum range in kilometres
   2. the number of rounds the gun carries
   3. the barrel length as a multiple of the bore
   4. the weight of the shell in kilograms
3. The Positive Indigenisation Lists of the Department of Military Affairs cover
   1. items the armed forces will buy only from Indian industry after a stated timeline
   2. foreign firms cleared to sell to the Army
   3. items that may be exported
   4. defence companies to be privatised
4. The AK-203 rifles for the Indian Army are produced at Korwa by
   1. Hindustan Aeronautics Limited
   2. DRDO
   3. Bharat Electronics Limited
   4. Indo-Russian Rifles Private Limited
5. Which of the following is NOT a wholly Indian design?
   1. Pinaka
   2. Arjun
   3. K9 Vajra-T
   4. ATAGS
6. PIB describes the Akash weapon system as
   1. a ballistic missile for strategic use
   2. a short-range surface-to-air missile system designed by DRDO
   3. an anti-tank missile fired from helicopters
   4. a loitering munition

Where to Go Next

For the career side, read career in the Indian Army. Boards ask "know your service" and the weapons of your arm, so read our SSB interview tips and the lecturette topics: indigenisation and drone warfare are standard group-discussion subjects. Study with the NDA study material and CDS/OTA study material, then see wars and operations for where these weapons were used. Our NDA coaching batches cover defence GK with weekly tests and SSB training, and the CDS course does the same for graduates.