India’s air and missile defence architecture is undergoing rapid expansion, with DRDO-Israel Aerospace Industries’ (IAI) Barak-8 missile system positioned as a core operational layer within the country’s multi-tiered shield.

The system, co-developed by IAI and Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), is intended to provide both naval and land-based medium-range protection against a variety of airborne threats, including aircraft, cruise missiles, anti-ship missiles, and UAVs.

The program has deep strategic value, particularly because it serves as both an operational capability and as a bridge technology: while offering robust protection against current threats, it acts as a baseline for the collaborative and indigenous development of more advanced interceptors under India’s future defence roadmap.

Between 2017 and 2023, the Barak-8 was the centrepiece of some of the largest defence procurement contracts signed by India with Israel.

In April 2017, India finalised a $1.6 billion deal to procure the land-based variant of the system, followed shortly afterward in May by a separate $630 million contract for the naval-optimised configuration tailored to the Indian Navy.

These procurements stood as the Israeli defence industries’ largest-ever international defence deals until 2023, when IAI secured a landmark $3.5 billion Arrow 3 missile defence system contract with Germany.

The size and scale of these deals highlight India’s recognition of Barak-8 as a crucial enabler for its layered air-defence structure, especially when integrated alongside Russian-origin S-400 batteries and upcoming indigenous systems.

Operationally, the Barak-8 is particularly valued for its multi-platform deployability. The Indian Navy has integrated the system into frontline warships such as Kolkata-class destroyers and Visakhapatnam-class stealth destroyers, strengthening fleet area-defence capabilities against saturation strikes from advanced anti-ship missiles.

On land, the system is being deployed to protect high-value assets and strategic installations. Its range of up to 100–140 km, coupled with advanced active-seeker homing, mid-course guidance, and high mobility launch units, ensures responsive defence against regional threats.

This has made the Barak-8 a cornerstone of India’s plan to extend full-spectrum security coverage to strategic facilities across the country by 2035, a goal emphasised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi under the Make in India vision for defence self-sufficiency.

The collaboration around Barak-8 also reflects India’s approach of leveraging foreign partnerships to gain technology access while fostering local industrial growth. Several components of the missile system, including portions of the missile manufacturing, radar production, and command-and-control elements, have been localised through Indian defence majors such as Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) and Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL).

This not only reduces dependency on imports but also aligns with India’s ambition to expand its indigenous capability for large-scale air-defence interceptor production. Such industrial participation ensures continuity of supply and supports the larger target of evolving from licensed production to fully indigenous systems in the near future.

Parallel to operational deployment, India is advancing Project Kusha, also called the Extended Range Air Defence System (ERADS) under DRDO’s leadership. Conceptually similar to Israel’s layered defence structure, Project Kusha seeks to field a family of locally developed long-range interceptors with ranges spanning 150 km to 400 km, which would extend well beyond the existing performance envelope of the Barak-8.

The modular integration plan for Project Kusha envisions that these indigenously built missiles can be seamlessly interfaced not only with the Barak-8 launch systems and sensors, but also with existing Russian S-400 Triumf platforms currently in Indian service.

The effort echoes Israel’s tiered defence ecosystem, where lower-tier defences like Iron Dome integrate operationally alongside medium- and high-altitude systems such as David’s Sling and Arrow. India’s adaptation will thus feature the Barak-8 as the mid-tier defence layer, bridging shorter-range quick-reaction missiles with extended-range interceptors now under development.

Strategically, the combination of Barak-8, S-400, and future ERADS systems under Project Kusha points to India’s intent of establishing one of the world’s most comprehensive multi-layered national air defence networks. This architecture is envisioned to provide uninterrupted and overlapping protective coverage across the entire country, shielding against both conventional threats from regional adversaries and advanced missile systems in future conflicts.

Once fully realised, the system will offer critical protection to India’s nuclear command-and-control nodes, strategic infrastructure such as refineries and defence industrial corridors, densely populated urban centres, and forward military deployments.

Beyond air threats, the sophistication of these networks also expands India’s deterrence posture, signalling to adversaries that saturation strikes and precision missile campaigns can be effectively blunted.

Thus, the Barak-8 emerges not merely as a foreign acquisition but as a strategic enabler in India’s pathway toward indigenous, layered, and self-reliant air defence.

Its operational maturity, adaptability to naval and land forces, and compatibility with future indigenous weapons make it indispensable during the transitory period as India transitions from reliance on imports to its own advanced systems under Project Kusha.

This integration of proven Israeli design with long-term Indian self-reliance ambitions exemplifies the hybrid model of defence modernisation that New Delhi is actively adapting to meet its 2035 full-coverage air-defence vision.

Based On Israeli Media Report