Paras Anti-Drone Technologies, a 2021-born subsidiary of Paras Defence and Space Technologies, has positioned itself squarely in the counter‑UAS (C‑UAS) segment in response to the surge of asymmetric drone threats highlighted by Operation Sindoor and contemporary conflicts such as Russia–Ukraine, said Paras Anti-Drone Tech's CEO Ashutosh Baheti in an interview with Business World.. 

The company’s long‑term vision is to field fully indigenous, modular anti‑drone systems that cover the complete kill chain from detection to electronic countermeasures, with the ability to scale across terrains and operational echelons in the Indian armed forces.​

The firm views counter‑drone warfare as a deep‑tech domain where sensor technologies, situational awareness and systems integration will shape the next decade of combat capability, and therefore argues for sustained R&D investment and policy support beyond traditional L1‑driven procurement.

Paras Anti-Drone frames its value proposition around rapid technology evolution, claiming that lessons from ongoing conflicts and Indian operations are being folded into iterative product upgrades rather than static, one‑off systems.​

Detection Architecture And Sensor Fusion

At the heart of Paras Anti-Drone’s roadmap is a multi-layer autonomy concept built around multimodal sensor fusion, combining RF, radar and electro‑optical (EO) inputs into a unified detection and tracking environment. The company’s current generation systems “listen” for radio frequency emissions from drones to perform primary detection and classification, enabling early soft‑kill actions against link‑dependent platforms.​

However, recognising the rapid rise of radio‑silent, pre‑programmed and autonomous drones, the firm is pushing integration of surveillance radars and EO/IR payloads to detect targets that may not radiate in the RF spectrum. This layered sensing approach aims to feed an AI‑enabled threat picture, allowing correlation of multiple sensor cues to improve low‑RCS, low‑altitude detection and reduce false alarms in cluttered civilian or tactical environments.​

Soft-Kill Jamming, Spoofing And Autonomy

Paras Anti-Drone’s current systems place clear emphasis on soft‑kill techniques, particularly smart, agile jamming and GNSS spoofing, as the first line of defence due to their cost and logistical advantages over physical interceptors. The RF effectors are designed to break the command, control and video link between the drone and its ground control station, rendering the platform effectively “blind” and unable to navigate, or to push it away from protected zones via spoofed coordinates.​

Company leadership acknowledges that in theatres such as Ukraine many drones are being physically destroyed at the last mile, but argues that jamming remains a critical, if less visible, staple of daily operations and must be embedded as part of a broader, multi‑layered defence architecture. Paras Anti-Drone’s longer‑term goal is to close the loop between detection and effectors through autonomous decision support, enabling reactive jamming profiles tuned to specific drone signatures and mission types rather than static, band‑wide denial.​

Hard-Kill Options And Operational Trade-Offs

While jamming and spoofing are portrayed as the preferred solutions from a cost‑per‑engagement perspective, Paras Anti-Drone accepts that hard‑kill options such as interceptor drones, high‑energy lasers or directed microwave systems remain essential for certain scenarios. Precision engagement of small drones at ranges of 2–3 km is technically challenging and expensive, especially for saturating swarms, making soft‑kill especially attractive for volume defence and perimeter protection.​

In an Indian context, Operation Sindoor demonstrated a blend of hard‑kill and soft‑kill CUAS assets, with DRDO’s D4 systems and integrated air‑defence guns and missiles decimating over 50 hostile drones and missiles without allowing a single platform to complete its mission. Paras Anti-Drone situates its offerings as complementary to such integrated air‑defence networks, providing RF‑centric layers and portable jamming nodes that can fill gaps where legacy or missile‑based systems are either unavailable or uneconomical to deploy.​​

Product Lines: Manpack And Portable Systems

The company recently secured a Ministry of Defence order worth roughly ₹46 crore, covering two main categories of jamming‑centric systems for the Indian Air Force. The first is manpack units designed to be carried by soldiers in the field, giving dismounted forces the ability to detect and jam drones during manoeuvre or in exposed forward positions.​

The second category comprises man‑portable or static portable systems intended for fixed or semi‑fixed locations such as airbases, critical infrastructure or forward operating bases, where persistent monitoring and rapid jamming are required. Both product families are optimised around RF detection and disruption, with an emphasis on swift deployment, ease of use by troops and tactical flexibility across varied terrain profiles prevalent along India’s borders and coastline.​

Indo-French Partnership And Chimaera-200

On the international side, Paras Anti-Drone’s most visible collaboration is with French firm Cerbair (referred to as Surbair in some reports), focused on developing agile systems capable of identifying unique drone RF signatures and applying reactive jamming. The joint work has produced the Chimaera‑200 system, a man‑portable RF detection and neutralisation solution aimed at rogue drones and swarms, for which Paras is the OEM and systems integrator.​

A recent export deal envisages the supply of up to 30 Chimaera‑200 units to the French partner, reflecting growing confidence in India‑developed CUAS capabilities and their relevance to European end‑users. Cerbair’s exposure to the Russia–Ukraine battlespace is feeding operational lessons back into the joint roadmap, helping refine reactive jamming tactics, threat libraries and user interfaces for fast‑moving, contested environments.​

Ecosystem Positioning And Competition

Within its parent group, Paras Anti-Drone operates across several verticals that naturally feed into CUAS: electronic warfare systems, phased‑array subsystems, software‑defined radios, direction‑finding and SIGINT/COMINT solutions. This RF and radar heritage allows the company to position itself as a “systems house” capable of integrating antennas, TR modules, SDRs and EW payloads into coherent counter‑drone architectures rather than isolated products.​

Domestically, the firm acknowledges that Operation Sindoor has catalysed a wave of new entrants into the counter‑drone market, including both established defence PSUs and private companies. Paras Anti-Drone claims an early‑mover edge based on prior deployments and export partnerships, but anticipates intense competition in both the Indian procurement space and export markets, especially as CUAS becomes one of the fastest‑growing defence segments globally.​

Export Ambitions And Target Markets

Paras Anti-Drone is actively courting export opportunities with “friendly nations”, supported by demonstrations abroad and its collaboration with Cerbair as a European channel. The company identifies Europe (notably France), South Asia and select African nations as promising markets, where a combination of border security challenges, urban airspace vulnerabilities and budget constraints creates demand for cost‑effective, portable CUAS.​

These ambitions are underpinned by broader global market trends: multiple analyses project the anti‑drone market to grow from around USD 3–4.5 billion in 2025 to between USD 9–26 billion by 2030–2034, with compound annual growth rates north of 25 per cent, and Asia‑Pacific emerging as the fastest‑growing region. India’s push for Aatmanirbhar CUAS solutions, showcased in Operation Sindoor and subsequent emergency procurements, positions firms like Paras as potential suppliers not only domestically but also to partners seeking lower‑cost alternatives to Western incumbents.​

Procurement Policy, R&D And Indigenisation

Paras Anti-Drone argues that for niche, high‑end technologies such as multi‑sensor CUAS, traditional L1‑centric procurement is sub‑optimal and should be replaced or balanced by frameworks that weight technical performance and growth potential alongside cost.

The company advocates for structured consortia linking DRDO, PSUs and private industry to accelerate development of sensors, data fusion engines and autonomy stacks that will anchor future warfare systems.​

From an industrial base perspective, Paras Anti-Drone describes itself as self‑reliant in design and R&D, but acknowledges that roughly 20–30 per cent of components—typically highly specialised electronics or materials not yet produced in India—are imported, with an explicit roadmap to indigenise a portion of these in the medium term. Given India’s expansive land borders and coastline, the company expects sustained domestic demand and multiple follow‑on orders as the armed forces move from urgent operational buys to planned, scaled deployments of layered CUAS networks.​

Based On Business World Report