The next edge in Indo-Pacific military power will not come from counting fighter jets or ships. It will be shaped by code, autonomy, and intelligent systems that can deploy rapidly, operate in degraded environments, and adapt in real time to shifting threats.
These software-defined, modular, and secure systems will be interoperable among partners and will define the military advantage of tomorrow. U.S. defense leaders like Secretary Pete Hegseth have emphasized the need to “rapidly field these new [AI and unmanned] systems that we’re going to need for fights in the future,” underscoring the fact that autonomy is critical to staying ahead.
In February 2025, the United States and India jointly launched the Autonomous Systems Industry Alliance (ASIA), a new initiative to co-develop and co-produce autonomous defense platforms serving both nations and their partners. The announcement, tucked within a U.S.-India joint statement, highlighted a partnership between Anduril Industries and India’s Mahindra Group to build maritime autonomous systems and AI-enabled counter-drone technology, as well as a collaboration between L3Harris and Bharat Electronics Limited on advanced towed-array sensor systems.
Despite its significance, ASIA’s launch passed with little public fanfare. But it would be a mistake to overlook it. If this initiative can move from high-level framework to actual fielded systems, and from coordination to execution, then it has the potential to become one of the most strategically important U.S.–India defense efforts of the decade.
From signals to systems
Early signals are promising. The Anduril-Mahindra venture on unmanned maritime platforms and the L3Harris–BEL teaming on undersea sensors are important first steps. However, isolated one-off projects do not make a scalable system. Right now, ASIA lacks a clear structure, concrete timelines, a pipeline of projects, shared testing infrastructure, or common standards. There is momentum, but no architecture. To deliver lasting impact, ASIA needs an execution backbone. One that can turn joint innovation into joint production.
What's at stake
What’s at stake is more than just another defense MoU. Autonomous and AI-driven systems are already reshaping the battlespace across the world. The United States remains a leader in tactical autonomy, edge AI, and software-centric warfare platforms, while India brings unmatched engineering talent, manufacturing scale, and complex terrain as a testing ground.
Meanwhile, adversaries are not standing still. China has been aggressively developing unmanned platforms. For example, it launched the Zhu Hai Yun, an autonomous drone carrier ship capable of deploying unmanned surface, underwater, and aerial vehicles to surveil the South China Sea. Chinese undersea drones and gliders have been caught collecting oceanographic data in contested Asian waters, blurring the line between scientific research and military reconnaissance. Similarly, Iran has flooded proxy conflicts with fleets of low-cost drones. Tehran supplied its militias in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon with an “unprecedented number of armed unmanned aerial vehicles” in recent years, enabling them to strike regional targets. These loitering munitions and UAVs cost only a few thousand or even few hundred dollars, yet force adversaries to expend missiles worth millions to counter them.
In short, autonomy is not a future concept. It is happening right now—and it is cheap, effective, and proliferating.
ASIA offers a chance for the United States and India to define the democratic standard for trusted autonomy ensuring these technologies are secure, resilient, and used in line with international norms. But to seize that role, the initiative must unlock opportunities spanning across a range of platforms and domains:
- Uncrewed underwater and surface vessels (UUVs/USVs) – for maritime intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), mine detection, and anti-submarine warfare operations in the Indo-Pacific’s vast littorals.
- Uncrewed ground vehicles (UGVs) – for logistics support, high-altitude or high-risk land missions, and forward-deployed resupply in contested border areas.
- AI-enabled command-and-control (C2) systems – battle management software that can function under electronic warfare, cyber attack, or GPS-denied conditions, allowing commanders to make decisions at the tactical edge even when networks are under siege.
- Modular autonomy “stacks” – common architectures of sensors, software, and actuators that can be rapidly integrated into any platform (air, land, or sea), upgraded continuously via software, and exported securely to partners who need trustworthy alternatives to opaque authoritarian tech.
For all of these, India itself can be an invaluable test bed. Few countries offer the environmental diversity found in India. From the Himalayan heights of Ladakh and the dense jungles of the Northeast (to stress-test edge AI in extreme cold or foliage), to the deserts of Rajasthan (for UGV stress test) and the vast coastlines and islands of the Indian Ocean (for autonomous sea and ocean solutions). Systems proven in India’s varied and challenging terrains will be well equipped for almost any environment since India’s geography and topography naturally provides a touchstone for autonomy at scale.
Four ways to make ASIA real – revisiting good ideas
ASIA does not need to reinvent the wheel. Around the world, governments and industry have co-created models that balance national security goals with private-sector innovation. To turn ASIA from vision into reality, the United States and India should draw on four proven approaches:
- Government-led platforms, delivered by industry: Major joint programs work best when governments set the objectives and enable the framework, while industry handles execution. A classic example is the U.S.-Israel Arrow anti-missile program, structured via a formal bilateral agreement and co-funded by both nations. Israel Aerospace Industries and Boeing co-developed the Arrow system under this arrangement, aligning production and even export considerations from the start. Another example is the new Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP), in which the UK, Japan, and Italy are jointly developing a sixth-generation fighter. The three governments brokered the partnership, and a joint venture of BAE Systems, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (via Japan Aircraft Industrial Co.), and Leonardo is leading platform development as a unified industry team. ASIA should adopt a similar model. A formal U.S.-India bilateral agreement needs to underpin the alliance, setting out development timelines, co-funding commitments, intellectual property sharing, and export frameworks. While Indian and American defense primes form joint teams to actually design and build the new autonomous systems. In essence, governments provide the structure and strategic direction; industry delivers the product.
- R&D co-creation that brings builders and users closer: Innovation accelerates when the people building technology work hand-in-hand with the people using it. A model here is the Singapore–Israel Industrial R&D Foundation (SIIRD), which provides up to $1.5 million per project to support joint research between companies from each country. This kind of program funds collaborative prototypes and proofs-of-concept, often pairing smaller firms or startups with end-user needs early on. The result is that solution-makers and military end-users can iterate together, improving relevance and speeding up deployment. ASIA should establish a similar binational autonomous R&D fund focused on mid-stage autonomous tech (like technology readiness levels (TRL) ranging 3 to 6). Crucially, the grants would require joint projects (an American and an Indian company teaming up) by design. This would incentivize startups and established firms alike in both countries to find partners and build together from the ground up. Such a fund would complement existing efforts like the U.S. Defense Innovation Unit or India’s iDEX startup defense incubator, but go further by ensuring cross-border collaboration is baked in rather than incidental and the focus is entirely on R&D (future needs).
- Field trials in India’s diverse terrain: Paper designs and lab tests are not enough for autonomous systems. They must be validated under real-world conditions with soldiers in the loop. In 2023, the AUKUS partners (Australia, UK, U.S.) conducted a series of exercises in South Australia to do exactly that. The Trusted Autonomous Vehicles in Contested Environments (TORVICE) trial put robotic ground vehicles through missions while subjected to GPS jamming, electronic warfare attacks, laser interference and other hostile effects. Engineers and warfighters worked side by side, learning how the AI behaved under pressure and feeding improvements back into design. A UK military advisor involved called the tech “a game-changer,” noting the ability to deploy sensors and supplies with robots across a larger battlespace will give commanders greater options while reducing risk to human troops.
India offers an even richer venue for such trials. ASIA should sponsor joint field exercises in multiple Indian environments like testing unmanned systems and operations on the edge at high altitudes in Ladakh, in dense jungle terrain in the Northeast, UGVs in desserts, and in littoral/maritime scenarios around the Andaman & Nicobar Islands. Mixed teams of Indian and American developers and military personnel should participate in these trials together, creating a continuous feedback loop from field to factory. This not only hardens the technology against real operational stresses, but also builds trust and familiarity among the two forces. After all, autonomy in warfighting is as much about doctrine and training as it is about algorithms.
- The ASIA “Corridor Fund”: Finally, to scale any innovation, you need capital. This capital is different from the revenues from procurement hence governments need to not spend on procurement, but put actual investment to grow the ecosystem of companies building these cutting-edge systems. Rather than direct subsidies or government-managed programs, the United States and India could take a page from venture financing. ASIA should establish a Corridor Fund dedicated to Indo-Pacific autonomous systems, raised from private investors (major defense OEMs, venture funds focused on dual-use tech, development finance institutions, strategic family offices, and other strategic investors). Why would private capital participate? Because both governments, as sponsors, would signal strong conviction and backing for this fund by providing regulatory support, fast-track testing and evaluation opportunities, export facilitation, and critically signal procurement to de-risk the fund. The key is that the fund would be privately managed and free of government control. So while government officials or departments will not be LPs nor have bureaucratic vetoes in the investment committee, they will still guide the portfolio companies and the IC toward strategic tech areas by the confidence and access that government backers provide. Such a vehicle could inject patient growth capital into promising companies (particularly joint ventures or co-development efforts at advanced prototype stage, say TRL 6 to 9) and help them bridge the infamous “Valley of Death” between demo and deployment. In short, governments catalyze and enable, the market drives the scaling. The signal of two states endorsing a field of tech, autonomy, as critical and offering support (short of writing blank checks) can crowd-in far more money and talent than public funding alone. It’s a force multiplier.
Ultimately, patient capital and enabling frameworks are among the most powerful tools governments can wield to shape an industry. When paired with the execution models above, like structured public-private programs, shared R&D, rigorous joint testing, they can unlock not just innovation, but also trust and scale.
ASIA as strategic infrastructure
Autonomous systems are no longer experimental projects at the periphery of forces; they are fast becoming the infrastructure of deterrence. A quiet, distributed web of sensors, shooters, and decision-support AI will underpin military power, much like satellites or stealth technology did in earlier eras. Drones and unmanned vessels will not replace fighter jets or frigates one-for-one, but they will fundamentally shape how missions are carried out: how data flows between units, how targets are detected and tracked, and how decisions are made at the tactical edge.
The United States and India are uniquely positioned to build this infrastructure together. One side brings cutting-edge integration capabilities, combat networking experience, and pioneering AI/autonomy research. The other side brings massive scale in human capital and manufacturing base and some of the world’s most complex operational environments to hone these tools. What has been missing is the corridor to connect these strengths and convert them into deployable capability. ASIA can be that corridor. But only if it moves beyond symbolism and high-level working groups. It must become a pipeline that turns intent into reality funding tangible projects, testing them under pressure, fielding systems that are designed to last and trusted by both nations and their partners.
In an era when technology will decide the balance of power, the most strategic thing democracies can do is build together not just shared values, but shared capabilities. Not just interoperable platforms, but interoperable pipelines of innovation and production. The Autonomous Systems Industry Alliance, if given real steel, structure, and purpose, can ensure that the Indo-Pacific’s next-generation arsenal is one developed by and for the democracies of the region. ASIA is that corridor—now is the time to start paving it in earnest.
