Article by Shubhi Malhotra, PhD Research Scholar 

Introduction

On February 11, 2026, the Department of Defence under India’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) released the draft Defence Acquisition Procedure 2026, inviting stakeholder comments by March 3. Intended to replace the Defence Acquisition Procedure 2020, DAP 2026 is more than a routine revision of India’s capital acquisition rulebook. It is framed by the Ministry as “the navigation chart for the middle leg of India’s journey to 2047,” explicitly weaving national security priorities into a longer industrial and technological transformation agenda. As of this writing, the draft remains under review, with a final version, expected to include a separate procedure for aerospace systems, still awaited. But its structural ambitions already mark a discernible shift in how India intends to arm itself over the coming decade.

From “Made in India” to “Owned by India”

The most consequential conceptual shift in DAP 2026 is captured in a phrase now circulating widely among policy analysts: a move from “Made in India” to “Owned by India.” Where DAP 2020 was preoccupied with localising manufacturing and assembly, the 2026 draft pushes further upstream, toward design ownership. Under the new framework, India would retain a defence product’s technical rights, source code, critical design data, and upgrade authority, rather than merely hosting license-built production lines. The MoD has stated its ambition for India to become a “design powerhouse of the world,” a considerably more assertive posture than earlier procurement cycles, which were content to absorb technology transfer without necessarily controlling the underlying intellectual property.

This shift responds to a longstanding criticism of India’s defence-industrial base: that decades of licensed production under DPP (Defence Procurement Procedure) 2002, DPP 2008, DPP 2016, and DAP 2020 produced assembly capacity without genuine design competence, leaving India dependent on foreign original equipment manufacturers for upgrades, spares, and technology refreshes. By raising Indigenous Content requirements in the Buy Indian-IDDM (Indigenously Designed, Developed and Manufactured) category from 50 to 60 percent and formally defining “Indigenous Design” for the first time, DAP 2026 attempts to close this gap structurally rather than rhetorically.

Structural and Procedural Reforms

DAP 2026 introduces several mechanisms aimed at compressing acquisition timelines to match faster technology cycles, particularly in domains such as artificial intelligence, drones, space systems, and cyber tools, which the draft notes evolve within eighteen-to-thirty-six-month windows far shorter than traditional procurement cycles.

Key structural changes include:

· Category rationalisation. Procurement categories have been reduced from five to four, intended to simplify vendor decision-making and reduce administrative overhead.

· Technology Readiness Level (TRL) integration. Acquisition categories are now explicitly linked to TRL bands: TRLs 1–5 map to Make and Design & Development categories, TRLs 5–9 to Buy (Indian-IDDM), and TRLs 8–9 to Buy (Indian) and Buy (Global) with Manufacture in India. This allows single-vendor procurement for mature indigenous technologies (TRL 6–9) under Buy (Indian), a departure from the multi-vendor competitive norm that has historically slowed acquisitions.

· Planning architecture. A ten-year Integrated Capability Development Plan (ICDP), supported by a rolling two-year Annual Acquisition Plan (AAP), is meant to anchor procurement in longer-term capability forecasting rather than ad hoc service requirements.

· Long-Term Bulk Acquisition (LTBA). A new procedure allows capital-intensive, high-technology equipment to be acquired from Indian and foreign sources over extended periods and multiple tranches, with progressive indigenisation and upgrade commitments built in.

· Trial and quality assurance reform. The draft introduces two-stage trials, gives the services discretion over quality-assurance modes, and notably proposes compensating vendors who succeed in trial evaluations, addressing a long-standing industry grievance about the financial burden of prolonged, uncompensated trial cycles.

· Fast Track Procedure refinement. The FTP has been reoriented toward genuinely urgent operational requirements, with downward delegation of authority for procurement involving emerging, short-development-cycle technologies.

· iDEX and TDF institutionalisation. Where DAP 2020 treated innovation as a subset of the Make category, the 2026 draft carves out a dedicated chapter for acquiring technologies developed under the Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX) initiative and the Technology Development Fund, alongside service-run internal R&D.

Strategic Context and Industry Response

The timing of DAP 2026 is not incidental. The draft’s release follows a period of heightened attention to India’s operational readiness in the wake of recent standoffs with China and Pakistan, and arrives during what the government has termed a “Year of Defence Reforms.” The policy’s emphasis on jointness, indigenisation, and export orientation is consistent with a broader strategic-autonomy agenda extending toward 2047.

Industry response has been cautiously optimistic but not uncritical. Legal and industry analysts have noted that enhanced clarity in procurement pathways and long-term planning mechanisms could improve investment confidence, but that stricter indigenous design and localisation requirements will require firms, particularly those with existing foreign technology partnerships, to reassess intellectual property arrangements and compliance frameworks. More pointed critiques have argued that despite its stated simplification goals, the draft in places adds complexity rather than reducing it, and that DAP 2026 alone cannot resolve deeper structural problems in India’s acquisition ecosystem: the multiplicity of agencies involved, each following separate chains of command, and the continued absence of a unified, professionally staffed procurement organisation.

Conclusion

DAP 2026 represents the most significant attempt yet to reorient India’s defence procurement architecture around design ownership rather than assembly-line localisation. Its integration of technology readiness levels, long-term planning instruments, and revised trial and vendor-compensation mechanisms addresses several procedural frictions that have historically slowed capability acquisition. Whether it succeeds in producing a genuine “design powerhouse,” however, will depend less on the text of the procedure itself than on institutional follow-through: sustained R&D investment, coherent inter-agency coordination, and a defence-industrial base capable of absorbing the intellectual property responsibilities the new framework assigns to it. The final version of DAP 2026, still pending as of mid-2026, will be the first test of how much of this ambition survives stakeholder consultation intact.

References

Author

  • The author is a PhD Research Scholar in Defence & Strategic Studies, with research interests in national security, defence policy, strategic affairs, emerging technologies, and geopolitical developments. She has experience in policy research, academic writing, and strategic analysis, with a particular interest in India’s defence modernisation, indigenous defence capabilities, and emerging security challenges. Her work focuses on examining contemporary security issues through the intersection of defence policy, technology, governance, and strategic autonomy.

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