What is Nagastra-3? India’s New Loitering Munition In The Making

BUT WHAT EXACTLY IS THE NAGASTRA-3?

The Nagastra-3 is a loitering munition — also called a suicide drone or kamikaze drone — designed to hover over a target area for a period of time before engaging and destroying the target with a precision strike. These systems are particularly useful for hitting high-value or mobile targets in contested environments without risking human pilots or extensive collateral damage.

What sets loitering munitions apart is their hybrid nature: they combine the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with the strike capability of guided missiles, enabling real-time battlefield decision-making.

The earliest loitering munitions systems were used in the 1980s in the Suppression of Enemy Air Defences (SEAD) against fixed Surface to Air Missiles (SAMs) installations. With time, the role of these LMs grew for short range (2-15 km), medium range (15-50 km) and long range (50-100 km) for various mission operations like anti-personnel, anti-bunker, anti-armour and the destruction of critical enemy assets like air bases, missile bases and other critical infrastructure.

BUILT ON A PROVEN FOUNDATION

The Nagastra-3 builds upon India’s evolving line of indigenous loitering munitions.

1. Nagastra-1, inducted by the Indian Army in 2024, was India’s first indigenous loitering munition system with over 75 per cent indigenous content. Weighing around 30 kilograms, it was man-portable and could be carried in two rucksacks. It featured a 1 kg high-explosive fragmentation warhead, 60 minutes of endurance, and a strike accuracy of 2 metres. The system operated in manual mode within 15 km, extendable to 30 km in autonomous mode. A key feature was its parachute recovery system, allowing it to be safely retrieved if the mission was aborted — a critical cost-saving capability.
2. Nagastra-2 introduced more lethality and sophistication. Weighing 20 kilograms, it was equipped with a 4 kg anti-tank/anti-personnel warhead, a portable pneumatic launcher, and dual day-night sensors for all-weather, real-time targeting. Like Nagastra-1, it retained the parachute-based recovery system for reuse.

Nagastra-3, being developed as a prototype under the Medium Range Precision Kill System (MRPKS), represents the most ambitious leap forward — not just as a weapon system, but as a symbol of India’s growing push for defence self-reliance.

STRATEGIC SIGNIFICANCE

Loitering munitions have emerged as game-changers in modern warfare — particularly evident in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, where both sides have used them for real-time, cost-effective tactical strikes. The United States and Israel have long dominated this domain, with systems like the Switchblade and Harop, but India is now catching up.

The development of Nagastra-3 under the Make-I framework highlights the government’s commitment to Atmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India) in defence manufacturing. It also signals confidence in the Indian private sector, particularly Solar Industries, which already exports military-grade explosives and ammunition to over 60 countries.

With Nagastra-3, India is not just developing a weapon — it is shaping the future of battlefield autonomy and indigenous precision-strike capability.