Indian drone maker NewSpace Research and Technologies has officially unveiled a new jet-powered drone concept being pitched as a loyal wingman called Abhimanyu. The Indian Navy is now investing in the design as the basis for a future Naval Collaborative Combat Air Vehicle (N-CCAV), which it hopes to team with the service’s existing carrier-based MiG-29K Fulcrums, Rafale-Ms expected to arrive in the coming years, and future domestically-developed fighters.
A model of the current iteration of the Abhimanyu drone design is on display at the Aero India 2025 exhibition, which opened in the southern Indian city of Bengaluru earlier today. Angad Singh was generous enough to share pictures of the model with TWZ, as well as renders the company shared with journalists. Abhimanyu has been funded in part through the Indian Ministry of Defense’s Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX) initiative, as well as internal company funding, according to Singh. iDEX has launched multiple rounds of Acing Development of Innovative Technologies (ADITI) innovation challenges since it was launched in 2018, including one centered on the Navy’s N-CCAV needs. Indian defense outlet Livefist first reported over the weekend about Abhimanyu and the N-CCAV effort.
Details about the Abhimanyu drone itself are still very limited. The model at Aero India 2025, as well as the company renders, show a design with swept wings, horizontal stabilizers, and a single vertical tail. There are a pair of narrow air intakes for the drone’s single jet engine, one on either side of the rear fuselage.
Livefist says Abhimanyu was designed to have a low radar cross-section. A continuous chine-line that wraps around the fuselage is visible on the model and in the renders, which is a typical radar cross-section-reducting design feature. A main engine tucked away in the rear fuselage behind the low-profile air intakes would also help in this regard.
As seen below, NewSpace’s renderings also show what look to be trapezoidal-shaped main landing gear doors, another typical feature of stealth designs. No door for a nose wheel or weapons bays are readily visible.
While the design clearly has features that reduce the aircraft’s radar signature, it is not a low-observable design.
Placards that NewSpace has on display at Aero India 2025 along with the Abhimanyu model state the company is targeting a top speed of almost 300 knots (550 kilometers per hour), a 620-mile (1,000-kilometer) operational range, and a service ceiling of close to 19,700 feet (6,000 meters). This is relatively slow, short-range, and low-ceiling for a loyal wingman-type design, which does raise questions about the extent to which it will be able to directly operate together with faster-moving crewed combat jets. With proper planning, lower-performance drones can still enjoy teaming benefits, but with far less persistence and direct tactical cohesion with their high-performance fighter counterparts.
It is worth noting that NewSpace has been working on the Abhimanyu project since at least 2023 and the current design differs completely from concepts the company has shown in the past. There has been talk previously of Abhimanyu being more of a group of designs rather than a single drone. The Indian Navy is now interested in a family of different versions of the Abhimanyu with increasingly diverse capabilities achieved through iterative development cycles, Angad Singh told TWZ.
Abhimanyu drones with a mixture of capabilities might offer India’s carrier air wings valuable added offensive and defensive capacity in cooperation with other crewed aircraft and forces down below. The pilotless planes could also help extend the sensor reach of a carrier strike group, including to provide better situational awareness and tactical flexibility. Depending on their exact capabilities, the Indian Navy might also be able to deploy N-CCAVs to locations ashore to support operations, which could also help make up for range and other limitations.
NewSpace also promises a high degree of autonomy for Abhimanyu leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) technology. The company has already been testing AI/ML-driven autonomous capabilities as part of work on swarming technologies for much smaller drones. NewSpace also unveiled a new line of smaller uncrewed aerial systems with swarming capabilities, including kamikaze types, called Sheshnaag at this year’s Aero India event. The company has done work in the past on so-called air-launched effects (ALE) type uncrewed systems in collaboration with the U.S. Air Force, as well.
What unit cost NewSpace is targeting for Abhimanyu is unknown. “Documents reviewed by Livefist suggest that NRT is developing the N-CCAV to be both cost-effective and expendable, with an emphasis on rapid production,” that outlet reported. That is certainly in line with the potential decoy role. There are some broad strokes similarities to the U.S. Navy’s vision for “consumable” carrier-capable Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drones that could be expended as munitions or targets for training or testing purposes after short service lives measured in hundreds of flight hours rather than years.
From what is known about it now, Abhimanyu is a notably lower-end concept compared to many other loyal wingman or CCA-like drone efforts globally, even those focused on lower costs and rapid production with capabilities balanced against those requirements. This includes the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) Warrior under development for the Indian Air Force’s Combat Air Teaming System program. The twin-engine Warrior, a demonstrator or mockup thereof of which is also being shown at Aero India 2025, is understood to be much larger and heavier than the Abhimanyu. The demonstrator design, which HAL previously unveiled, also differs significantly from models and renders that had been shown in the past, especially the less stealthy configuration of the top-mounted air intake.
The Indian military has been working on a more advanced stealthy flying wing-type unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV), as well. In 2021, it emerged that a subscale UCAV demonstrator, the Stealth Wing Flying Testbed, had flown at least once. China, India’s top competitor, has also been very actively developing stealthy flying wing UCAVs. A number of other countries, including Russia, Turkey, and France, are doing the same. The U.S. military, at least publicly, abandoned work in this vein decades ago, as you can read more about here.
Yang Suping/VCG via Getty Images
China and the United States, and now India, are among a growing number of countries with uncrewed naval aviation ambitions — more specifically, efforts that also reflect the differing views on the future of uncrewed collaborative airpower. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) looks increasingly set to operate UCAVs from the decks of at least some of its aircraft carriers, as well as its new monster Type 076 amphibious assault ship, while the U.S. Navy remains more focused on its disposal CCA vision.
For the Indian Navy, progress on the N-CCAV effort comes amid talk of scaling back its aircraft carrier plans. Indian media reported earlier this month that a proposed second domestically-produced flattop could ultimately replace the existing INS Vikramaditya, a heavily modified Soviet-era ship, rather than supplement it as had originally been expected. India has two carriers in service today, the other being the domestically-developed INS Vikrant.
The Indian military, overall, does have a long history of upsets and resets on major defense procurement programs. It remains to be seen when any Abhimanyu drones actually begin to enter service regardless of what the country’s carrier force might look like in the future. The current funding ceiling for Abhimanyu through iDEX is just around $2.85 million, according to Angad Singh. Much more funding is expected to be necessary to complete the design’s initial development, as well as that of future variants with new capabilities.
Abhimanyu has certainly now gotten another important vote of confidence from the Indian Navy.
Special thanks again to Angad Singh for sharing the pictures of the Abhimanyu model and the renders, as well as information gleaned about the drone from Aero India 2025.
Contact the author: joe@twz.com