Indigenously designed and developed, three different types of loitering munitions were successfully tested in Ladakh last month, with the Army Design Bureau facilitating trials at Nubra Valley to rate performance and safety standards.

In a first, Indian-developed loitering munitions - deadly, portable 'suicide drones' that wreaked havoc on conventional weapons like tanks and missile launchers in recent battles - have been successfully tested at over 15,000 feet, giving forces a new combat power near the border.

Indigenously designed and developed, three different types of loitering munitions were successfully tested in Ladakh last month, with the Army Design Bureau facilitating trials at Nubra Valley to rate performance and safety standards.

The man portable munitions can take off with a 4 kg warhead, flying for an hour and homing at ground-based targets with precision. Such munitions, much cheaper to produce than armed drones, can cause disproportionate damage to conventional targets like ground-based bunkers, command centres, artillery and armoured formations.

The three munitions - two fixed wing variants and a hexacopter - have been developed by Economic Explosives Ltd in partnership with Bangalore-based start-up Z Motion Autonomous System Pvt Ltd and are expected to be at least 40% cheaper than imports from Israel and Poland. The defence ministry has also placed loitering munitions on a recently released 'import ban' list.

The trials were conducted from March 21 to 23, with all three systems achieving their endurance targets after taking off from high altitude areas, sources involved in the testing process told ET. The development project has been supported by the defence ministry, which is keen to cut dependence on foreign suppliers and has earmarked 25% of its domestic capital procurement budget (amounting to ₹21,149 crore) for acquisitions from the domestic private industry this year.