Indian startup develops compact specialized drone interceptor

A small Indian defense company has built a weapon that looks like it walked straight off a battlefield in Ukraine, a portable, gun-shaped launcher that fires its own miniature drone to physically hunt down and destroy enemy aircraft in midair. Picraft Technology Pvt. Ltd., a private Indian defense technology company, developed the system, called Harpy Eagle, as an AI-powered anti-drone interceptor built specifically to counter the kind of small, hard-to-stop unmanned aircraft that have reshaped modern warfare.

Krishna Singh, the company’s founder and lead research and development engineer, described the system in a public post as one built to detect, track and neutralize hostile drones through high-speed autonomous interception.

“Harpy Eagle is an AI-powered anti-drone interceptor developed by Picraft Technology Pvt. Ltd. to detect, track, and neutralize hostile UAVs with high-speed autonomous interception. Designed for modern battlefield and critical infrastructure protection, it combines advanced AI vision, precision guidance, and rapid response to counter emerging drone threats,” said Singh.

What sets the Harpy Eagle apart from a typical surveillance drone is its design purpose, it exists purely to kill other drones, using a combination of computer vision and artificial intelligence to spot an incoming threat, track its flight path and then guide a small interceptor drone into it fast enough to physically knock it out of the sky. That approach mirrors a fast-growing category of counter-drone weapons that has emerged out of necessity on the battlefields of Ukraine, where cheap, difficult-to-detect first-person-view drones have made traditional air defense systems, built to shoot down missiles and manned aircraft, poorly suited for stopping swarms of small, low-flying unmanned aircraft that can cost as little as a few hundred dollars to build.

Conceptually, the Harpy Eagle closely resembles a Russian system known as the Yolka, or “Fir Tree” in Russian, a portable, rifle-shaped launcher that fires a small kinetic interceptor drone at oncoming enemy aircraft. The Yolka first drew public attention in mid-2025 after Russian state security personnel were photographed carrying the device during a Moscow military parade, and it has since become a fixture on Russian frontline positions as one of the more effective tools discovered against small, fast-moving drones that traditional jamming and gunfire often struggle to stop.

According to open-source reporting on the Yolka’s documented specifications, the interceptor drone it fires can reach speeds of roughly 220 to 250 km/h (137 to 155 mph) and is primarily effective against slower, steadily flying targets silhouetted against a clear sky, a limitation that also illustrates the broader technical challenge any system in this category, including Harpy Eagle, must overcome, since drones flying low and erratically against cluttered terrain remain far harder for optical tracking systems to lock onto reliably.

India’s interest in fielding a domestically built counter-drone weapon comes against a rapidly evolving regional threat environment, one where neighboring Pakistan and China have both continued expanding their own drone and precision-strike capabilities. India’s broader counter-unmanned aircraft systems architecture already includes systems like Bhargavastra, a longer-range, missile-based interceptor developed by Solar Defence and Aerospace Limited capable of engaging targets out to roughly 2.5 km (1.5 miles), suggesting the country is building layered defenses that combine cheaper, close-range tools like Harpy Eagle with more capable, longer-reach systems for different threat scenarios. Picraft Technology has not publicly disclosed detailed performance specifications for Harpy Eagle, including its range, interception speed or unit cost, and it remains unclear whether the Indian military has evaluated or expressed interest in procuring the system beyond its public debut.

That debut came at an innovation showcase held under the Aarohi AI Incubator, a state-backed program based at Raj Bhavan in Dehradun, the capital of the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand, designed to connect promising young entrepreneurs with mentorship and resources to turn early-stage ideas into working technology. Uttarakhand’s Governor, Lt. Gen. Gurmit Singh, a retired Indian Army officer who has served in the role since 2021 and has made artificial intelligence a signature priority of his tenure, visited the company’s exhibition stall during the event, a moment Krishna Singh described as a milestone for the young firm.

“It was an honour to welcome Hon’ble Governor Lt.Gen. Gurmit Singh to our stall and demonstrate our indigenous defence technology supporting India’s AI and innovation ecosystem,” said Singh.