India's tri-service headquarters signs a five-year AI pact with Sarvam that covers targeting

India's Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff, the Ministry of Defence body that coordinates planning and operations among the three armed services, has signed a five-year memorandum of understanding with the Bengaluru artificial intelligence company Sarvam. The agreement sets up an umbrella framework under which Sarvam will design, develop and deploy AI applications for the Indian Army, the Indian Navy and the Indian Air Force, as well as for the joint and tri-service organisations under the headquarters.

According to ThePrint, the headquarters announced the agreement on 26 October in a post on X, saying the two sides would work together on AI applications, research, knowledge management, training and decision support. Sarvam made the agreement public in a statement on Tuesday, 27 October. A photograph released with the announcement showed Sarvam co-founder Pratyush Kumar with Air Marshal Tejinder Singh, the Chief of Integrated Defence Staff to the Chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee, after the signing in New Delhi.

Targeting and data fusion

Sarvam said the work would cover the operational, training and decision-support needs of the three services, spread across several projects, with the headquarters arranging engagement across the organisations involved. The company will also provide follow-on technical support. It listed the focus areas as decision support, target acquisition and data fusion across the sensor-to-shooter loop, the chain that runs from detecting a target to engaging it, and said human oversight would be kept over operational decisions.

Under the framework, the services and joint organisations are to share access to the same foundation models, agentic software infrastructure and geospatial and perception systems, so that doctrine and lessons from one service's projects can inform work for the others. Sarvam said the AI layer would be built in India and deployed on sovereign infrastructure, and that the projects include what it called an AI fabric linking the elements of India's defence capabilities.

The work will be carried out by Chanakya, a firewalled Sarvam division focused on national security and defence, using the company's AI models including Sarvam 105B. ThePrint reported that Sarvam announced Chanakya in March and that the division works on on-premise deployments in air-gapped setups, which are cut off from the internet as classified military networks require.

What has not been disclosed

Neither side has disclosed the value of the agreement, which projects will come first or when any system might enter service. CRN Asia noted that the announcement does not name the platforms, sensors or operating environments involved, or set out the safeguards, testing and validation that will govern the use of AI in target acquisition.

Background

The agreement builds on earlier ties between the company and India's military education system. ThePrint reported that in August the Defence Services Staff College at Wellington launched an upgraded generative AI platform for training and strategic studies that runs on Sarvam 105B, after the college and the company signed a separate agreement. Sarvam linked the new framework to the government's push for self-reliance in defence equipment, which it said now extends to artificial intelligence.