India’s long-pending quest for self-reliance in the military sector remains trapped in a stubborn intellectual property rights (IPR) dilemma.For while the country aspires to technological sovereignty under the banner of Atmanirbharta or indigenisation, its defence industrial base (DIB) continues to depend on foreign designs, licensed-production arrangements and externally controlled technologies. As a consequence, even when India designs and locally manufactures advanced military platforms and systems, it often does not own the underlying IPR.At its most basic, IPR determines who owns the technology embedded within a military platform, weapon system or related piece of equipment. This extends far beyond patents and trademarks, to encompass design data, source codes, engineering drawings, manufacturing processes and materials technology, as well as control over how that technology can be used, modified, shared and ultimately, exported.Ownership of a platform and ownership of the technology embedded within it are often separate matters. A country may purchase, operate and even manufacture a military system under licence, yet the intellectual property governing key technologies within that platform remains firmly in foreign hands, restricting the ability to modify or commercially exploit them without the original owner’s approval.Yet, this distinction has long been blurred in official narratives in the Ministry of Defence (MoD), the armed forces and defence industry and India’s military modernisation journey over the past six decades offers repeated examples of this disconnect between manufacturing capability and technological ownership.Limited control over the underlying design architectureThe MiG-21, MiG-27, Jaguar and later the Su-30MKI fighter programmes, along with the Hawk 132 Advanced Jet Trainer (AJT), all followed variations of the same template: progressively higher levels of domestic manufacture, but limited control over the underlying design architecture.Even when India negotiated more favourable terms – as with the Su-30MKI – the outcome remained broadly similar. In this instance, the fighter combined a Russian airframe and propulsion system with Indian mission computers and communications equipment, French navigation systems and Israeli targeting and electronic-warfare force multipliers. Yet integrating these technologies did not confer ownership of the underlying intellectual property.As a result, India became highly proficient at system integration and adaptation – executing its trademark jugaad or improvised innovation across imported platforms – but far less successful at originating the underlying technologies itself.India’s now-defunct Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA) project with Russia further illustrated the complexity of the IPR dilemma. Conceived in 2007 and pursued for more than a decade, the programme was intended to jointly develop a variant of what eventually emerged as Russia’s Sukhoi Su-57 fifth-generation stealth fighter for the Indian Air Force (IAF).Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), the lead Indian agency for the programme, sought co-development and shared ownership of the resulting intellectual property, but disagreements over access to key technologies, workshare, transparency and the extent of Russian willingness to part with critical design data ultimately led to India’s withdrawal from the project in 2017-18, despite having invested around US$295 million in it.The implications of that failure continue to reverberate. With the indigenous Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) still years away from operational service, the IAF is reportedly considering the acquisition of two or more squadrons of the very same Su-57 as an ‘interim’ capability. Few episodes better illustrate the difference between acquiring a capability and acquiring the technology that creates it.But if the FGFA highlighted the difficulties of acquiring meaningful IPR through overseas collaboration, India’s indigenous Tejas programme demonstrated both the progress that could be achieved independently and the limitations that remained.The Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA)-designed and HAL-manufactured Tejas Mk1 fighter and its advanced variants represented a major achievement in domestic combat aircraft design and systems integration. But these platforms continue to be powered by US-origin General Electric F404IN20 engines and incorporate several other critical foreign-origin components, including British Martin-Baker ejection seats, Israeli radar and electronic warfare systems, and a range of various imported avionics and mission-critical subsystems.What this means in practice is that India can modify, upgrade and operate Tejas with considerable freedom, but only within the constraints imposed by the foreign-origin technologies embedded within it. Design sovereignty, therefore, is substantial but not absolute. In effect, Tejas is an Indian-designed fighter with significant IPR ownership over its architecture and integration, but not over all the technologies that make it fly, fight and evolve. It remains an important domestic technological achievement, though not a fully self-contained indigenous system in the strictest sense.Other local rotary-wing programmes, however, offer a somewhat marginally encouraging trajectory.The Dhruv Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH) and its derivatives – the armed Rudra, the Light Combat Helicopter (LCH) Prachand, and the naval ALH Mk III – demonstrate significantly higher levels of indigenous design and development. Yet even these platforms rely on externally sourced or collaboratively developed technologies, most notably the Shakti engine derived from Safran’s Ardiden powerpack family, alongside various transmission elements, avionics and specialised components.A pattern that extends beyond aerospaceThe same pattern of partial technological autonomy extends beyond aerospace.Licensed production of T-72 and T-90 tanks created substantial domestic manufacturing capacity, but limited design ownership. Even the indigenously designed Arjun main battle tank – frequently showcased as evidence of India’s technological self-sufficiency – relies on the German-origin MTU Friedrichshafen MB 838 Ka-501 1,400 hp powerpack and Renk transmission. Significantly, the MB 838 engine is no longer in production, with MTU now part of Rolls-Royce Power Systems. It is also a reminder that even an indigenously designed tank can find its future jeopardised by reliance on foreign technology, exposing the limits of self-reliance when ownership of critical subsystems lies elsewhere.Likewise, warships – including an aircraft carrier – built and assembled in Indian shipyards frequently depend on imported propulsion systems, gas turbines, sensors, radars, combat-management suites, and other critical technologies. The steel, like the shipyard, may be local, but a large number of technologies that give these vessels their fighting capability continue to originate abroad. Consequently, across multiple domains, India continues to struggle from “build-to-print” to “design-and-own”.However, this awkward reality is seldom emphasised within official circles. Instead, everyone involved participates in a convenient fiction, if not an outright charade: politicians trumpet indigenisation, MoD bureaucrats and the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) cite indigenous-content percentages, and manufacturers celebrate domestic production, while the foreign-owned technologies that ultimately determine a platform’s performance, evolution and long-term sustainability remain quietly and conveniently overlooked.Over the years, meaningful technological ownership has been the exception rather than the rule.One such rare example is the operationally successful and exportable BrahMos supersonic cruise missile. Developed through a joint venture between the DRDO and Russia’s NPO Mashinostroyenia, it gave India a far greater stake in the resulting intellectual property than is typically available through licensed-production arrangements.This structure enabled India not only to participate in BrahMos’s development and evolution but also to exercise a significant measure of control over future upgrades, production and exports, facilitating the missile’s recent sales to the Philippines and Indonesia and, potentially, soon to Vietnam. All other collaborative programmes with Russia have followed a vastly different trajectory, transferring production know-how while leaving ownership of critical technologies firmly with Moscow.These contrasting experiences were not lost on Indian policymakers. By the early 2000s, they increasingly realised that India was spending billions on defence procurement without acquiring commensurate control over the technologies it was buying. Successive governments therefore began searching for mechanisms that could leverage India’s vast defence import expenditure into industrial and technological gain.Defence offsets emerged as the preferred instrument.Introduced through the Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP)-2005, the offset policy initially required all foreign defence acquisitions valued at Rs 300 crore or more to carry an offset obligation, mandating vendors to reinvest 30% of the overall contract value locally. These obligations could be discharged through purchases from Indian defence firms, investments in local military manufacturing, joint ventures, technology transfers and, later, through approved activities in related sectors like civil aerospace and internal security.The overall objective was to facilitate the absorption of advanced technologies and know-how, build domestic industrial capacity and deepen supplier networks. Such were the expectations attached to the policy that, under DPP-2016, the offset threshold was raised more than six-fold – from Rs 300 crore to Rs 2,000 crore – in the hope of focusing it on larger acquisitions and improving its all-round effectiveness.Assumptions proven wrongUnderlying the policy was an assumption that now appears remarkably naïve: that technology ownership would gradually flow alongside manufacturing activity. Indian policymakers believed that foreign vendors, attracted by access to one of the world’s largest defence markets, would eventually share advanced know-how. But such assumptions collided with the harsher realities of geopolitics and fundamentals of the global arms business.No Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) willingly parts with the technologies that define its competitive advantage. These ‘crown jewel’ technologies like fighter engines, Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radars, advanced propulsion systems, stealth materials, source codes and other critical know-how, are the product of decades of research, enormous investment and hard-won expertise.They underpin market dominance, preserve technological superiority and ensure continuing dependence on the supplier for upgrades, support and future capability. Expecting OEMs to transfer such assets in exchange for market access was always more hopeful than realistic.Many of the critical technologies remain controlled elsewhereHence, while offsets generated industrial activity, supplier relationships and manufacturing partnerships, they seldom altered the underlying balance of technological ownership. Having failed to deliver the critical technologies and IPRs they were designed to secure, the offset policy has been quietly and unceremoniously dumped, with its omission from the draft DAP-2026, thereby signalling an end that officialdom has preferred not to advertise too loudly.Ultimately, there is little doubt that India’s DIB is far more capable today than it was two decades ago, but not necessarily more sovereign. It can design and assemble fighter aircraft, build warships, manufacture missiles and produce armoured vehicles, among a wide range of other military platforms and systems, yet many of the critical technologies that determine their performance, upgradeability and future evolution remain controlled elsewhere.The central challenge facing Indian policymakers, therefore, is no longer one of manufacturing capability, but of technological ownership. The technologies that matter most cannot be imported, licensed or negotiated into existence; they must be developed indigenously. And, until India can achieve this, the gap between manufacturing self-reliance and technological sovereignty will persist, and Atmanirbharta in defence will remain more slogan than reality.