There has been a steady expansion in budget allocation towards defence over the last decade, mostly for modernisation across the Tri-Services. To achieve this, high-performance materials have emerged as the frontrunner to redefine innovation, performance, and protection through future-ready land, naval, and air defence systems.
At the Combined Commanders’ Conference 2025, Defence Minister Shri. Rajnath Singh stated that it is imperative to “go beyond traditional concepts of war to deal with invisible challenges emanating from unconventional threats.” This translates to future-ready tech for the Tri-Forces, helping them expand and evolve operational capability and strategic readiness. Such cutting-edge innovation needs to be incorporated right at the material level.
Strategic materials enabling India’s 2047 ambition
Protection in modern defence systems has become synonymous with the use of materials. Cutting-edge innovations are being better realised with the use of specially engineered materials such as armour ceramics, specialty coatings, and nanomaterials. They enable multi-domain combat systems to deliver on every performance and protection parameter.
Across operational assets such as bulletproof vests, armoured vehicles, naval vessels, and fighter jets, the degree of survivability is closely tied to the materials used. An entire library of advanced and new-age materials is working at the core of every defence asset to determine efficient protection of man and machine on land, air, and water.
With the ability to tackle multi-dimensional threats, high strength, lightweight, high strength materials are emerging as the preferred option to integrate the best in protection and performance. They have also come to play a key role in helping India realise its micro and macro ambitions for 2047 in defence.
- Soldier-centric protection: Advanced ceramics directly improve mobility, survivability and reduce physiological strain.
- Lifecycle economics: Lightweight, corrosion-resistant systems reduce expensive maintenance cycles and total cost of ownership.
- Export competitiveness: Global defence markets increasingly evaluate weight efficiency and integration with domain-optimized frontier materials.
- Strategic autonomy: Indigenisation for Indian prototypes requires secure supply and domestic manufacturing of defence-critical materials, not just assembling these strategic capability systems.
Armouring the brave on land
Modern land warfare requires mobility and agility during combat, without any compromise on ballistic resistance. This has necessitated a structural shift from single-threat, thickness-based protection to multi-layer ceramic composite systems with a multi-threat architecture. Where weight was earlier accepted as penalty for greater protection, weight in modern ceramic-based armour is engineered as a performance driver for better protection and improved agility.
Ceramics have enabled a shift from traditional passive armour to engineered energy management systems. From a reactive mechanism that resists force but doesn’t actively manage energy dissipation, these ceramics have enabled a transition to a 360-degree design that manages the entire energy pathway. It not only actively neutralises the projectile, but spreads and dissipates the impact energy laterally, with the residual absorbed by the backing materials. By reducing backface deformation, ceramics limit trauma transmission to the soldier and the vehicle. Moreover, every kilogram saved in terms of weight compounds the mission advantage.
The library of high-end ballistic protection ceramics such as Reaction Bonded Silicon Carbide, Zirconia Toughened Alumina, and high-purity Alumina precision-engineered for modern armour. They offer high hardness-to-weight ratios, superior energy dissipation and multi-hit capability when engineered within composite stacks.
For soldiers, this means a much lighter ‘load’ to carry, better ergonomics, improved agility and endurance, and higher survival probability. With precision engineering, lightweight add-on armour for combat vehicles enables better manoeuvrability, faster deployment of troops, efficient fuel use, and advanced protection.
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Conquering protection on sea
The urgent priority for naval defence is across the mission-critical areas of blast- and fire-resistant infrastructure for naval bases and shipyards, building modern warships and retrofitting legacy vessels with robust ballistic protection, lightweight armour for amphibious and armoured vehicles used in naval operations, and corrosion and wear resistance for long-term operability in harsh marine environments.
Naval platforms such as aircraft carriers, destroyers, frigates, and patrol boats simultaneously face combat threats and harsh ocean environments. Operational preparedness now depends both on how combat vessels are built structurally and the materials used in design.
Protection systems designed for the sea must be designed to address Impact, blasts, and fires, corrosion in saline conditions, long lifecycle fatigue, and electronic component durability and signal traceability.
Ceramic-reinforced composite structures and advanced surface coating treatments provide corrosion and thermal resilience, weight optimisation for speed and fuel efficiency, while reducing long-term maintenance burden. They are also impact fire, and blast-proof and work well to armour naval helicopters, aircraft carriers, destroyers, frigates and patrol boats.
Blast-resistant ceramic tiles and modular carbon fibre-reinforced polymers (CFRP) panels act as powerful shields to fortify command centres, armouries, and fuel depots. Indigenous blast, bullet, and fire-proof materials are increasingly being used to reinforce the superstructures of Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) corvettes.
Designing modern warships with CFRP sheets, tubes, and custom parts is rendering them lighter, faster, and easily manoeuvrable.
The nanomaterial graphene can potentially reduce the radar cross-section or traceability signature of a vessel. To reduce acoustic signatures, submarines are fitted with elastomer-based tiles on their outer hulls, designed to absorb sonar waves and dampen internal noise transmission. Ceramics and composites work in parallel to enhance durability and survivability in harsh marine environments.
Passive fire protection systems, including lightweight thermal ceramic blankets, provide additional thermal and acoustic protection. Alumina-based marine anti-skid paints on ship decks augment durability and deck safety for crew and equipment.
Keeping it light and agile in the air
India has charted out a clear roadmap to upgrade capabilities across its fleet of next-gen fighter jets, combat aircrafts, drones, and high-altitude satellites. The most pressing challenges are to build aircraft frames that are extremely lightweight while being able to carry higher payloads, boost fuel efficiency, and mission endurance. At the same time, a critical pressure point lies in maintenance-repair-overhaul (MRO) operations, particularly in protecting vital aero-engine ‘hot section’ components from frequent and extreme thermal stress & wear.
New-age materials like CFRP are 40% lighter than aluminium while providing better stiffness, cutting down on weight and raising efficiency. Titanium alloys maintain their strength beyond 600°C, ideal for engine parts. Together, these materials endure harsh thermal and mechanical stresses, oxidation, and fatigue, helping next-generation aerospace systems function at their best.
Surface engineering with thermal spray powders, such as Yttria-stabilized Zirconia and Alumina Titania, enable high thermal and wear resistance, structural stability, reduced mass while maintaining/improving operational performance and ensuring extended mission range.
Scaling high-performance materials for multi-domain operations
The next era in defence protection is being defined by a revolution in materials, with multi-layered, lightweight, high-performance ceramic and composite systems that are engineered, qualified, and manufactured in India.
Leading domestic materials science companies are working behind the scenes to reinforce the entire supply chain. They are involved right from the initial, critical stage of producing raw materials indigenously to secure supply. Alongside this, they have also developed world-class processing and R&D capabilities, manufacture components, collaborate closely with key ecosystem partners, as well test & certify as per global benchmarks. This ensures complete influence over the defence manufacturing value chain for full-spectrum operational protection across the three domains of Land, Water, and Air.
About the Author:
Subbu Venkatachalam is Head of Defence & Aerospace at Carborundum Universal Limited (CUMI), a leading materials science and engineering solutions provider, and part of the 125-year-old Murugappa Group. Previously, he held the role of global head of marketing at CUMI. Subbu is enabling CUMI’s ambitious growth plans through R&D, innovation collaborations, and brand-building efforts across key markets in India and overseas. He spent ten years at Royal Enfield (A unit of Eicher Motors Ltd.), prior to this, in various roles that spanned marketing, corporate strategy, and planning.