Defence Ministry's 1st iDEX winner: How a Swadeshi Firefighting Robot Fits into the Unfinished Lesson of Op Sindoor

At the Pokhran range in Rajasthan on 27 February 2026, the Indian Air Force spent the afternoon bombing a simulated enemy airfield during Exercise Vayu Shakti 2026. The targets included a runway, radar sites, bunkers, ammunition dumps and a communication centre. The same exercise also featured a machine built for the opposite problem: the FF Bot, a Made in India firefighting robot developed under the iDEX programme by Swadeshi Empresa Private Limited of Changodar, near Ahmedabad, to help an air base recover after taking a hit.

Offensive strikes took the headlines during Operation Sindoor in May 2025. In the early hours of 10 May, the Air Force struck Pakistani military bases. At a briefing the next day, the Director General of Air Operations, Air Marshal A.K. Bharti, showed satellite images of damage at Sargodha, Jacobabad, Bholari, Rafiqui, Murid, Nur Khan, Rahim Yar Khan, Sukkur and Chunian.

The briefings also covered attacks coming the other way. On 7 and 8 May, Pakistan tried to hit 15 Indian locations with drones and missiles, including Adampur, Bhuj, Uttarlai, Phalodi, Nal and Bathinda. Prime Minister Narendra Modi later told Parliament that on 9 May, Indian air defences intercepted about 1,000 missiles and drones. At the same press briefings, Wing Commander Vyomika Singh showed time-stamped satellite images to disprove Pakistani claims of damage to Indian airfields such as Suratgarh and Sirsa, while Pakistan's former air chief, Sohail Aman, claimed that 34 Indian bases had been struck.

Air defence stopped the incoming salvos in May 2025, and the Pokhran exercise showed the Akash surface-to-air missile alongside Spyder systems and counter-drone gear. Yet air staff planners cannot assume that every missile will be shot down in a future war. If a warhead gets through, an air base faces three losses: sorties cancelled while the runway is shut, aircraft damaged on the ground, and fuel or ammunition destroyed by fire.

A year after Operation Sindoor, the armed forces were reported to be building hardened underground bunkers for fuel, oil, lubricants, ammunition and medical facilities along the western front. Reports also described underground command centres and portable 3D-printed bunkers. This passive defence work is running alongside Mission Sudarshan Chakra, the air defence project Modi announced on Independence Day in 2025 and for which a Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) panel has prepared a pre-feasibility report. 

Concrete bunkers protect fuel and bombs while they are locked underground. They do not put out a fire if a missile hits a fuel farm, a hangar or an open weapons bay while aircraft are being turned around for a sortie. That is the role the Air Force's firefighting robots are meant to fill.

Swadeshi Empresa says the Air Force bought the FF Bot through emergency procurement with a 12-month delivery schedule, and that it delivered the order in 11 months. In January 2026, the Air Force order was reported as covering 80 units for air bases, maintenance hangars, fuel storage areas and ammunition facilities. Under the sixth emergency procurement tranche (EP-6), approved by the Defence Acquisition Council on 16 May 2025 with powers of about ₹40,000 crore, each contract is capped at ₹300 crore, must be signed within 40 days and must be delivered within a year.

At Pokhran, the FF Bot was tested in debris and fire scenarios, on uneven terrain and in low visibility. Operators controlled it from outside the hazard radius using a console with a touchscreen and joystick. The robot has a stainless-steel body, built-in cooling and six powered wheels with suspension. It carries optical and thermal pan-tilt-zoom cameras to spot hotspots through smoke, fights fires with a foam jet and a fog-water monitor, and can drag a charged hose or tow up to 5 tonnes. Officials also name power stations, airports, fuel storage and disaster response as civilian uses, following its earlier deployment at a fire at the Visakhapatnam refinery.

The Vayu Shakti exercise ran with more than 130 aircraft in the presence of President Droupadi Murmu. Putting a firefighting robot into it showed that the Air Force treats fire recovery as part of wartime readiness. Official statements, however, still give no figure for how many western bases have finished their underground bunkers, or how fast a struck base is expected to fly again.