Kawa UAV Flies India's First Indigenous Jet-Powered Suicide Drone

The defense-technology startup Kawa UAV Pvt. Ltd. successfully conducted the maiden flight of the Divyastra Mk3 on August 11, 2026, at a testing airstrip in Uttar Pradesh. The aircraft is India's first fully indigenous jet-powered loitering munition, designed to scan for high-value targets and detonate upon impact. Developed within eight months of the program's inception in early 2026, the system was created without reliance on imported engines or foreign critical subsystems.

The Divyastra Mk3 is powered by a turbojet engineered by DG Propulsion and utilizes AI for autonomous flight control and target engagement. The project received support from the Uttar Pradesh Defence Industrial Corridor and various government agencies, including the Ministry of Civil Aviation and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, as part of the Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative to scale domestic precision strike capabilities.

Company co-founders characterized the achievement as a "declaration of intent" and a milestone for domestic defense engineering. They noted that the project demonstrated India's ability to conceive and fly a jet-powered precision strike system entirely within its own borders at scale and speed.