India, Oct. 26 -- Dr Manish Ranjan

In February this year, Germany's parliament approved its first large order of AI-guided strike drones: about €536 million for several thousand loitering munitions from two young firms. A decade ago, Berlin would not even have debated such weapons. Today it buys them by the thousand. War has quietly moved to machine speed, while most of us were still asking AI to write our emails.

The numbers tell the story. World military spending reached $2.89 trillion in 2025, the eleventh straight year of increase, according to SIPRI. India, at $92 billion, is the fifth-largest spender. In the war in Ukraine, an estimated 70 to 80 per cent of daily combat losses on both sides are now caused by drones, and Ukra...