DRDO Has Put Quantum Key Distribution on the Live Network That Carries Artillery and Armour Trial Data at Chandipur

DRDO announced on 14 October 2026 that it had configured and tested a quantum key distribution (QKD) platform on the live network of the dynamic test ranges at the Proof and Experimental Establishment (PXE) in Chandipur, Odisha. The network carries real-time observations and telemetry from artillery and armoured-weapon trials, and the platform is there to protect that data and to show when someone tries to intercept it.

The platform was designed under the Microelectronic Devices, Computational Systems and Cyber Security (MCC) cluster of DRDO, the Defence Research and Development Organisation, with Taqbit Labs of Bengaluru as production partner. That is how Swarajya, India TV News and Organiser report DRDO’s statement. It moves the technology from demonstration links to a working range network, six years after DRDO’s December 2020 quantum link between two of its own laboratories.

What the Chandipur network carries

PXE is part of DRDO’s testing infrastructure, according to India TV News. The test ranges there evaluate artillery and armoured weapons, and each trial produces a stream of telemetry, which is data sent back from a system under test so engineers can watch how it performs. DRDO’s statement, as Madhyamam and Devdiscourse report it, calls the platform a suitable use of QKD for the real-time observations and telemetry of those trials.

Chandipur is better known for missile flights, which are tracked at the separate Integrated Test Range described in our account of DRDO’s June and July 2026 tests. The October announcement concerns the ranges for guns and armour.

How key distribution works

Encryption scrambles a message with a key, and the weak point is getting the same key to both ends without anyone copying it on the way. DRDO’s 2020 release put the problem plainly: sharing keys over the air or over wired links needs encryption, which in turn needs keys that were shared earlier.

QKD sends the key itself as particles of light, one photon at a time. Reading a photon changes its state, so a listener leaves a trace in the exchange, and the two ends can detect the attempt. The December 2020 trial validated this detection of “a third party”, in DRDO’s phrase. The British National Cyber Security Centre describes QKD as a way to generate and share cryptographic keys with security that rests on physics. The key then goes into ordinary encryption that protects the data itself.

From 12 km in a lab to a working range

DRDO’s route to Chandipur runs through four public steps, beginning on 9 December 2020, when DRDO tested QKD between two of its Hyderabad laboratories, the Defence Research and Development Laboratory (DRDL) and the Research Centre Imarat (RCI). The Ministry of Defence release says the technology came from CAIR in Bengaluru and DYSL-QT in Mumbai, used a time-bin scheme, and held up over more than 12 km of fibre with 10 dB of signal loss, at a key rate in the kilobits per second with a low error rate. The Defence Minister congratulated the team.

On 23 February 2022 a joint DRDO and IIT Delhi team ran a QKD link between Prayagraj and Vindhyachal in Uttar Pradesh, more than 100 km apart. The release calls it a first for the country. It ran over “commercial grade optical fibre already available in field”, with sifted key rates of up to 10 kHz. (Sifted key is the raw key before the final error checks.)

On 27 May 2025 DRDO opened its Quantum Technology Research Centre at Metcalfe House in Delhi, with test beds for developing and validating QKD led by its Scientific Analysis Group. On 16 June 2025 a DRDO and IIT Delhi team showed an entanglement-based free-space link over more than 1 km on the IIT Delhi campus, with a secure key rate of nearly 240 bits per second and an error rate under 7 per cent. Free space means the photons cross open air, which avoids laying fibre through difficult terrain or dense cities. The same release records that in 2024 the team distributed keys using entanglement over a 100 km spool of telecom fibre.

On 14 July 2026 DRDO said it had completed military field trials of a scalable, fibre-based QKD system developed with Taqbit Labs, which it described as the foundation for large-scale, multi-hop quantum networks, according to The Week and Janes. The Chandipur test three months later is the next reported step. The civilian side of India’s quantum push, including the longer links run under the mission, is covered in our piece on the National Quantum Mission, in which DRDO is a named stakeholder.

The Bengaluru partner

Taqbit Labs has worked with DRDO on QKD for the armed forces since 2020, Janes and Organiser report. In a 16 July 2026 interview with Janes, chief executive Animesh Aaryan said the company had built customised systems with DRDO for both existing networks and new ones, and described the work as fitting QKD into current military networks and building a separate tactical network. Besides QKD the company sells quantum random number generators and post-quantum cryptography, according to the same interview.

The pairing follows a pattern DRDO describes elsewhere. The 2020 release said the laboratory work was meant to enable start-ups and small firms in quantum information technology. DRDO also runs 15 Industry-Academia Centres of Excellence at institutions including the IITs and IISc, according to India TV News. The wider shift from importing to building at home is traced in our overview of India’s defence industry.

What has not been published

The reports of 14 to 18 October carry no performance figures: no key rate, error rate, link length or number of nodes for the Chandipur network. We found no Press Information Bureau release for it as of 29 October 2026. The reports all trace to DRDO’s own statement, and we could not open the post itself, so the wording above is as the outlets give it.

One outlet, GKToday, reports figures for the July trial: a 100 km link between Prayagraj and Vindhyachal, 26 dB of loss, a 6 per cent error rate and a key rate of about 5 kbps. The other July reports we opened give no route or numbers, and the route matches the 2022 demonstration, so we have left those figures out.

What the security agencies say

DRDO’s statement claims unconditional security for the key distribution, with eavesdropping detection. Madhyamam’s report adds a line from the same statement saying that the security of the whole communication system also depends on how it is implemented and on protecting the connected devices and networks.

Other governments treat QKD more cautiously. The UK’s NCSC says QKD “does not provide authentication, nor do any other quantum techniques”, and that it will not support QKD for government or military applications, recommending post-quantum cryptography as the main defence against quantum computers. Post-quantum cryptography means ordinary software algorithms built to resist quantum attack. NIST published its first three such standards on 13 August 2024, and DRDO lists post-quantum cryptography among the quantum areas it leads, alongside secure communication and sensing, in its May 2025 release.