DSSC Launches DRONA 2.0, India’s First Multimodal AI for Armed Forces Training
The Defence Services Staff College (DSSC) in Wellington, Tamil Nadu, has launched DRONA 2.0, a multimodal generative AI platform designed to deepen the use of indigenous artificial intelligence in professional military education. The system was formally inaugurated on 18 August 2026 by Lieutenant General Manish Erry, Commandant of DSSC, in the presence of Dr Vivek Raghavan, Co-Founder of Sarvam AI.
The launch was accompanied by a Memorandum of Understanding between DSSC and Sarvam AI, setting the framework for further collaboration on DRONA GPT and related AI-based applications. The agreement signals that the college is not treating the platform as a one-off deployment, but as part of a continuing development effort for defence education and research.
From DRONA 1.0 to a multimodal system
DRONA, short for DSSC Resource Optimising Neural AI, was first introduced in June 2025 as a customised GPT developed in India. The original version, DRONA 1.0, was jointly created by DSSC and the Weapons Electronics Systems Engineering Establishment (WESEE) of the Indian Navy and was launched on the DSSC Wide Area Network (WAN) on 16 June 2025.
That earlier version was intended to give faculty and student officers faster access to the college’s academic repository and to support research in defence, strategy and leadership. DRONA 2.0 extends that concept by adding multimodal functions and an indigenous large language model stack, bringing text, image and speech capabilities into the same secure environment.
Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff (HQ IDS) described the upgrade as part of a wider effort to bring Artificial Intelligence into training while keeping the technology sovereign and domestically controlled.
What DRONA 2.0 can do
At the centre of the new platform is Sarvam AI’s Sarvam 105B large language model, integrated with open-source models and deployed on a state-of-the-art GPU server inside DSSC’s secure network. Sarvam 105B is a Mixture-of-Experts model developed as part of India’s broader sovereign AI push under the IndiaAI Mission.
According to HQ IDS, DRONA 2.0 offers a wide set of multimodal tools. These include advanced reasoning and document inferencing, image recognition and generation, speech-to-text and text-to-speech conversion, automated translation and transliteration, podcast and presentation generation, and tools for data analytics.
HQ IDS said DRONA 2.0 is the first multimodal GPT of its kind in the Indian Armed Forces. Before it was put into service, the system underwent extensive security audits and received formal certification from HQ IDS and the Defence Cyber Agency (DCyA).
The model has also been pre-trained on a large repository of academic content held by DSSC. Officials said this specialised training would provide “a major fillip to faculty [and] students of DSSC, aiding them towards access of information and progress [in] advanced studies/research in the field of Defence and Strategic Studies.”
Why the launch matters for DSSC
DSSC, located in the Nilgiris, is India’s premier tri-services staff college. It trains mid-level officers from the Army, Navy and Air Force, along with officers from friendly foreign countries, in jointmanship, staff duties, strategy and higher leadership. Lieutenant General Manish Erry, who took over as Commandant in September 2025, has overseen the institution’s continued focus on adapting professional military education to technological change.
The move also reflects the wider emphasis within the Indian Armed Forces on self-reliance in critical technologies. By placing DRONA 2.0 on a secure internal GPU server and clearing it through cyber certification, DSSC has tried to balance the advantages of generative AI with the need to protect sensitive academic and strategic material.
Sarvam AI, co-founded by Vivek Raghavan and Pratyush Kumar, has positioned Sarvam 105B as a reasoning and agentic model trained with a strong focus on Indian languages and contexts. Its adoption for a defence education platform points to the growing role of Indian AI startups in the military training ecosystem.
Potential use in military education
DRONA 2.0 is intended to be more than a conversational assistant. Its document analysis, image generation, speech tools and automated presentation and podcast creation features are designed to support academic and research tasks across the college.
For faculty and student officers, that could mean faster literature review, scenario analysis, translation of material into different languages, and the creation of instructional content for classroom use. The platform’s combination of a domain-specific knowledge base and an indigenous foundation model is meant to reduce delays in information access while keeping the data and the operating environment under institutional control.
The newly signed MoU with Sarvam AI suggests that further iterations are likely, with the possibility of additional AI-based applications being developed beyond the current staff course environment.
The launch comes as military education institutions around the world are testing generative AI tools. DSSC’s path has been gradual and security-conscious: starting with a custom GPT in 2025 and now moving to a certified multimodal system built on an indigenous 105B model. DRONA 2.0 is currently available to DSSC faculty and student officers on the college’s secure network, while details of performance benchmarks or future expansions have not yet been made public.
