Artificial intelligence is reshaping the character of warfare and the terms of strategic competition. As the United States pursues unconstrained adoption of military AI and China accelerates integration through military-civil fusion, India faces a widening capability gap with direct implications for its national security. This report assesses India’s military AI ecosystem, its institutional foundations, operational deployments, and persistent structural constraints, and benchmarks it against the rapid advances of its principal competitors. It finds that India possesses a distinctive but underutilised advantage in the DRDO’s Evaluating Trustworthy AI (ETAI) Framework, which offers an operational governance model that neither great power has matched. The report proposes a policy roadmap spanning institutional reform, talent acquisition, fiscal reallocation, and agile procurement, alongside an international strategy for India to shape emerging norms on military AI governance rather than merely inherit them.