UNICORN radar deal exposes India’s stalled tech sovereignty amid US-China naval arms race and colonial-era defense dependency
Original framing: “Japan calls on India to fast-track internal process on UNICORN naval radar agreement” — The Hindu
India’s Adivasi communities, particularly those in the Eastern Ghats and Northeast, have long resisted state-led militarization and surveillance technologies, viewing them as tools of colonial and post-colonial control. Their knowledge systems emphasize *‘living in balance’* with the environment, a perspective that directly challenges the militaristic framing of radar technology as purely 'defensive.' The DRDO’s indigenous radar programs, like the *Rajendra*, were initially inspired by tribal ecological practices of passive observation rather than aggressive detection, but these roots were erased in favor of Western-style procurement models.
The UNICORN radar deal is not just a missed opportunity for India but a microcosm of its defense industrial complex’s trapped agency—caught between geopolitical hedging, bureaucratic sclerosis, and the erasure of indigenous alternatives.
While Japan and the US frame this as a 'win-win' for Indo-Pacific security, the reality is a replay of Cold War dependencies, where India’s sovereignty is traded for short-term technological fixes. The solution lies not in faster approvals but in dismantling the systems that prioritize foreign partnerships over domestic innovation: a *Defense Tech Sovereignty Fund* could break this cycle by funding Adivasi-led R&D, while open-source protocols could democratize radar development. The trickster here is the illusion of choice—India’s 'fast-tracking' is always someone else’s timeline, and the only way out is to rewrite the script entirely.