New Delhi— India has achieved a major technological breakthrough in defense and cybersecurity with the successful demonstration of free-space quantum secure communication using quantum entanglement, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh announced on Monday.
Calling it a milestone in India’s technological evolution, Singh said the country has officially entered a “new quantum era” of secure communication—an advancement poised to redefine future warfare and cyber defense capabilities.
The achievement was spearheaded by the DRDO-Industry-Academia Centre of Excellence (DIA-CoE) at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi. In the demonstration, quantum entangled particles were transmitted across a free-space optical link covering more than one kilometer within the IIT Delhi campus.
The experiment achieved a secure key rate of approximately 240 bits per second and maintained a quantum bit error rate of under 7 percent—benchmarks that indicate both speed and reliability.
According to scientists, this breakthrough enables real-time applications in quantum cybersecurity, including long-distance Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), future quantum networks, and a quantum internet. Quantum entanglement-based communication is considered vastly more secure than traditional methods, as any interception attempt disrupts the quantum state, alerting the system and rendering the data transmission effectively unbreakable.
This makes the technology especially valuable for strategic sectors like defense, finance, and telecommunications.
One of the key advantages of this method is that it eliminates the need for laying optical fiber cables—a costly and often impractical process in remote or densely populated regions.
The project, titled “Design and Development of Photonic Technologies for Free-Space QKD,” was sanctioned by the Directorate of Futuristic Technology Management (DFTM) under DRDO. The demonstration was led by Professor Bhaskar Kanseri’s research team and observed by senior officials from DRDO, including the Director General (MED, COS & CS), Director SAG, Director DFTM, and IIT Delhi’s Dean of R&D.
DRDO Chairman Dr. Samir V. Kamat and IIT Delhi Director Prof. Rangan Banerjee lauded the team’s efforts, calling the success a significant step forward in India’s pursuit of next-generation defense technologies.
This is not the team’s first achievement in quantum communication. In 2022, DRDO and IIT Delhi established India’s first intercity quantum communication link between Vindhyachal and Prayagraj using underground optical fiber. In 2024, they successfully distributed quantum keys across a 100-kilometer spool of telecom-grade fiber.
These milestones are part of DRDO’s broader DIA-CoE initiative, which has established 15 Centres of Excellence at top institutions such as the IITs and IISc to accelerate development of advanced defense technologies. (Source: IANS)
