The US Just Flew A Nuclear Reactor On A Plane - India Should Be Taking Notes

Last Updated:February 16, 2026, 14:49 IST

On February 15, 2026, the US loaded a nuclear reactor onto a military aircraft and flew it across the country. For India, the moment deserves more than a passing glance.

Operation Windlord, as the U.S. military called it, saw three C-17 Globemaster transport planes carry eight modules of the Ward 250 microreactor from March Air Reserve Base in California to Hill Air Force Base in Utah. The reactor, built by California-based Valar Atomics, made the trip without nuclear fuel loaded inside, but the point had been made regardless. Nuclear power, long seen as something fixed and permanent, can be picked up and moved.

The Ward 250 is a compact machine, roughly the size of a large van, but its ambitions are anything but small. At full capacity, the reactor is designed to generate about 5- megawatts of electricity which is enough to power approximately 5,000 homes. It will begin operations later this year at 100 kilowatts, ramp up to 250 kilowatts, and eventually scale to its full output. What makes it different from conventional reactors is its design. It uses TRISO (TRi-structural ISOtropic particle) fuel, a type where uranium kernels are wrapped inside multiple layers of ceramic material, and it cools itself with helium instead of water. This makes it safer to operate, harder to damage, and capable of running at higher temperatures than older reactor designs.

Valar plans to start selling power commercially by 2027. The U.S. Department of Energy wants at least three microreactors reaching operational criticality by July 4th of this year.

The military application is what makes this genuinely strategic. A microreactor does not need to be plugged into any power grid. It can sit at a remote base in a desert, a mountain range, or an arctic outpost and produce electricity for years without a refuelling convoy or a supply chain. For the Pentagon, that independence from the civilian grid removes a vulnerability that conventional military logistics have never fully solved.

India has every reason to want exactly this capability, and the geography to make the argument for itself

From the frozen heights of Siachen and Ladakh to the dense jungles of the northeast, from the island chains of Andaman and Nicobar to the tribal highlands of Chhattisgarh, India operates across some of the most challenging terrain on earth. Running power cables into these areas has never been simple, and in many cases, it still has not been done. Around 25,000 villages continue to face unreliable electricity supply, and in the most remote corners, the grid simply does not reach.

Diesel generators fill the gap today, but they come with their own costs. Fuel needs to be transported constantly, often over mountain roads or by air in places where trucks cannot go. In a military context, a fuel convoy is a target, a vulnerability, and a logistical chain that can be broken. A microreactor, once deployed, eliminates that problem entirely.

India’s armed forces operate on terrain where this matters enormously. Forward posts along the Line of Actual Control sit at altitudes above 4,000 metres. Setting up a temporary base in such locations currently means either running long power lines or trucking fuel in regularly. A mobile microreactor, airlifted by an aircraft like the C-17 India already operates, could change the equation at these positions. It could also power the radar systems, communication infrastructure, and early warning stations that sit in locations where grid connectivity is not realistic.

The building blocks for India to develop this technology already exist, though the country is still some distance from a deployable microreactor

The Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) is currently developing three small modular reactor designs under India’s Nuclear Energy Mission, which received Rs 20,000 crore in the 2025-26 Union Budget. These include the BSMR-200, a 200-megawatt reactor for industrial use, the SMR-55 at 55 megawatts aimed at off-grid and remote locations, and a 5-megawatt thermal High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor designed for hydrogen production. The 55-megawatt variant is the closest in intent to what microreactors like the Ward 250 are trying to accomplish, but it is still considerably larger and not designed for rapid airlift deployment.

India does not yet have a startup ecosystem focused specifically on microreactors in the way that American companies like Valar Atomics have emerged. The country’s Atomic Energy Act has historically kept the nuclear sector closed to private players, though amendments to open it up are currently being discussed. Industrial conglomerates like Reliance and Adani have reportedly shown interest in adopting small reactors for captive industrial power, but the startup-led innovation that has driven U.S. microreactor development has not yet found a parallel here.

That gap is precisely what India needs to address. BARC and DRDO hold decades of technical expertise in reactor design and defence applications respectively. Pairing that institutional knowledge with private sector speed and startup-driven innovation, in a model similar to what the U.S. has done through its public-private nuclear programs, could accelerate a timeline that currently targets demonstration reactors by the early 2030s.

The case for urgency is straightforward. A microreactor developed entirely within India, certified for airlift deployment by the Indian Air Force, and capable of powering a forward base or a remote village, would be a strategic asset in a class of its own. It would give the military a power source that no adversary can cut off and no terrain can block. It would deliver electricity to the communities that have waited the longest for it.

America just proved the concept works. The reactor fits on a cargo plane, it can be assembled on-site, and it can run without a power grid in sight. The question for India is not whether such a capability is worth pursuing. The question is, how long will it take India to build one of its own.

News world The US Just Flew A Nuclear Reactor On A Plane - India Should Be Taking Notes

Read More