NEW DELHI, Jan 23: Highlighting the unique challenges of India’s security landscape, Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan today stressed the need for the armed forces to remain prepared for both prolonged conventional conflicts and rapid, technology-driven operations.
Addressing the gathering at the Jawaharlal Nehru University on the birth anniversary of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, the CDS said, “For a country like India, which has a disputed border, two countries trying to claim what is Indian territory, there could be a possibility of this long drawn-out war in old domains for which we have to be always prepared.”
“This dual requirement places exceptional demands on India’s defence planning, forcing the military to simultaneously invest in capabilities for grinding conventional warfare while developing expertise in cyber operations, electromagnetic warfare and cognitive domain operations,” the CDS added.
Outlining the vision for modernising India’s armed forces to counter emerging threats, the Chief of Defence Staff emphasised that future preparedness will require a rethinking of warfighting concepts, operational organisation and human resource development.
He noted that adapting to a more complex and dynamic security landscape calls for deep, systemic changes across the military establishment.
“Preparing for future threats and challenges demands a system-level transformation across how the Indian military thinks about war and organizes for it and nurtures its officers and men,” he said. “This will require conceptual or doctrinal shifts, organizational and structural changes, cultural realignment and procedural reforms, so that we can adapt to this kind of change.”
Following Operation Sindoor, the military is developing a forward-looking framework to anticipate how warfare will evolve, he said, adding, “we are also looking at a framework that thinks and ideates about how warfare will evolve in the future, which will be part of our headquarters’ ideas as future operations and analysis grow.”
Highlighting the dual challenges being faced by the country’s military planners in terms of traditional combat and emerging warfare domains, the CDS said, “The new domains are cyberspace, the electromagnetic spectrum and cognitive warfare,” he said, adding, “warfare, if you look at the old domains, will always be long, brutal? We are seeing this happening in Ukraine and Gaza.”
“However, warfare in these new domains presents a fundamentally different character. Warfare in the new domains would be faster, smarter? This is what we witnessed in Operation Sindoor, or to some extent also in the conflict between Israel and Iran,” he added.
(UNI)
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