India should be prepared to fight short-term high intensity conflicts and long duration conflicts as well in order to deter terrorism and because of territorial disputes with its neighbours respectively, said Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan on Monday while speaking at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay.
While talking about what kind of threats India should be prepared for, Gen Chauhan shied away from naming Pakistan and China but indicated that India has land disputes with both its neighbours, reported news agency PTI.
“What kind of threats and challenges should India be prepared for? This should be based on two facts. Both our adversaries — one is a nuclear weapon state and one is a nuclear armed state — hence we should not allow that level of deterrence to be breached,” he was quoted as saying.
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“We should be prepared to fight short duration, high intensity conflicts to deter terrorism, something like Operation Sindoor. We should be prepared for a land centric, long duration conflict because we have land disputes. Yet, we should try and avoid it,” he added further.
While speaking about modern warfare, Gen Chauhan said that it was at a cusp of a third revolution in military affairs and termed it as convergence warfare. This, he said, is because now a lot of different technologies — including artificial intelligence, quantum, edge computing, hypersonic, advanced material, robotics — have an impact on the nature and character of warfare as compared to earlier, when technologies were fewer.
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He added that in future, multi-domain operations will become a necessity instead of being an option because of how one domain will have an impact on other domains, something which was evident during Operation Sindoor.
“This was clearly visible in Operation Sindoor. In a war which lasted only about four days giving India decisive victory, all domains of warfare were used simultaneously with great amount of tempo,” he said.
He also said that during multi-domain operations, there would be a need of multi-domain capabilities and extensive coordination and control between different wings of the military — Army, Navy and Air Force — along with cyber forces, space forces and forces operating in the cognitive domain.
(With PTI inputs)