Muristek
Ajay Banerjee
New Delhi, April 12
Indian Air Force chief Air Chief Marshal VR Chaudhari on Tuesday said new-age cyber-warfare and information-warfare have created hybrid and multi-domain spectrum of future conflicts resulting in older tactics and strategies becoming redundant.
He was delivering a keynote address on 'Future of Air Warfare' at the National Leadership Conclave of All India Management Association (AIMA) on Tuesday.
Traditionally, wars have been fought on land, at sea, in the air and to some extent, in space. In the past two decades, this spectrum has increased to encompass cyber and information domains. The first four domains are physical in nature and the other two are virtual.
Cyber and information have become modern tools for shaping the battlefield. A well-created narrative in the information domain to adversely affect the enemy can have devastating effects. As we become more and more interconnected, a cyber-attack on our networks can cripple command and control structures.
There is need to "reimagine, reform, redesign and rebuild our traditional war fighting machinery and adapt to this new emerging paradigm", the IAF chief said.
In the next war, the enemy might not be a country or an organisation. In the future, the attack could be on all fronts, ranging from economic strangulation to diplomatic isolation and military standoffs to information blackouts. "All this will happen well before the first bullet is fired or the first aircraft goes across the border," the IAF chief said.
Future warfare is likely to be hybrid in nature and spectrum of conflict will be spread across all domains spanning from kinetic to non-kinetic and lethal to non-lethal - all under a nuclear overhang, he said.
The weapons we are looking at would range from a small computer virus to hypersonic missiles.
Conflicts in the last few decades have clearly established without doubt the pre-eminence of air power as the instrument of choice for almost all operational contingencies.
The importance of aerospace power in the larger security framework has grown manifold and would be increasingly critical to handling future security challenges.
The unique combination of developing capabilities, operational concepts and technological opportunities has created a situation where air power will play a very crucial role to overcome rapid changes in the character and conduct of war.
A potent air force in the future will be characterised by persistent presence, multi-role capability, rapid deployment, spectrum dominance, centricity of information management, precision targeting and rapid innovation.
The IAF, he said, was pursuing development of niche technologies in the field of space-based capabilities, data linking and Artificial Intelligence-based decision support systems to make the system highly responsive.
At the same time, unmanned combat systems are being pursued and so are hypersonic weapons.