Chief of Defence Staff (CDS)General Anil Chauhan on Wednesday said aligning technologies with future warfare is not the sole solution to achieving victory in war. He emphasised the need to develop new concepts and doctrines to complement technological advancements.
Making these assertions in a seminar on aligning technologies with future conflicts at Aero India here, the CDS said "Aligning technologies with future warfare is only part of the solution to achieving victory. You must evolve new concepts, create new doctrines, establish new organizations for such combat, and build a new culture and processes if you want to win." He added, "Technology will only provide a part of the answer."
Noting that warfare initially evolved on land before expanding into the maritime and air domains, the CDS said, "With each new domain, there has been an influence on the preceding one. Even within these domains, significant changes continue to occur."
In the land domain warfare has evolved to include terrain-based and urban combat, he said. "In the maritime domain, apart from surface warfare, battles are now extending underwater-almost to the seabed. In the airspace we are witnessing an expansion into near space." "We need to align technologies to fight in these increasingly complex domains, and that is where technology will assist us," he added.
Speaking on how combat is evolving due to technological advancements, General Chauhan said, "For generations warfare has been between human beings but today we are on the verge of redefining this.
In the future combat may be between humans and machines and later it could be entirely between autonomous machines."
He also highlighted that warfare is becoming multi-domain, meaning that battles will be fought simultaneously across multiple domains.
As warfare grows more complex the need to develop technologies for cross-domain operations and cross-domain command emerge, the CDS stressed. "Warfare is also becoming more intelligent due to battlefield digitisation, the networking of terrestrial, aerial, and satellite systems, and the shift toward data-centric warfare," he added.
