Chief of Army Staff, General Bipin Rawat on Sunday made a strong case for integrating technology such as artificial intelligence into military systems and emphasised the need for “looking inwards” and indigenising production in the defence sector.
General Rawat was speaking at the two-day national conference on Self Reliance in Defence Manufacturing 2.0 organised by the Forum for Integrated National Security.
“Our adversary on the northern border is spending a huge amount of money on artificial intelligence and cyber warfare. We cannot deny that. It is time for us to also focus on AI and big data analysis, rather than keeping it confined to mere definitions,” General Rawat said.
Explaining the nuances of warfare, he said the future would witness ‘non-contact warfare’ which is an important reason to integrate newer technologies into defence systems.
General Rawat also highlighted the need to develop ‘battlefield management systems’ as information from various sources comes to the commander. This information, he said, could be by means of satellites and human intelligence, apart from other sources. The battlefield management system should integrate information for the commander to take a decision, he explained.
While India has one of the largest armies in the world and is the fifth largest spender on defence, General Rawat drew the attention of the gathering towards indigenising defence products.
He also said that Defence Public Sector undertakings alone cannot cater to the needs of the armed forces and that there is a need for industry and defence establishment to work together.
Men in uniform, he said, can act as a link between industry and the defence services.
Like the defence establishment has come out with problem statements, the industry should do the same, he urged. This could be looked into as the Centre is keen to remove ‘bottlenecks’.