BENGALURU: Defence minister Rajnath Singh and Chief of Air Staff RKS Bhadauria on Wednesday underlined the need for enhanced partnerships between friendly nations as India kicked off the chiefs of air staff (CAS) conclave aimed at enhancing effective utilisation of aerospace power, specifically in the Indo-Pacific region.
“Conclaves like these provide an excellent opportunity to address security and challenges and provide mutual benefits amid changing threat matrix and changing nature of warfare,” Bhadauria said, adding that with the advent of new technologies the understanding of national boundaries have shifted beyond classical definitions.
Singh said India’s indigenous defence and aerospace sector has many success stories like LCA, ALH, AeW&CS, radars, missile systems, among others.
“It is essential for india to achieve self-reliance... IAF has commissioned a major indigenisation drive for sustenance of all maintenance of aircraft. This will boost the efforts,” Singh said while reiterating the various reforms the Centre has introduced in the last six years.
He said the domestic defence manufacturing has now improved and that the trajectory can only be upwards.
“Recent conflicts show how warfare is changing. India is building capabilities to handle this. Budgetary constraints limit our goals of building armed forces...Given this, we must have a robust mechanism to share technologies and best practices,” Singh said, adding that friendly countries must work together.
Stating that the Indian aerospace sector will come of age and become a significant player globally, Bhadauria said India was central to peace, security and stability in the region. Calling for international cooperation, he said such cooperation can be created but it needs to be backed by credible and appropriate military power.
Pointing out that attacks now originate without warning several time zones away, he said the exponential technological progress made has made access to technologies like drones easy for both state and non-state actors. Such technologies are lethal and agile, he added.
“We (IAF) are focussing on developments on UAV/drone capabilities, communication, navigation and weapons delivery systems and technologies,” Bhadauria said.
He added that in the changing scenario, space-based assets have become critical. “They are both force multipliers and targets,” he said. “In the digital game, software has become as key as hardware and adversaries are increasingly targetting this. The degree of anonymity and remote operations of such adversaries has created a need for new mechanisms,” he added.
The air chief said that multi-domain situational awareness has become the need of the hour for decision makers and said that an integrated system of all friendly nations could go a long way in achieving this.
IAF, he said, has a potent network-centric capability and that the force is also working with domestic industries to build multiple artificial intelligence (AI) based tools to enhance operational efficiency.