Army building credible, balanced posture to deter escalation, says new Vice Chief

Speaking at the Pragyan Conclave organised by the Centre for Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS), Pande said, “legacy challenges of our unsettled and disputed borders have become more complex in the face of changing character of future wars” and “new tools of aggression, riding on disruptive technologies, and hostile actions that exploit the ambiguous Grey Zone of traditional war and peace, have transformed the battle-space.”

“To succeed in war, we will have to be pro-active in building a credible deterrence,” to defeat “the adversary’s efforts to achieve its strategic goals and deterring military escalation,” said Pande, adding, “we are cognisant of these requirements.”

He mentioned that for building capabilities and capacities to fight in a multi-dimensional war, Army is “actively involved in modernising and evolving, keeping the future of conflicts in mind” and at present, it is “building a credible and balanced force posture, to deter escalation towards an armed conflict.”

It is high time, he said, for the Indian security establishment to “decipher the changing dynamics and respond accordingly”.

Talking about the new domains of warfare, Pande said that the “rapidly expanding domains of cyber, space and informatics, necessitate a new approach to warfare” and multi-domain operations, require “synergistic application of resources.”

“We need to shed the classic war and peace disposition and enhance inter-agency cohesion. In fact, the critical need for all organs of the state, to work in unison towards the national objective, has been the core take-away of the past year.” Pande asserted.

He also mentioned that the “techno-social realm” like the social media, also needs to be addressed “in order to evaluate rise of current and emerging trends and arrive at measures to counter information and influence operations, such as deep fakes and bots, with a focus on perception change and policy safeguards.”

Grey Zone warfare, he said, is an “important component of future warfare” and mentioned that “violent conflicts across the globe in the past few years are already giving us an insight into the contours of future wars.” Grey Zone warfare, he said, “is low cost, involves lesser risks and results in very little retribution” and such campaigns are “typically built around non-military tools, as part of the tactics of remaining below key thresholds of response.”

“They employ diplomatic, informational, cyber, historical half-truths, proxy forces, terrorists, economic leverages and other tools and techniques, to avoid the impression of a military aggression.”

He called understanding and accepting “the growing importance of new technologies, their application in warfare and impact on doctrines” as the “cornerstone to achieving transformation in the armed forces” and added that “changes in organisation and operational concepts will facilitate this transformation.”

“The incorporation of Artificial Intelligence into the military and national security realms, will fundamentally change the way wars are fought and won,” Pande said, and emhphasised that “whichever nation triumphs in the AI race, will hold a critical and perhaps, insurmountable military and economic advantage.”

Empowering the strategic and operational military leadership, he said, is the “key to preparing a nation to deal with uncertain security challenges” allowing the armed forces to be “adapt to changes, quickly enough, to win future conflicts.”