Role of humans in AI dictated war decisions, reflections on West Asia conflict and Operation Sindoor feature at second joint Indian defence leaders summit

“The ongoing Middle East conflict is a sharp reminder that sea lane disruption, energy supply shocks, and regional instability can affect India’s interests without a single adversary targeting us directly,” said Air Marshal Ashutosh Dixit, Chief of Integrated Defence Staff, in his keynote address on the opening day of the two-day Ran Samwad conference on Thursday.

“An Iranian naval frigate was recently sunk nearly 40 nautical miles from Sri Lanka in waters where India has vital interests. For us, this is not a distant spectacle. It is a strategic lesson delivered in real time,” said Air Marshal Dixit.

Kill chain dilemma in AI-dictated decision environment

The question of a human presence in the AI-prescribed decision-making process, which leads to the initiation of the kill chain (where orders are executed for a remote attack) came up several times during discussions by the top military brains from the Indian defence forces.

While technology can be a decision enabler, the human element must remain in war decision-making, the Chief of Army Staff General Upendra Dwivedi pointed out.

Army Chief General Upendra Dwivedi speaking at the Ran Samwad (Express)

“Technology is the common thread binding the decision-making process in modern warfare by integrating the data into the network, converting the integrated data into decision advantage, and translating it into a coherent fighting architecture. This must always be technology-enabled, and not technology-led,” General Dwivedi said.

“The kill chain and web kill chain must join hands to make it a smart kill chain, as the human must remain on the loop exercising judgment,” the Army chief said.

Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Dinesh Tripathi said the transition from a linear kill chain to network kill webs could deliver instant effects across the vast expanse of the seas, but the human element remained a key factor in decisions.

Naval Chief Admiral Dinesh K Tripathi speaking at the Ran Samwad in Bengaluru

The human element is a decisive pillar of modern warfare, and “irrespective of the pace of technological advancement, no algorithm can replicate the judgment, the instinct, and resilience of the well-trained sailor,” Admiral Tripathi said.

“Machines will probably not tell you what is to be done. It can give you an option thereafter, I think, the expertise, the experience, the battle-hardiness of the operational commanders or technical commanders who are there on the scene, or even from the headquarters, that decision will be taken by the humans based on many other factors, which actually machines cannot sense,” the Navy chief said.

“Only the human brain can tell you that this doesn’t look right. You may go wrong at some point of time, but it is still better than just blindly relying on the machines,” he said.

Vice-Admiral Sameer Saxena, flag officer commanding in chief for the Southern Naval Command, also expressed similar views.

“Technology is not the panacea for all our problems. The commander’s intuition of a situation will continue for a long time with all the AI and ML (machine learning) that you have. Certainly, decision-making will be faster, data processing will be faster, but technology is not the panacea for everything,” Vice Admiral Saxena said.

“I ask this question – with all the technology that the Americans used (in the West Asia conflict), what was it that AI did not identify. They used everything and did everything.  The AI did not detect a certain Persian civilisational strength; the AI did not get to detect the simple rule that the enemy gets to vote,” the Vice Admiral said.

The ripples from the West Asia conflict

The war in West Asia involving the US-Israel conflict with Iran, which began on February 28 is perhaps an instructive study in “multi-domain operations,” which is at the core of modern warfare and requires the defence services to work in cohesion, said Chief of Integrated Defence Staff Air Marshal Ashutosh Dixit.

“Consider what has been in play – B2 stealth bombers made ultra long range strike missions, carrier strike groups providing sea-based air power, submarine operations in the Indian Ocean. Iranian retaliation using coordinated salvos of ballistic missiles and drones striking across nine countries at once, and Iranian restrictions on traffic through the Strait of Hormuz,” the Air Marshal said.

“By this, they have weaponized geography and economics as part of the same campaign. No single domain has been decisive. Every domain is contested. The conflict has also demonstrated how quickly regional instability reaches our doorstep,” he said.

Admiral Tripathi said the Indian Navy has had a ringside view of the war in West Asia on account of the presence of Indian naval ships at sea.

“All of you are aware of the ongoing tensions in West Asia, and subsequent disruptions to maritime traffic are reminders that security is interconnected, persistent, and unforgiving, where distance from conflict does not equate distance from its consequences. At the same time, advances in technology are driving a convergence of domains and a compression of timelines,” Admiral Tripathi said.

The conflict illustrates that speed is no longer merely an enabler of warfare, but a distinct capability, he said. “AI-driven battlefield decision systems, amongst them, such as Lavender, Gospel, and Palantir’s Gotham link satellite fields, surveillance inputs, and phone records to process thousands of targets in compressed cycles and conduct precision strikes,” he said.

Apart from severe economic consequences the disruptions near the Strait of Hormuz “have also led to a significant increase in dark vessels that operate on the seas,” highlighting the security, economic, and informational challenges in the maritime domain, he said.

The conflict in West Asia has highlighted the importance of carrier battle ships and amphibious forces, the Naval Chief said. “Certainly, they carry a punch when they are to be used. Even in this war, you saw the utilisation of the carrier battle group from the US side,” he said.

“We were monitoring the position of both the US carrier group, as also the two amphibious ready groups they deployed on a kind of regular basis,” the naval chief said.

Admiral Tripathi said a large number of operations were launched from the US carrier battle ship Abraham Lincoln in the conflict with Iran.

“Abraham Lincoln is still there and carrying out what it is supposed to do – that is to project power from the sea,” he said.

“Large number of aircraft operations, a large number of operations which were carried out on land, got launched from this carrier battle group, and this we monitored, because we were there only and so we were monitoring how many aircraft are being launched, in which way, etc,” the naval chief said.

The immediate takeaways from the West Asia conflict were the importance of resilience, supply chains, and the intrinsic capability of the carrier battle group, he said.

Operation Sindoor lessons

Operation Sindoor, executed following a terrorist attack in Kashmir in 2025, demonstrated the need for joint action by India’s defence forces, the top military leaders said at the conference.

“In Operation Sindoor, it was the ground intelligence network coupled with cyber and electronic warfare inputs that gave the joint Army and Air Force targeting cycle its precision. While the Navy’s repositioning shaped the strategic calculus simultaneously. No single domain decided the operation. Each domain created the condition that the other needed,” Army Chief General Upendra Dwivedi said.

“Operation Sindoor was India’s most powerful proof of progressions to domain jointness, but we need to achieve domain integration and fusion,” he said.

Among other lessons garnered from the Operation Sindoor experience by the Indian defence forces is the requirement of a “psychological warfare division” because 15 per cent of effort was “in managing the disinformation campaign,” the army chief said.

“The way we look at it is that the military population is not 12 lakh but 1.3 crores. A psychological division under a Brigadier is playing a very big role. A command cyber operations wing has also been opened, which will at a later time be part of the core headquarters,” General Dwivedi said.

“We have opened up social media so that soldiers know the single source of truth which can be relied upon. In Operation Sindoor, we closed all social media handles other than the ADG Stratcoms so that there is one source of information,” the Army chief said.

Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan said a strategic communications agency is being created in the Integrated Defence Services headquarters to deal with the psychological aspects of warfare.

“We are going to start a strat com agency which will contain cognitive warfare and perception management at headquarter IDS. It will coordinate the efforts of all three services, especially the perception management part, but will work independently in the domain of cognitive warfare. We are also at an advanced stage of getting a communication agency that will look at the networks of the three services,” the CDS said.

Drone strategy

Since drones have featured as part of the strategy to counter larger forces in Operation Sindoor and the Russia-Ukraine war, the Indian defence forces are pursuing a drone strategy of its own the defence conference was told.

“The proliferation of drone technology across modern battlefields deserves special mention.  From Eastern Europe to West Asia, relatively low-cost unmanned systems, when integrated effectively, have changed the calculus of conflicts,” Air Marshal Dikshit said.

The Army is setting up drone battalions as part of the lessons from Operation Sindoor.

“Today, we are looking at about 15 regiments, 34 batteries, and about 284 Ashni platoons and border platoons. What is relevant today is that the call sign, which has been given, is Eagle on the arm. Every soldier should be able to fly a drone,” Army Chief General Dwivedi said.

“We are creating an ecosystem of trained people who can fly drones. We should be able to understand the networking of these drones,” he said.

“In Operation Sindoor, one of the lessons that we learned when the drones were flying was that the IFF (identification of friend or foe) was difficult. Therefore, the jamming was very effective, but we did not know for whom. It is a lesson we have drawn,” General Dwivedi said.

“At the divisional headquarters, a UCC is created to control all drones in the area. There is a need to identify enemy drones. There is an internet app where drone locations can be input, and the drone can be identified. We are not short on manpower, and the only thing is coordination and use of AI to decide what to do,” the Army Chief said.