Army building credible, balanced posture to deter escalation: Vice Chief

Speaking at the Pragyan Conclave, organised by the Centre for Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS), Lt Gen Pande said, “Legacy challenges of our unsettled and disputed borders have become more complex in the face of changing character of future wars…. 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, Pande said, “we will have to be proactive in building a credible deterrence,” to defeat “the adversary’s efforts to achieve its strategic goals and deterring military escalation”.

“We are cognisant of these requirements,” he added.

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

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 the “rapidly expanding domains of cyberspace 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,” he said. “In fact, the critical need for all organs of the state, to work in unison towards the national objective, has been the core takeaway of the past year.”

Pande also mentioned that “techno-social realm” such as social media also needs to be addressed in order to evaluate the 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”. He said 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”. Such campaigns are “typically built around non-military tools, as part of the tactics of remaining below key thresholds of response”, he said.

“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”.

“Changes in organisation and operational concepts will facilitate this transformation,” he said.

Pande said, “The incorporation of Artificial Intelligence into military and national security realms will fundamentally change the way wars are fought and won… 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.”