NEW DELHI, SEPT 3: Defence Minister George Fernandes today asked the defence forces to harness the ``full capabilities'' of information technology which provides an opportunity to exploit a new dimension of information warfare, hitherto unknown.``Information warfare has been heralded as the dawn of a new revolution in military affairs. Described as battlefield digitisation, army enterprise strategy, cyberwar, soft war combat and many other snappy and image provoking terms, information warfare is seen by futurists as a new era in the history of man.Cyberwar may be to the 21st century what blitzkrieg was to the 20th,'' he said, while speaking at the inauguration of a conference on `Information technology in Indian Army - an integrated perspective for the next millennium.He said the world was witnessing a ``paradigm shift'' in the dimensions of national power. While political ideology, diplomacy, economic and military systems and technological base remained the cornerstones of national power, each ofthese could be applied if the full capabilities of information technology were harnessed.The Minister said there would be increasing dependence on establishing databases, websites, decision support systems and information networks. These would have to concentrate on technology for security, cryptography, spectrum management simulation, data fusion and a host of other areas.He said the armed forces would also have to be committed to provide civilian connectivity in remote and far flung areas and establishing centres of excellence with core competency in many security related areas of information technology.The Defence Minister said he had set up joint task forces between the CII and defence in six key areas and information technology was one of them.He said the national agenda on governance had set out the goal of making India an information technology super power by 2008 AD. In pursuance of this goal, the Prime Minister had constituted a national information technology task force whose 108 pointaction plan has been approved by the government. The services would be a major contributor to national information technology vision 2008.The task force had addressed the issues of software, hardware and human resource development. It has set a target of 50 billion dollars for hardware and ten billion dollars for software. ``The targets are achievable provided we synergise our efforts.''The Minister said the urgency of addressing the opportunities provided by information technology were dictated by the fact that it would have an impact on society, economy, technology, national security and the individual.He said India faced the challenge of its integration into a global economy without losing its social and cultural identity. There was also the challenge of ensuring that the fruits of economic change percolate down to weaker sections of society. In addressing these problems, information technology would enable competitiveness in industry.''The Indian information technology industry today is on thethreshold of being a global player. There is a strong case to closely identify and tightly couple those areas where synergies in hardware and software components of civilian and military systems can be mutually beneficial,'' he added. The two-day seminar was organised by CII.
