Warfare Becoming Networked, Digitised, Intelligent; Human-Machine Combat Possible: CDS Chauhan

With warfare increasingly becoming 'networked, digitised and intelligent', technology would play a pivotal role in deciding the outcome of combats in the future, Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan said on Friday.

Addressing the Chanakya Dialogues conclave on the 'Bharat 2047: Atmanirbhar In War' theme, he said data-centric warfare includes looking at network security, redundancy, latency in data flow and the use of artificial intelligence as well as storage, collection and analytics of data.

Referring to the trends in robotics and automation, Gen Ghouhan told the gathering that it presents a possibility of combat between humans and machines, and among machines in the future.

"We all know that warfare is increasingly becoming digitized, networked and intelligent. So in future, I think technologies like artificial intelligence, data analytics and supercomputing will play a pivotal role in deciding the outcome of combat," Chauhan said.

"The Indian armed forces actually want to transit to data-centric warfare or intelligentised warfare. Explaining the concept of Theater Commands, the chief of defence staff described it as an attempt to separate force generation from force application," he said.

"Till now, both these responsibilities were vested with the service headquarters or the service chiefs. He was responsible for recruitment, training, equipment acquisition and maintenance, among others," Gen Chauhan said.

"So force generation and force application was one responsibility. Now, we are trying to separate that. We are trying to nominate a theatre commander who would be capable of carrying out multi-domain operation, that means in all the three domains, including support from space and cyber," he said.

General Chauhan added that while other nations have taken a much longer time to implement theatre commands, India has been adopting a bottom-up approach which has made the process faster. "Ours is the only country which is trying to attempt a bottom-up approach."

"In future wars, one may be able to use data analytics so that decisions taken during combat are better and faster," he said, adding that with advances in drone technology, the speed of warfare may also be higher.

"So you have a range of platforms which can hit you... from a small cross-section to a large cross-section, from a very slow mover to something that is moving at Mach 4 or Mach 5. All these platforms can be routed intelligently. Since these are almost undetectable and inaudible, targeting them is rather difficult," the DCS said.