Legacy challenges have only grown in scale, depth: Gen. Naravane

While there are newer threats on the horizon, the arduous actuality is that legacy challenges have not fairly gone away, they usually have only grown in scale and depth, Army Chief Gen Manoj Naravane stated on Thursday, as India and China began disengagement to finish the nine-month lengthy standoff in Eastern Ladakh.

“Ongoing developments along our Northern borders should cause us to ponder over yet another reality, the nature of our unsettled borders and consequent challenges with regard to the preservation of our territorial integrity and sovereignty… While the Indian Army will continue to prepare and adapt to the future, the more proximate, real and present dangers on our active borders cannot be ignored,” Gen. Naravane stated at a webinar organised by Centre for Land Warfare Studies.

Gen. Naravane stated the principal problem earlier than them at this time was the “growing capability enhancements in an era of finite budgets”.

“There are no easy answers. Our structures, inventories and human resources will need to adapt and transform accordingly,” he said.

However, on the similar time he stated it was a proven fact that fight was not confined to the normal domains, however was increasing steadily to the newer domains of cyber, area, the electromagnetic spectrum, and the digital areas. “In order to win future wars, mere mastery of the traditional domains of land, sea and air will no longer suffice,” he stated.

Highlighting the rising challenges posed by adversaries in stand-off deterrence, Gen. Naravane harassed the necessity to develop capacities to strengthen our anti-access prowess, as additionally develop proficiencies to beat the anti-access capacities of the adversary. “The establishment of the Defence Cyber Agency and the Defence Space Agency underscores our intent to leverage these new domains of warfare,” he stated.

Talking of futuristic applied sciences, Gen. Naravane referred to Swarm of Offensive Drones, based mostly on autonomous and synthetic intelligence, to neutralise enemy mechanised columns deep inside enemy territory. At the Army Day parade in January, the Army had demonstrated such swarm drones for offensive functions, which Gen. Naravane stated was a message to our adversaries, that “the Army is steadily inducting niche capabilities to enhance our combat proficiencies in multi-domain operations”.

Concurrently, the Army was additionally working in direction of penetrating the anti-access bubble of adversaries by “investing in long range vectors, as also through the smart leveraging of our aircraft and aerial platforms,” he added.