Present dangers cannot be ignored, says army chief
NEW DELHI: Army chief General Manoj Mukund Naravane on Thursday said that while the Indian Army is preparing for future conflicts, the “real and present dangers” on the country’s borders cannot be ignored. His comments came on the day defence minister Rajnath Singh told Parliament that the Indian and Chinese armies were implementing a disengagement plan on the north and south banks of Pangong Tso to reduce military tensions in eastern Ladakh.
“Ongoing developments along our northern borders should cause us to ponder over …the nature of our unsettled borders and consequent challenges with regard to the preservation of our territorial integrity and sovereignty. Without doubt there are newer threats on the horizon, but the hard reality is that the legacy challenges have not quite gone away,” Naravane said in his inaugural address at a seminar on Multidomain Operations: Future of Conflicts, organised by the Centre for Land Warfare Studies.
Naravane said the challenges have only grown in scale and intensity.
Talking about multi-domain operations, the army chief said India needed to address the challenges posed by adversaries in stand-off deterrence. “We need to develop capacities to strengthen our own anti-access prowess as also develop proficiencies to overcome the antiaccess capacities of the adversary to strengthen our defensive framework as also to add punch to our offensive poise.”
While stand-off deterrence refers to the capability to strike the enemy from far-off ranges, anti-access capacities are aimed at hindering the movement of the adversary in a theatre of operations.
He said platforms such as tanks, fighter jets and surface combatants, which were once the mainstay of 20th century battlefield, were rendered relatively less significant in the face of emerging battlefield challenges in newer domains.
“We have seen how the very imaginative and offensive use of drones in Idlib and then in Armenia-azerbaijan challenged the traditional prima donnas: the tanks, the artillery and the dug-in infantry,” the army chief said. In Syria’s Idlib, Turkish forces had successfully used drones to carry out attacks against Syrian tanks, air defence systems and other assets. Also, Azerbaijan made extensive use of Kamikaze drones to target and inflict losses on Armenian forces in a conflict last year.
“We have also seen how disruptive technologies are now driving doctrinal cycles like never before. It may not be inaccurate to infer that technology itself is steadily emerging as a core combat capability,” the army chief said.
The concept these days is minimising direct contact warfare, said former Northern Army commander Lieutenant General BS Jaswal (retd).
“But you cannot dispense with infantry in a ground-holding capturing role. Also, artillery with its inherent capability of switching the arc of engagement with precision is going to assume importance. As far as armoured thrust goes, it is likely to suffer prohibitive casualties in multi-domain operations,” Jaswal added.