Revolution In Military Affairs: Indian Army In Sync With Digital Reality

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New Delhi: A Rs 3,000-crore modernisation plan, approved by the defence ministry in 2003, seeks to increase the infantry man’s firepower at least tenfold with about 250 Kornet-E anti-tank guided missile launchers, light bullet-proof vehicles, 4,000 new carbines, 200-plus battlefield surveillance radars, 4.5 lakh rounds of multi-purpose ammunition and more.

The newly acquired capabilities and weapons have changed the thinking of the Indian Army’s brass. They now feel that the revolution in military affairs (RMA) can be theirs, too. The Pentagon defines RMA as “a major change in the nature of warfare brought about by innovative application of new technologies which, combined with dramatic changes in military doctrine and operational and organisational concepts, fundamentally alters the character and conduct of military operations”.

This now means that there will be much more than merely weapon improvement. It means fighting in a futuristic digital technology spectrum with laser-guided munitions, satellite surveillance, and a lot more 21st-century gadgetry.

The RMA knock has woken the Army up to a new realisation: they still do not have a war doctrine. The Army training command was given the charge of drafting a doctrine half a decade ago. Points out Air Commodore Jasjit Singh, director of the Centre for Air Power Studies, “if there is a single lesson of warfare for the past 100 years, it is that land forces cannot achieve their military, strategic, operational and tactical tasks effectively without synergy between land and air operations.”

The infantryman today is gradually acquiring the kind of firepower and precision that was once with the artillery and the armour. As many senior army officers believe, it is this firepower, coupled with high-tech sensors, surveillance equipment and night-fighting capability, that has made infiltration almost impossible.

Today, the Indian infantryman has become a night-stalker, with about 5,000 hand-held thermal imagers (HHTIs), 8,000 night-vision goggles and hundreds of long-range reconnaissance and observation systems (LORROSs) in his hands. He can see deep, and strike, in the dark.

After years of neglect, when shopping meant only big-ticket items like tanks and artillery guns, the infantryman is getting ‘empowered’. Field battle equipment, like the Israeli-designed and Bharat Electronics-assembled battlefield surveillance radars, are also effectively used in non-conventional situations like counter-insurgency. “It can pick up a walking man from 15 km, a group of men from 18 km and a moving helicopter 25 km away,” said a senior army official.