By Stating the Obvious About Changing Nature of Warfare, Rajnath Reveals His Rear-View Mirror Vision

Chandigarh: In the grand halls of military conferences around India, where seasoned army generals with decades of experience and shoulders weighed down with gleaming brass insignias gathered twice each year, one would expect ground-breaking strategic direction from the country’s defence minister whilst addressing this august assembly.    

Instead, defence minister Rajnath Singh delivered a low-impact speech last week at the three-day, bi-annual high-stakes Indian Army (IA) commanders meet in New Delhi, which could best be likened to an event where the fire chief was telling his force to be always ready to fight a fire. 

And, in a dazzling display of strategic unoriginality Singh, as the Indian military’s overall civilian custodian, breathlessly informed the top-rung commanders of the world’s second-largest and battle-hardened army on April 3 that warfare had, indeed changed. 

According to the Press Information Bureau (PIB), the defence minister tellingly told the army commanders that prevailing global geo-strategic uncertainties affected everyone. He went on to stress that the present world order was inter-connected and such incidents – unspecified in the PIB's translated version of Singh’s address – whether happening in our neighbourhood or far-off countries, affected everyone. 

“Unconventional and asymmetric warfare, including hybrid war, will be part of future conventional wars,” the minister said with the tone of a man unveiling terminally obvious information as classified content. In the same vein, which analysts and military veterans somewhat irreverently equated to telling rocket scientists that fire was hot and ice was cold, the minister went on to declare that ‘cyber, information, communication, trade and finance’ had all become an inseparable part of future conflicts. 

Hence, India’s Armed Forces, he gravely advised needed to consider all these unknown critical facets while planning and formulating their strategies, implying that the very people whose daily job it is to prepare for tomorrow’s security contingencies had somehow not gotten this particular memo earlier. 

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Ignoring the enduring reality that all these aspects and facets had been – and were continuing – to be discussed ad nauseum in military white papers and defence journals locally and globally for decades, Singh directed the gathered commanders to formulate a ‘dynamic perspective plan’ by keeping all ongoing global security uncertainties in mind to counter long and short term challenges. 

It seemed Singh was unaware that his predecessors in his Ministry of Defence (MoD) had established the perspective planning directorate in 1986, to evaluate force structuring, capability development, scenario analysis, modernisation roadmaps and integration of new technologies and doctrines. 

Functioning under army headquarters, but with MoD oversight, this directorate is tasked with preparing the army for future threats and operational environments for the upcoming 15-20 years. It’s a different matter, however, that since its inception 39 years ago this directorate had functioned inadequately, with little or no supervision or accountability by Singh’s ministry. 

But Singh wasn't yet done in his condescending address to army commanders veiled as wisdom. He went on to iterate that ‘in the present global context the importance of Military Intelligence (MI) incorporating modern technology could not be stressed upon more'. 

A cross-section of senior veterans, all of whom requested anonymity, as they were fearful of repercussions from the MoD or their respective service headquarters, or both over their pension payments, equated this remark to shibboleths like ‘strong leadership is vital in times of conflict’ and that ‘intelligence needed to be accurate and timely’. One three-star Indian Air Force (IAF) veteran cheekily said Singh’s statement on MI harnessing modern technology was like saying that cars needed brakes and seatbelts for safety.  

Two days later, on April 5, Singh recapitulated similar views whilst addressing the naval commanders' conference at Karwar in Karnataka, by asserting that it was necessary to reorient the future role of India’s armed forces amidst the ‘present unpredictable geopolitical landscape’.

Like in Delhi earlier, he told Indian Navy (IN) commanders that security was an ongoing adaptation process that needed ‘re-assessing, planning and new ideas’ to remain ‘alert and prepared’. “We need to analyse how India can make its security role more effective,” Singh told commanders who had spent their three-decade -long careers doing just that.   

“Both the Raksha Mantri’s addresses to the army and naval commanders were underwhelming as he merely restated routine slogans with little or no relevance to the prevailing ground situation in the services and the myriad problems they faced,” said a retired two-star IA officer, requesting anonymity.

The two speeches, said the officer who had attended at least two such conferences during his service tenure, were merely a readout prepared by senior civilian MoD officers with inputs from the respective armed forces which he claimed appeared to have been ignored.  

Other senior retiree servicemen said that a lack of strategic, doctrinal and operational knowledge was apparent in the minister’s address, even though he was the one responsible for ‘steering’ the military and providing it direction to counter assorted security challenges. And, instead of mouthing vague generalities, Singh needed to have provided a broad MoD policy statement on eliminating bottlenecks to effect long-deferred force modernisation, beget service jointness or integrated theatre commands and fast-track technology absorption, amongst countless other operational and administrative challenges.  

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“No one contends that Singh reveal classified information on any of these issues, but policy brushstrokes to indicate what the MoD was doing to resolve procedural logjams would have been more relevant,” said a three-star IN veteran. But in its present state his discourse, he said was a ‘wasted opportunity’ in providing even a modicum of direction or optimism to the armed forces. 

One foremost and perpetual issue all three services faced was modernisation. Last month chief of defence staff general Anil Chauhan highlighted the MoD’s ‘slow’ materiel procurement processes, and many veterans believed that reassurances from Singh to remedy this would have been more in keeping with his position as Raksha Mantri rather than his ‘amorphous catchwords’ on the evolving global security framework which were all too well known.   

“We have problems like our slow procurement procedures, that it is difficult to imbibe technology at the rate the armed forces would want to” Gen Chauhan declared at the Raisina Dialogue, 2025 in Delhi in March. Procuring military hardware can take years under India’s weapon-buying rules, the CDS had grumbled, adding that India needed to induct more technologies at a faster rate to narrow the technological gap with its adversaries.  

To counter this criticism from India’s senior-most military officer, Singh could easily have provided the commanders the assurance that materiel procurements, mired in files and foot-dragging for interminable periods would be escalated to a ministerial task force for swift action. India, he could have indicated simply cannot equip a 21st-century army with 20th-century systems via 19th-century processes.

Moreover, the military was also left guessing as to its role in national security in light of there being no declared definitive National Security Strategy, said the aforementioned IA officer. “The military takes its cue and direction from the political leadership,” he added “but if the Raksha Mantri simply says keep doing your best in a difficult situation, it’s then up to the commanders to simply pursue their own strategic intent, which could be problematic.”

Other pending matters that would have made Singh’s speech more substantive and the conference more purpose-driven, veterans said, would have been his added assurance that force modernisation would be matched with operational needs and that the MoD would lead by reform and not rhetoric. They said that he should simply have signalled that as Raksha Mantri he was not there to tell the military commanders how to fight wars, but to have assured  them that the state would give them what they needed to prevail.  

In conclusion, Singh’s address to the army and naval commanders was not so much a roadmap, as such events are indeed intended to be, but a rear-view mirror vision that reflected concepts the military leadership had long internalised, but repackaged in civilian bureaucratese, and delivered with the misplaced gravitas of a person reinventing the wheel. 

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