The replacement of the iconic 1971 war surrender painting in the Chief of Army Staff’s lounge by an amateurish mishmash is a matter of concern for one big reason – the complete erosion of Indian Army’s professionalism.
The new painting is perhaps a product of Project Udbhav, which is a collaborative endeavour of the Indian Army and the United Services Institution of India, seeking to ‘integrate age-old wisdom with contemporary military pedagogy’, according to the Army’s handout. The painting portraying some weapons, including unmanned systems on one side of the canvas and a chariot with some mythological weapons on the other side. It is an acknowledgement by the Indian Army leadership that it neither understands modern warfare, nor cares to prepare for it. This when, India’s primary threat, the People’s Liberation Army, is at the cutting edge of this warfare.
Lt Gen Niazi signing the Instrument of Surrender under the gaze of Lt Gen Aurora. Photo: Indian Navy.
The character of war (how war is to be fought) has two aspects: the science of war which is about technologies, and the art of war which seeks optimisation of technologies for the best outcome. Now, both the science of war and the art of war (generalship) should go hand in hand for credible war preparedness. Interestingly, the deficit in the science of war can be made up to a certain extent by good generalship, but the opposite is not true.
Unfortunately, in the case of Indian military, the art of war has suffered a double whammy.
One, 34 years of uninterrupted counter terror operations by the Indian Army in Jammu and Kashmir has seen army leaders rise in service and rank doing tactical encounters with terrorists. For this reason, the Indian military still follows the hugely outdated US’ 1987 Air Land Battle war concept for combat. Ironically, instead of understanding the evolution of warfare over decades – which has been missed by the Indian military – a quick fix is being done. An unimaginative generalship, without changing the art of war, is attempting to airdrop new technologies on 1987 war concepts and force structuring. Changing the art of war involves two steps: building war concepts, and doing structural reforms in the forces to support them.
And two, instead of allowing the art of war to meet the advancements in science of war, the Indian military leadership has decided to slide back into ancient mythology and medieval battles to find answers for modern warfare. This is not a military project. This is a political project.
Sadly, the Indian military today is unable to distinguish one from the other. For example, the so-called 2016 surgical strikes by the Indian Army and the 2019 Balakot air attacks by the Indian Air Force were political projects which the two services believe were military projects.
An annotated satellite image showing possible damage to the madrasa in Balakot.
How the PLA fights
Let’s assess the PLA’s military project where the science and art of war have progressed together. Much in line with Sun Tsu’s saying that ‘victorious warriors win first and then go to war,’ the PLA decided on asymmetrical approach to warfare with the objective of cognitively (mind game) defeating or confusing the enemy. Hence, instead of attrition warfare which was the norm, the PLA chose to develop science and art for cognitive warfare.
So, the PLA focused on five capabilities, namely, land-based missiles to meet the challenge of western combat fighters; cyber to insert malware (malicious software) or software weapons to disrupt and destroy data or information passing through cyberspace in enemy’s information and communication systems; management of Electro Magnetic Spectrum (EMS) for Electronic Warfare (EW); and space and anti-space capabilities and nanotechnology which is at the heart of modern warfare.
By 2014, the PLA’s capabilities in these areas had reached a level where it could combat in two virtual war domains of cyber and EMS as well as in additional physical war domain of space. By definition, a war domain is not the same as force multipliers. The latter adds a punch to an existing war domain or battlefield like land, air and sea, while the former means capability to combat, confront, and contest with a peer competitor in new battlefield. Instead of building technologies for new war domains, the Indian military has chosen to focus on force multipliers.
So, in 2014, the PLA announced its new war concept called Joint Integrated Operations (JIO) which involved combat in six war domains of land, air, sea, space, cyber and EMS. Having built new capabilities and the war concept to use them optimally, the next step was force restructuring to train forces. Thus, in 2015, the PLA announced its biggest force structuring reforms since Mao Zedong’s 1956 military strategy.
Having built capabilities, defined a new war concept and made structural reforms, the PLA was given five years (2015 to 2020) to train to win in the new cognitive warfare where the focus was not on killings, but on rendering the enemy deaf and blind by snapping his communication nodes and free flow of data and information at all levels of command. This is what PLA’s systems destruction warfare with focus on information supremacy is about.
Meanwhile, conscious that the Pentagon had in 2014 announced its third offset strategy focused on intelligence supremacy in warfare, the PLA too started working on its new intelligenised warfare. In its 14th five-year plan (2021 to 25), China ordered the PLA to accelerate the fusion of mechanised (platform supremacy), informatised and intelligenised developments for modern warfare.
Beyond a traditional battlefield, the PLA, as part of its cognitive warfare, was building non-kinetic capabilities which could be used both in the whole-of-nation (war zone) and battlefield (combat zone) during peacetime, in crisis, pre-war and in war. These capabilities involve the continuum of cyber, EMS and space domains through which data or information passes. The reality of modern digitised war (networked war) that has been missed by the Indian military is that without superiority in this continuum, a war would be lost in little time. Against the Indian military, the PLA will have dominance in their continuum.
Since the Indian military war concept precede the 1991 US-led Gulf War against Iraq when the world was introduced to networking (US battle networks), the Indian military today is not even networked. This means that each service – the army, air force and navy – is capable of fighting only tactical war of their own in coordination with other services. In such an unusual situation, the PLA will use its Rocket Force capable of war surge to destroy Indian military’s command and control hubs, logistics train, follow-on forces, ammunition storage sites and fuel dumps at air bases and so on to end a decisive war where it would exercise total war control in a few days.
Meanwhile, for building ‘strategic deterrence’ implying ability to conduct non-kinetic operations in war zone in cyberspace and space, the PLA did its second biggest force structuring reform in a decade in April 2024 with emphasis on technology (AI) driven forces; the first set of reforms were done in 2015. In this, the Strategic Support Force (comprising cyber, space and EW) created in 2015 was replaced by three individual support arms, namely, Cyberspace Force, Aerospace Force, and Information Support Force (ISF). While the Cyberspace Force and Aerospace Force have operational roles in both war zone and combat zone, these provide the useable ‘strategic deterrence’ in war zone unlike the traditional non-useable nuclear weapons ‘strategic deterrence.’
The ISF powered by AI will help PLA’s situation awareness, support combat operations, strengthen information protection and help deny information flow to the enemy. An important task of the ISF will be to strengthen Network Information System by integrating different forces with independent data chains. The ISF is meant for combat with PLA’s peer competitor (the US military) where the combat would be at both the operational level and tactical levels of war.
Against the Indian military, given the huge gap in the science and art of war, the PLA has capability to win war on its terms in a lightening campaign which would end at the operational level of war itself. There would be no need for the PLA to fight at the tactical level which is the comfort zone of the Indian defence services.
The biggest gap between the two is the inability of the Indian military leadership to (a) understand modern war and to (b) focus on the PLA rather than the US military for this purpose. Consider the assertion made by the recently retired army chief, Gen. Manoj Pande. According to him, ‘The land will always remain a decisive domain of warfare especially when there are contested borders. The notion of victory will always remain land centric.’ This is an absurd statement to say the least.
Recall the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq where the US Air Force did 44 days air campaign followed by 100 hours of ground war limited to mopping up operations. Without a tactical fight, the Iraqi Army retreated in a decisive victory for the US-led multinational force. Iraq, which had fought 10 years’ war with a peer competitor Iran failed to stand up to the US military with dominant capabilities, especially, its battle networks, precision munitions, space-based capabilities and dominance of the skies. Today, the gap in science and art of war between the Indian military and the PLA is far more than what was in the 1991 Gulf war.
But what of the US military?
Moreover, the Indian military leadership wants to learn modern war from the US military which has different war concepts and force structuring. For example, the US military believes in joint force with ability for mission command. Thus, the focus is on joint training where junior leaders are encouraged to take on the spot decisions at tactical level in war. The PLA, on the other hand, believes in mission sets where the services do independent and not joint training. Depending on the mission, the theatre commanders put the joint force together for the task.
The PLA war concepts give it two advantages:
One, it provides flexibility and hence operational surprise in war since the PLA can fight by building mission-set and do independent operations. The latter means a mix and match from six independent, namely, cyber war, invisible war (cyber and EW), drone war, missile war, space war and psychological war.
And two, it dispenses with the need for mission command since the PLA is not comfortable with allowing decision making at lower levels.
Regarding force structuring, the US military has five services, namely, army, air force, navy, marines and space force. While the PLA has four services, which are army, air force, navy and rocket force, it has four support arms, namely, aerospace force, cyber force, information support force and joint logistics support force. Both the services and support arms report directly to the Central Military Commission (CMC) through the quad-services Joint Staff Department responsible for conventional war, smooth transition of conventional war to nuclear level, and nuclear war planning. A deeper examination of the US military’s and the PLA’s science and art of war shows that both have different war concepts and overall approach to warfare. For example, the PLA gives more weightage to grey zone operations than the US military. The PLA’s grey zone operations are the responsibility of the Political Work Department which reports directly to the CMC.
The Indian military which lacks the science of war to create new war domains (especially the virtual domains) has decided to bring about structural reforms in the force by raising of Integrated Theatre Commands. This is putting the cart before the horse. The steps that should be followed are to study the PLA in detail; decide on technologies to be built indigenously and those to be procured from friendly nations; create new virtual war domains; decide war concepts; and finally, do force structural reforms. All this will take time, finances, long-term commitment and political will. Remember, Rome was not built in a day.
Pravin Sawhney’s recent book is The Last War: How AI Will Shape India’s Final Showdown With China.
