NS Raja Subramani.
India needs to rethink the way it prepares for national security, moving from a reactive approach that focuses on fixing vulnerabilities to a proactive doctrine built around resilience, Chief of Defence Staff General NS Raja Subramani said in Delhi.
Addressing the Security Summit (Suraksha Sabha), Gen Subramani said the traditional distinction between peace and war, as well as conventional and non-conventional conflict, is increasingly disappearing, with warfare evolving into a continuous spectrum of competition.
He highlighted the growing importance of the "grey zone", where adversaries operate below the threshold of conventional military confrontation through economic pressure, technological denial, cyber activities, information operations, maritime coercion, proxy operations and manipulation of public perception.
The CDS said the expanding battlefield and rapidly evolving threat vectors require the Armed Forces to fundamentally transform their approach to preparedness and operations.
Technology has democratised warfare
Gen Subramani highlighted the democratisation of military technology, noting that capabilities once largely restricted to nation-states are increasingly available to non-state actors through cheaper commercial technologies.
The proliferation of unmanned aerial systems and drones, he said, has lowered the technological barriers to warfare and created new avenues for asymmetric threats.
However, he stressed that simply possessing advanced technology would not guarantee an operational advantage.
"The decisive advantage will belong to those who can integrate and operationalise technology fastest and most effectively," was the central message of his technology assessment.
From information superiority to decision superiority
The CDS said the Armed Forces must move beyond the traditional pursuit of information superiority and focus on achieving decision superiority - the ability to process information, make decisions and execute actions faster than an adversary.
He called for a shift away from isolated, platform-centric military capabilities towards a capability-centric, system-of-systems approach, where different platforms and technologies function as interconnected components of a larger operational architecture.
Push for genuinely integrated multi-domain operations
Gen Subramani also stressed the need to move beyond basic inter-Service coordination towards genuine operational jointness.
Future military operations, he said, will require land, air, maritime, cyber and space capabilities to operate as a single, integrated force.
The changing character of warfare, therefore, demands an integrated multi-domain approach rather than operations dominated by individual Services.
National resilience and Atmanirbharta
The CDS further called for a shift from merely managing vulnerabilities to building comprehensive national resilience.
He linked this resilience directly to technological self-reliance and said the country's defence industrial base must be strengthened through deeper partnerships between the Armed Forces, academia, MSMEs, startups and private industry.
The objective, he said, should be to create an ecosystem in which these stakeholders become equal participants in developing the capabilities required for future warfare.
From war-fighting to strategic shaping
Gen Subramani also called for a broader strategic posture extending beyond preparation for kinetic conflict.
The Armed Forces, he said, must develop the ability to actively shape the strategic environment, deter aggression before it materialises, manage escalation during crises and secure favourable geostrategic outcomes across the entire spectrum of competition.
Concluding his address, the CDS underlined that artificial intelligence and emerging technologies will play an increasingly important role in the future battlespace, but technology by itself will not determine victory.
He outlined the pathway to decisive advantage as the ability to seamlessly convert technology into capability, capability into operational advantage and operational advantage into strategic effect.
Gen Subramani said India has the necessary scale, intellectual talent, technological foundation, economic ambition and geostrategic weight to build such an advantage.
The larger challenge, he said, is to fuse these national strengths into a coherent National Security Architecture capable of delivering strategic resilience and decisive advantage.
