Geography has placed India between two neighbours, both of whom are hostile and inimical to India’s interests. To the West, India faces a belligerent and antagonistic Pakistan, with which she shares a 3,310 km long land border. To India’s North lies Tibet, which, when it came under Chinese occupation, saw for the first time, Indian and Chinese troops, facing each other across the high Himalayas separated by a 3,448 km long Line of Actual Control (LAC). Chinese hostility against India is premised on keeping India confined to the backwaters of South Asia and towards that end, China actively colludes with Pakistan. As of now, while relations between India and her two antagonistic neighbours remain troubled, the possibility of full scale war is unlikely. In the near to middle term however, China may attempt to annex her claimed areas by force, if the Chinese political leadership is confident of achieving a quick military victor.
In the event of hostilities breaking out with China, the key to victory for either side will lie in information dominance, battlefield transparency and air superiority. Inter alia, both sides will leverage space to get that edge. Space is thus, the final frontier. The criticality for India will lie in monitoring in real time, Chinese troop movement, build up of artillery and logistic nodes, command and control centres, missile bases and aerial assets. This would require continuous satellite coverage over the Tibetan plateau, for which India would need adequate satellites of its own or leveraging information from satellites of friendly partner countries.
Hostilities with China will in all probability begin with a series of non kinetic responses through the cyber domain, where China will aim to cripple India’s network centric warfare capability and neutralise command and control centres. Non military targets such as financial centres may also be disrupted through cyber attacks. Prior to this, however, there will be a concerted attempt at shaping opinion, both within China and across the world. While China has been carrying out perception management operations through its ‘Three Warfares’ doctrine, encompassing media or public opinion warfare, psychological warfare, and legal warfare, there will be a ratcheting up of such activity in the weeks and months prior to the outbreak of hostilities. The cyber attacks would be followed by a series of missile attacks on military targets, before ground operations commence.
India will have to counter Chinese cyber capability by both offensive and defensive means. To counter Chinese ground operations, India would require precision strike capability and a measure of air superiority over the Tibetan plateau. Here is where leveraging space comes into play, to achieve both battlefield transparency as well as precision strike capability.
Pakistan is no longer a major conventional threat to India, but in conjunction with China, it will impose on India the threat of a two-front war. The criticality here will be to determine the movement of Pakistan’s strategic reserves, which again would require leveraging space capability.
Whether it is hot war or cold war, or the grey zone in between, the cyber domain will continue to offer almost cost-free opportunities, especially to rogue nations to carry out attacks on non-military targets. This makes cyber-space the most critical domain of future warfare. With rise of AI enabled deep fakes, the cyber frontier is heading for sci-fi like cold war scenarios that is already covertly an active line of conflict for India. India needs to ready herself to counter both hot-war and grey-zone conflict scenarios.
Synopsis for Milit - 19 Jan 2022.
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