Recently the country observed its 92nd Air Force Day, during which the country’s air prowess was on display. In our 76 years of history as an independent nation, we have fought four major wars – 1948, 1962, 1962 and 1971 and localised conflict in 1999 at Kargil.
But it was only during the 1971 Indo-Pak war in East Pakistan, IAF established air supremacy thus enabling unconstrained offensive military operations by land, air and sea.
In 1999, IAF played a major role in ejecting the Pakistani intruders entrenched in the peaks of Kargil, inflicting heavy casualties on our infantry. But the IAF was introduced into action at a much later stage after much reluctance, as there was a fear of escalation and fear of nuclear war. Most recently, the Indian government ordered IAF jets to fly across the Pakistani border to bomb the Jaish-e-Mohammed terror camps in Balakot.
While the IAF has to play a major role in conventional warfare, in the last one decade, the nature of warfare has also changed and is continuously evolving. It has become more technology-oriented. For example, aerospace superiority is the area where the world is moving, so is India.
Space capabilities are essential for a nation’s development, besides being crucial for conduct of military operations. Some peaceful civil applications of space that are utilised by the military include navigation, mapping, surveys, exploration, weather and communication.
The near space and space applications towards national security include intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; transit of military vehicles, weapon passage and guidance; secure military data links and communication; tracking and interception of weapons utilising the medium of space.
While IAF’s utilisation of the air and space continues to evolve, the term aerospace power assumes great significance. As an important stakeholder for its expanding operational capacities, the command and control structures that the air force develops, must have the requisite capability to leverage the entire spectrum.
Information Warfare is another area that the IAF is focusing on. Information warfare can be defined as the actions taken to preserve the integrity of one’s own information system, while at the same time exploiting, corrupting or destroying an adversary’s information system, and in the process, achieving an information advantage for the application of information operations – the offensive and the defensive.
Offensive Information Operations involve the integrated use of assigned and supporting capabilities and activities, to affect enemy decision-makers by attacking their information and information systems. Defensive Information Operations involves integrating and coordinating policies and procedures, operations, personnel and technology to protect and defend friendly information and information systems.
Cyber Warfare is another domain that has emerged to be very crucial in the scheme of national security. Wars can be lost and won in the mind and virtual spaces as much as in the physical battlespace. Cyber warfare is an attractive low cost war-waging model because it has some notable features such as: low entry cost, blurred traditional boundaries and an expanded role for perception management.
Threats in the sphere of cyber security originate from a variety of sources (known as well as unknown). These can target infrastructure, the financial sector, individuals, governments and the militaries of a country. The gravity of these attacks will vary depending on the objectives. The cyber defence environment requires deployment of technologies and capabilities for real-time protection and incident response.
The existing cyber threats to the IAF can be categorised as threats to IT Infrastructure, cellular networks and sophisticated malwares. A robust, secure and reliable network – both for data and communication – is a basic requirement for successful air operations. Network centric operations could significantly enhance combat capability and mission effectiveness.
We have been engaged in cyber-warfare with our enemy nations for a long time now. But cyber-warfare is not just about defacing websites of the enemy nations. It also involves shutting down the entire air-defence system using malwares, which can make the entire country vulnerable to conventional and nuclear strikes from two nuclear-armed hostile neighbours Pakistan and China.
Even the missile systems and the avionics of the aircrafts can be jammed using malwares as today all weapon platforms are technology heavy. A country with a two billion population can’t afford to have a vulnerable security network system as it can prove very costly.
This shows that the security challenges are multi-fold and the IAF has to be in the forefront to play a defensive and offensive role as air superiority and technology security will be key to ensure India’s long-term plans to increase its geo-political footprint.
We are today living in the era of Hybrid warfare. It is a theory of military strategy, which employs political warfare and blends conventional warfare with unconventional warfare, involving digital technology.
So, as the country strengthens its conventional fighting capabilities, it also has to invest its resources in the sphere of technology for non-conventional warfare.
