NEW DELHI: With rapid technological advances changing the very nature of warfare, the Army is now cranking up work on 16 specific technology clusters as well as planning to induct `domain specialists’ to ensure it becomes a future-ready force with the requisite offensive punch for the increasingly digitized battlefields.
“The rate of change of technology is so rapid that we must keep on adapting and absorbing. We are proactively engaging industry and academia, including the IITs and IISc, in our endeavour to be in sync with the latest in the world of technology,” deputy chief of army staff (information systems and coordination) Lt-General Rakesh Kapoor said on Friday.
The Indian armed forces, of course, still have some distance to go in optimally leveraging dual-use and disruptive technologies for warfighting, including in the non-kinetic warfare domain.
China is leagues ahead in space, cyberspace, hypersonics, robotics, nanotechnology, lethal autonomous weapon systems, AI, DEWs and the like, along with the People’s Liberation Army’s long-standing thrust on `informatized’ and `intelligentized’ warfare.
The Indian armed forces, however, are now focusing on such technologies in a major way to catch-up in this new strategic arena of competition. The over 11-lakh strong Army, for instance, is working on multiple programmes under technology clusters ranging from cyber, space, quantum, 5G/6G, block chain technology, artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented/virtual reality to directed energy weapons (DEWs), loitering munitions, robotics, drones and counter-drone systems.
“We have officers driving these clusters, with laid-down benchmarks, timelines and monthly reviews. A roadmap has already been approved,” Lt-Gen Kapoor said, adding that the Army was undergoing reorientation and restructuring as part of the larger “transformation” drive underway.
Towards this end, the Army is also pursuing 45 niche technologies identified for military applications, with around 120 indigenous projects underway to develop and absorb them.
The Army will also begin inducting `domain specialists’ in cyber, information warfare and information technology, as also linguistics in Mandarin and other languages, from mid-2025 onwards.
“Some domain specialists have already been inducted through the Territorial Army route. Now, they will also be inducted into the regular Army. The vacancies are being worked out and advertisements will be issued next month,” Lt-Gen Kapoor said.
These specialists will need to be at least postgraduates in the domains concerned to be commissioned as officers and graduates for JCOs (junior commissioned officers) and Havildars.
They will be inducted into the Army Educational Corps (AEC), which is also being re-structured and will be rechristened as the Army Knowledge & Enablers Corps, with the mandate to specially focus on cyber, infotech, perception management and linguistics, including specialization in Mandarin, Burmese and other languages, as was first reported by TOI earlier.
Parallelly, as part of the several “automation, digitisation and networking” projects underway, the Army is also going in for integrated battlefield surveillance and intelligence centres, which will get feeds from a wide array of sensors ranging from satellites and drones to radars and troops on the ground, to provide a composite operational picture for commanders on both the China and Pakistan fronts.