Capturing the exact character of a future war with definite certainty is extremely difficult but it could be assumed that future wars will be multi-dimensional, complex, with information domination, immense lethality and unpredictability. Future wars won’t be about explosive destruction alone, but also about synchronisation and manipulation by information in the military, political and social arenas incrementing the hybridity of war.

Such a trend has already been demonstrated by Russia in Estonia in 2007, in Georgia in 2008 and in Crimea in 2014 where a tailored mix of regular forces using conventional weapons, irregular forces using irregular tactics, insurgents, cyber intrusions and political influences were employed to meet the objectives. This trend implies that a future war would have kinetic and non-kinetic components intermeshed to achieve the war aims.

Specifically speaking, the kinetic component comprises the armed forces of a nation, while the non-kinetic component could vary from cyber, social media operations, subversion, trade warfare, resources warfare etc. Given its large canvas, the non-kinetic component could emerge as a great force multiplier if suitably aggregated in the kinetic arena. Our armed forces have focussed on kinetic action and kinetic targeting in the application of military force and the non-kinetic capabilities have received little or no attention. For future wars, non-kinetic capabilities will have to complement kinetic action and combining war fighting tenets of each would be a pre-requisite for victory.

India has been the target of irregular and unrestricted warfare capabilities of Pakistan and China. In the future, this hybrid threat will be more pronounced as China consolidates its new operational concept of fighting an informationalised war. In a two-front war, the hybridity could vary from a mix of regular forces using conventional weapons intermeshed with irregular forces using irregular tactics with support of terrorists and insurgents, cyber intrusions, and possibly some dimension of social and political warfare. While the armed forces would be called upon to tackle the regular war component and portions of the irregular war, the cyber intrusions, political and social dimensions would need a whole of nation approach. However, cyber intrusions that inhibit or constrain military operations will have to be dealt with by the armed forces.

The Indian Air Force (IAF) would also need to understand this new hybrid dimension and rework its doctrine, training and fighting ethos both for a full-spectrum conventional war and an irregular war. For this, two broad areas emerge. First, building capability and training for full-spectrum conventional war and second developing ability to adapt the same capability for operations in an irregular war. This framework has very wide operational, technological and training implications. At one end of the spectrum are the limited technological threats from militant groups or non-state actors and at the other, the highest level of technological sophistication from the adversary’s air force. The IAF will thus have to build capability of operating across the entire spectrum with the distinct possibility of having to operate at both ends either concurrently or nearly so. Achieving this adaptability will be challenging, and the quantum of air power capabilities resident in our air force would have to train to be rapidly scaled for employment in irregular warfare, while retaining the ability to perform the core roles and missions.




Four emerging trajectories provide a strategic context for capability building and training i.e. 5^th Generation manned and unmanned platforms, regular and irregular warfare, networked war and cyber war. These trajectories will need to be built with a multi-domain approach underlying the fundamental principle of joint warfare. The key doctrinal update for the IAF would be to integrate the cyber domain into the war-fighting doctrine and operational concept. Air forces exploit the third dimension of the operational environment and leverage speed, range, flexibility, precision, tempo, and lethality to create the desired effects within and from the air. This will now have to be done by intermeshing cyber offensive and defensive operations and making them a part of IAF’s overall employment concept.