Guest Column | Lethal Weapon

Lt Gen. Rameshwar Yadav (retd)

Changes in war technologies have led to a doctrinal shift in the use of the weapon to achieve the national objective in a more efficient manner. Air power is no exception to this phenomenon in the Indian context. Presently, the Indian armed forces are facing the challenge of hybrid warfare which warrants air support from a sub-tactical level in insurgency-prone areas to the entire spectrum of tactical to the strategic domain of conventional and Nuclear, Biological, Chemical (NBC) environment. The air power, which was entirely in the Indian Air Force’s domain till a few decades back, has gradually been delegated – a part of it - to the navy as well as the army to take special care of corps operations while the Indian Air Force (IAF) continues to retain the overall responsibility of defence of Indian air space.

Accordingly, the air components under navy and army are integral to national air power and their employment is coordinated by the IAF, barring execution left to them for better effect. The navy, due to their long outreach over high seas, have almost all the varieties of aircraft capable of operating from onboard ships as well as shore establishments. Whereas the army is controlling only the tactical level rotary wing equipment as part of army aviation primarily for fire direction of artillery fire, surveillance and logistics purposes. Besides the above, all the three services have a fleet of UAVs as part of their air component.

The Attack Helicopter (AH) is an offensive weapon platform for intimate fire support and destruction of the human and material targets. It has been a matter of debate as regards to its command and control since long. While the air force has been providing AH support so far, the intricacies of its employment in mechanised forces, insurgency and mountainous areas have been found to be a grey area for air force officers. The army officers,