India’s electronic warfare revolution and the case for a unified joint command

Junaid Suhais

In June 2026, the Indian Army announced it would raise dedicated electronic warfare (EW) brigades along both the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and the western front, purpose-built formations tasked with mapping, disrupting and neutralising adversary radar networks, communications infrastructure and UAV datalinks before the first kinetic exchange of any future conflict. 

The announcement represents a decisive structural evolution in how India conceptualises and operationalises EW, consolidating what had previously been fragmented signals-unit functions into cohesive, mission-dedicated formations with a clearly defined electromagnetic battlespace mandate. The drivers behind this transformation extend well beyond a single theatre requirement. Across four recent conflicts spanning Eastern Europe, the Middle East and South Asia, control of the electromagnetic spectrum has emerged as the determinative precondition for conventional military success: the domain in which battles are won or lost before a single platform fires a weapon.

Sindoor’s Electromagnetic Blueprint

Operation Sindoor, India’s four-day precision campaign from 7-10 May 2025, delivered the most operationally instructive demonstration of spectrum-integrated warfare in South Asian history. The campaign’s structure was defined not by kinetic firepower alone. 

As documented by the Centre for Military History and Perspective Studies, a Swiss military think tank, the Indian Air Force (IAF) executed a deliberate SEAD/DEAD campaign beginning May 8, concentrating Harop and Harpy loitering munitions against Pakistani forward air-surveillance radars and long-range SAM batteries across eight sites on May 8 and a further four on May 9, resulting in the confirmed destruction of early-warning radars at Chunian and Pasrur, an HQ-9 battery in Lahore, a Chinese-supplied YLC-8E anti-stealth radar in Chunian, and a Chinese LY-80 fire-control radar, the latter valued at approximately USD 70 million according to Observer Research Foundation’s (ORF’s) post-conflict assessment. The electromagnetic degradation of Pakistan’s IADS proved decisive: by the operation’s conclusion, Pakistani forces had switched off the majority of their remaining forward radars to avoid further losses to loitering munitions programmed to home on RF emissions, effectively blinding their own battle management and Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) platforms to incoming threats.

India’s indigenous Akashteer battle management system integrated army air defence shooters, comprising MRSAMs, Akash systems and QRSAMs, directly into the Integrated Air Command and Control System (IACCS) network, enabling real-time cross-domain cueing that neutralised Pakistan’s mass drone assault of 350-400 unmanned aircraft system (UAS) platforms on the intervening night of May 7-8. Operation Sindoor was, as the Centre for Aerospace Power and Strategic Studies concluded, India’s first tri-service cross-border counter-terrorism operation jointly planned and executed across domains, and the electromagnetic architecture underpinning it, comprising SEAD, IADS integration and real-time spectrum exploitation, constituted its operational spine.