Watchdogs in the Sky

Atul Chandra

The Indian Air Force (IAF) needs to rapidly induct greater numbers of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR), Electronic Warfare (EW) and Airborne Early Warning (AEW) aircraft to cater to future battles. In the future the IAF could be called upon to defend against an adversary that is gaining near superpower status and one that will have access to a large number of airborne and ground-based assets to strike at the IAF. The much smaller but combat proven IAF will require to make the best of its available resources in a future combat scenario before the end of the decade.

The MQ-9B Sky Guardian can deliver persistent ISR at long.ranges can stay in the air for up to 40 hours at a stretch 

In the ‘Doctrine of the Indian Air Force’ released in January 2023, the air arm states that ‘the air and near space domain are increasingly a continuum for the IAF due to the increasingly high dependency for ISR, navigation, imagery, targeting, meteorology, communication, operational networks, command and control, enhanced AD responsibility etc.’ It goes on to state that aerospace power is a key enabler in military strategy and for execution of surface and sub-surface operations. It states that ‘control of the air has assumed great importance in military strategy the world over because adversarial air power can increasingly interfere with the progress of operations on land, sea and air,’ adding that aerospace power provides a ‘here and now’ response mechanism to an increasing range of national security concerns.

Looking at the present pace of inductions, the IAF will largely have only 4th generation and 4th generation plus platforms in service and the combat effectiveness of these platforms can be dramatically enhanced with greater numbers of manned and unmanned