Technology is important in modern warfare, argued Army Chief General Manoj Pande, who also noted that it has become a new strategic arena of struggle. In his speech at the “Year of Technology Absorption: Empowering the Soldier” seminar, he emphasized that although improvements in technology have had a major effect on warfare, their benefits are unable to be separated from the overall strategy framework.
General Pande says that the impact of technology goes through multiple periods of history, starting with the 19th century with the invention of firearms and railroads, to the current moment with specialized technologies. He emphasized that armies had for centuries benefited and successfully triumphed in the battlefield when they adopted and integrated new technologies.He stressed that utilizing technologies from a warfighting standpoint requires grasping new technologies, seeing their potential, and obtaining strategic superiority.
In the Indian Army’s quest for autonomy, General Pande underlined the significance of assimilating and adjusting to technical advancements. He declared that new technologies are always developing, disrupting different industries, and becoming accessible for buy. Lethality and accuracy in military technology have grown dramatically, while emerging technologies like nanotechnology, neural networks, and quantum computing are becoming more and more significant.
The spread of destabilizing and dual-use technological devices, which even non-state actors are using to gain asymmetric leverage in wars, was brought up by General Pande. He noted that recent wars have shown whether these technologies are changing the nature of contemporary warfare and posing an imminent danger to standard force ratios and force multipliers.
In addition, new areas such as the internet age, space, and electromagnetic spectrum, along with developments in grey zone combat, have contributed to the complexity and contested nature of the battlefield. In order to lower potential hazards associated with external dependency, the Army Chief underlined the necessity of local technological advancement towards self-reliance in essential technologies.
The need for religious adaptation is due to these developments. General Pande highlighted the necessity of adapting doctrines and strategies to the dominant operational paradigms and adjusting organizational conceptions, operational ideologies, and tactics in line with those perspectives. Enhancing the combat potential of contemporary weapon systems is the goal of such continual endeavor.
In his final comments, General Pande emphasized the significance of understanding how technology affects combat not only strategically but also politically and doctrinally. He underlined that in order staying viable in the rapidly changing field of modern warfare, one must constantly innovate and adapt.
