In the emerging defense paradigm, India’s security would be maintained not only along the northern and western borders, but also in the strategic space of the “extended neighborhood,” said Chief of Defense General Staff on Saturday. Bipin Rawat.
He also said that India values its emerging relationship with the United States and appreciates its traditional relationship with Russia, adding that the country shares a mature and strong defense and security framework with both powers.
Addressing a symposium on defense exports, Gen Rawat said the armed forces will have to overcome budget constraints by finding the best solutions through new acquisitions and optimization considering macroeconomic parameters.
Referring to the proposed reforms in the military structure, Gen Rawat said that the Chief of Defense Staff and the theater commanders would “jointly” provide “unity of command” while the service headquarters and the “component commanders” they could provide “unity of effort.”
As part of a major reform initiative, India is working on the creation of a series of theater commands, integrating some of the commands from the three services, to meet the future security challenges facing the country.
Each of the theater’s commands will have units from the Army, Navy and Air Force and all of them will work as a single entity taking care of security challenges in a specific geographic territory under an operational commander.
The government had appointed Gen Rawat as India’s first Chief of Defense Staff on December 31 last year to achieve synergy in the operation of the three services.
Speaking on the regional security paradigm, he touched on key aspects of India’s security doctrine. In this context, he mentioned the International Border (IB) and Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistan as a Royal Line of Control (LAC) with China.
“In the emerging security paradigm, India’s security would not hold, as it has been up to now, in the IB, LC or LAC alone, but in the strategic space of the ‘extended neighborhood’ and the ‘strategic border’,” he said without giving more details. further away.
India has been strengthening defense and security ties with various countries in its extended neighborhood such as Indonesia, Singapore, and several countries in the Gulf region in recent years.
Delving into the evolving security matrix in the region, the Chief of Defense Staff proposed a seamless integration of the surveillance and communication resources of the three services, saying that such convergence is essential to develop a framework to have an air situation. composed in real time “.”.
General Rawat said that the strong interaction between the CDS, COSC (Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee) and the political executive (Cabinet Security Committee) should ensure single-point military advice, strategic direction and Resource Optimization.
On modernizing the Indian armed forces, he said that he has been in line with the changing global security environment and with a focus on maximum value for money.
“We are witnessing seismic shifts in geopolitics shaped by a ‘nation first’ approach and geoeconomics,” he said, adding that the military must be structured in a way that provides operational flexibility to pursue “broader strategic objectives.”
The country’s first CDS also said that the search for disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics, big data analytics, drone technology, militarization of space, quantum communications, along with the manipulation of social networks, is generating new threats and complicating even more the security environment.
He said that the asymmetric advantages created by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are being seen as opportunities by non-state actors, adding that future defense systems must be qualitatively and quantitatively capable of coping with new threats.
“In this age of multi-dimensional technology, we must focus on constant innovation and modern technology solutions, to stay ahead of adversaries,” he said.
General Rawat said that the creation of the Department of Military Affairs headed by the CDS, which has a central personnel scheme along with amendments to trade rules, in effect admits the military into the central building of the Indian government.
“This restructuring of the Ministry of Defense gives us the opportunity to adopt future strategies to seize and exploit the moment and launch a process of dynamic transformation,” he said.
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