Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan speaks during the Raisina Dialogue 2025, in New Delhi on March 19, 2025.
| Photo Credit: ANI
Boots on the ground cannot be replaced and technology will only be an enabler, Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Anil Chauhan said, in an address at the Raisina Dialogue, India’s flagship conference on geopolitics on Wednesday (March 19, 2025). At the same panel discussion, former U.S. Army General David Petraeus (retd) said his country’s military had a legacy procurement process and “yesterday’s equipment” was being procured for “fighting tomorrow’s wars”. General Chauhan acknowledged that Indian procurement cycles were also very long.
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“India has been facing this asymmetric threat… We have always called it a sub-conventional kind of conflict. We invented this particular term much before the West invented terms like global war on terror or asymmetric warfare or fourth-generation warfare or now, ‘hyper conflicts’. So, we have called it conflict, which is below the threshold of a conventional kind of conflict. And as far as the lessons are concerned, I think the biggest lesson is that there is no substitute for boots on ground. Technology can only be an enabler but it cannot replace people. I think that’s very important,” General Chauhan said, speaking at the panel discussion titled “Verses and Wars: Navigating Hybrid Theatres”.
The second important lesson, the CDS said, was the shaping of the combat zone, with intelligence being the third lesson. Speaking on “the shaping of a battlefield”, he said the battle of minds had become important as far as hybrid warfare was concerned. In hybrid warfare, close collaboration with the State government and the local police was important, General Chauhan stated.
“So it is a kind of a ‘whole-of-government’ approach which is able to look at such kind of warfare. This I think would be major lessons India learned in its… sub-conventional conflicts.”
He said the global security environment was marked by two aspects — uncertainty and rapid change.
“I think the global security environment is marked by two things… uncertainty and rapid amount of change. I joined the Army about almost 43 years back and the types of war they taught us about, the traditional wars, you know, declared conflicts, they are no longer there. Yet, conflicts exist. It is perennial and ubiquitous…”
Speaking at the session, Dr. Vivek Lall, chief executive of the General Atomics Global Corporation based in the U.S., said speed was critical in defence and energy security. In this regard, he identified six key areas: persistent surveillance, robust data-sharing, human resource training, electromagnetic spectrum dominance, real-time operational picture, ability to deliver mass in numbers, and logistical dominance.
General Patraeus (retd), also a former Director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), said that the U.S. military envisions future combat capabilities but hasn’t fully solidified them. Structures remain unchanged, leadership development lags, training needs an overhaul, and legacy defence procurement persists, he said, while delving in detail into the employment of technology in the Ukraine war and how it has changed the battlefield.
Published – March 19, 2025 10:20 pm IST