NEW DELHI: As the parliament gets ready for a discussion on Operation Sindoor next week, in both houses of the Parliament, Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) on Friday said that the operation is still on and our preparedness level “has to be very high.”
General Anil Chauhan, while speaking at a seminar, pointed out that there are no runners-up in a war, and any military must be constantly alert and maintain a high degree of operational preparedness.
"An example is Operation Sindoor, which still continues. Our preparedness level has to be very high, 24x7, 365 days.", he said.
India launched Operation Sindoor on May 7, in response to the terrorist attack in Pahalgam on April 22, to destroy terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK).
Meanwhile, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh is set to initiate the discussion on Operation Sindoor in the Lok Sabha on Monday and in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday. Both Houses will hold 16-hour discussions on the topic. Prime Minister Narendra Modi may also intervene in the Rajya Sabha discussion.
CDS spoke at a Capstone seminar here, part of the Warfare and Aerospace Strategy Programme (WASP) which was conceived by IAF to cultivate critical thinking in its future leaders.
The graduates of WASP subsequently go on to occupy positions in NSCS, Air War Strategy Cell, Think-tanks, and military educational institutes. This was the fourth edition of WASP featuring the participation of twelve officers, comprising ten from the Indian Air Force and two from the Indian Navy.
Jointly organised by the Indian Air Force (IAF) and the Centre for Air Power Studies (CAPS), the theme for this years Seminar was 'Aerospace Power: Preserving India's Sovereignty and Furthering National Interests'.
CDS, addressing the participants, further said the military in future will also need "information warriors, technology warriors and scholar warriors." In an emerging landscape of warfare, a future soldier will need to be a mix of all three "info, tech and scholar warriors," the CDS added.
Bringing in the concept of Revolution in Military warfare (RMA) CDS observed that the world is standing at the cusp of the third revolution in military warfare. "This form of warfare merges kinetic and non-kinetic means, combining elements of first and second generation warfare with the third. It is a converging tactical, operational, and strategic kind of domain."
According to the CDS, this third revolution is defined by the fusion of tactical, operational, and strategic thinking, alongside an integration of land, sea, air, cyber, space, and cognitive warfare.
Future combat, he asserted, will be dominated by individuals proficient not only in traditional combat roles but also in technological, informational, and psychological warfare. “Modern warriors must become masters of multi-domain operations,” Chauhan emphasised, “functioning simultaneously as tech warriors, info warriors, and scholar warriors.”
CDS Pointed to the rising importance of “info warriors”–experts trained to craft and counter narratives, fight misinformation, and influence public perception in what was described as “the invisible battlefield of cognition.”
“A scholar warrior is a military professional who combines intellectual depth. It combines skills. This individual possesses both strong academic knowledge and practical military expertise, enabling them to analyse complex situations, standardise effectively and adapt to diverse challenges in a dynamic security environment,” Chauhan said.
Concluding his remark, the CDS warns that the nations that fail to adapt to this paradigm shift risk falling behind in both defense and global influence