BENGALURU: “Modern warfare is no longer about isolated domain superiority but about how effectively different domains are orchestrated across the battlespace,” said General Upendra Dwivedi, India’s Chief of Army Staff (COAS), on Thursday, citing ‘Operation Sindoor’ as a key example of evolving jointness in multi-domain warfare.
Speaking at the 2nd edition of the two-day Ran Samwad 2026 - “Multi Domain Operations: An Imperative for Addressing Conventional and Irregular Threats” here, the COAS described the current global security environment as a “dispersed, undeclared, multi-theatre, multi-domain world war,” where the interaction between land, air, sea, cyber, space and cognitive domains is constant and decisive.
Referring to Operation Sindoor, he highlighted how ground intelligence networks, combined with cyber and electronic warfare inputs, enabled a precise joint targeting cycle between the Army and the Air Force, while naval repositioning simultaneously shaped the strategic outcome. “No single domain decided the operation. Each domain created the conditions the other needed,” he said, underlining that such synchronised, mutually enabling action is the essence of multi-domain operations (MDO).
The COAS outlined ongoing transformation within the Army, while noting that India is “largely, if not fully, multi-domain enabled,” he acknowledged challenges in synchronising operations across strategic, operational and tactical levels, as well as countering ‘hybrid warfare’ that operates below conventional thresholds.
Following the Army’s perspective, Admiral Dinesh Tripathi, Chief of Naval Staff, outlined how the maritime domain is evolving within the same multi-domain framework. He noted that ongoing tensions in West Asia and disruptions to maritime traffic demonstrate that security is interconnected and that “distance from conflict does not equate to distance from its consequences.”