THE LAST WAR How AI Will Shape India's Final Showdown With China 9789391047184

Citation preview

THE LAST WAR

Dragon On Our Doorstep: Managing China Through Military Power

{with Gha7,aia Wahab) Operation Parakram: The War Unfinished

(with Lt Gen. V. K. Sood) The Defence Makeover: 10 Myths That Shape India’s Image

THE LAST WAR How al Will Shape India's Final Showdown with China

PR AVI N SAWHNEY

alk were repeatedly stonewalled. I was not surprised any longer. Zeng was not a PLA officer, but an industry executive. By sharing the technologies NORINCO was working on, he had inadvertently revealed the PLA’s AI roadmap. Clearly, that couldn't be shared in writing with outsiders. Fortunately, I had had the sense to record the talk on my phone. Despite poor quality marked by ambient noise, the talk and my notes finally provided the clue to my two questions about Doklam. That I was making correct assumptions was validated when Dave wrote back to me after going through an early draft: ‘Your book is incredible...a real tour-de-force of the potential of the future of warfare.’ He further wrote that the book was ‘[a] fascinating read that illustrates the potential of future warfare. A rendition of the potential of artificial intelligence, cybernetics, hypersonic weapons, drones, armies of robots, swarms of self-targeting micro-UAVs, directed energy, real-time situational awareness provided by resilient communications, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance—all demonstrating the prowess of disruptive technologies and imaginative war concepts.’ He recognized that I was addressing ‘[t]he four battlespaces of physical, virtual, information, and cognition’, and that ‘[t]hese arenas are described in the context of the recent history of India-China-Pakistan skirmishes. A wake-up call for nations whose security constructs are stuck in the past, this is a must read for ail those with a role in national security affairs.’ Needless to say, I was overwhelmed. Dave went a step further. He introduced me to the person I regarded as my teacher and emailed my manuscript to Robert Work. In an email response to me, Work called the book ‘an impressive blend of history, strategic analysis, and operational, tactical and technological insight.... I learned a ton about China’s strategic thinking

behind BRI [Belt and Road Initiative] and DSR [Digital Silk Road]. And I found your description of future war to be especially good/ My gratitude to both Dave and Work for their time and early review of this book. I must also acknowledge an unexpected resource and sounding board- Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi. He got in touch with me during the Ladakh crisis of May 2020. Thereafter we stayed in touch. In the course of the following cwo years, we had several discussions on China, its capabilities and intentions. Mr Gandhi read the entire manuscript even as it was being written and offered valuable suggestions, which resulted in greater clarity. I am grateful for his time and involvement with this book. The writing took longer than 1 anticipated and was stalled several times because of self-doubts and lack of clarity. Despite my continuous research and reflection, I was often conflicted by the extent to which I could push the envelope as far as the future of war was concerned. In these moments, Ghazala Wahab not only heard me out patiently, but she frequently went steps further to suggest ideas that seemed radical even to me. For example, she suggested that the book begin with a war scenario. We had several conversations on how the possible war with China would unfold. Thereafter, she wrote an early draft of the war scenario to show me how it would work with the structure of the book. I remained unsure until Work wrote to me saying, T really liked your opening description of the war in 2024, which I found to be far more accurate and believable than other contemporary description of Chinese military prowess (like 2034)/ Not only that, my publisher, David Davidar, who patiently waited for the ideas to translate into a manuscript also felt that a fictional war scenario was a great way to begin the book. So, thank you, Ghazala, for a great idea. Thank you also for giving shape to the chapter on ‘Politicization of the Indian Military’. However, I will be erring if I reduce her contribution to the book to just these two chapters. She repeatedly read the manuscript even as it was being written, offered suggestions, and even rewrote when necessary. A heartfelt thank you to my editor, Pujitha Krishnan, for chiselling

the manuscript through her editing skills into a book. And, as always, thank you, Bena Sareen for a great cover. Finally, my gratitude to all those who helped me during my research, shared their confidences with me, and filled my information gaps. I will not betray your trust but will remain forever grateful. We are, after all, on the S 'im e side.

Prologue WAR 2 0 2 4

Prim e Minister’s Office, New Delhi, 22 February 2024 The prime minister is in a pensive mood. In a few hours, he will be participating in a virtual Quad Summit with the president of the United States and the prime ministers of Australia and Japan. He has gone over his speech a few times, but is not fully satisfied with it. Despite the military nature of the Quad, he is keen to convey how it is in alignment with India’s philosophy of non-violence, especially when the Summit will be followed by the naval and special forces exercise of the Quad in the eastern Pacific Ocean, south of the Sea of Japan. The Indian carrier group, led by the newly inducted indigenous aircraft carrier INS Vikrant, had already set sail from the Bay of Bengal along with its full complement of destroyers, frigates, submarines, fighters, helicopters, and maritime patrol aircraft. This was going to be the biggest Indian participation in a multilateral exercise. The prime minister is aware of the implications. China has been making noises since the biggest Quad exercise was announced. But there is no turning back now. India has chosen its side. That’s the only way to call China’s bluff and shatter its illusion of being the only power in Asia. Yet, it is important for India to let friends and neighbours know that it remains committed to non-violence and mutual co-existence so that it can retain the moral high ground. The prime minister decides to take a short break before the Summit. ♦

Minutes before the appointed hour, the prime minister is back at his desk, facing the giant screen on the wall opposite. S e n io r ministers and

bureaucrats are seated around the table. His support staff is in place. The teleprompter has been through several checks to obviate last-minute glitches. At the press of a button, the giant screen comes to life. On the screen are three of the prime minister’s counterparts. The prime minister smiles and starts the pleasantries. Just then the giant screen blinks a few times and goes blank. The prime minister casts a withering look at his foreign minister, who has already gone over to the technical staff. The staff scurry around, but the screen refuses to come back to life. The National Security Advisor (NSA) rushes out of the room. The conference room is in chaos. The NSA returns to the room almost instantly. ‘What’s the problem?’ the prime minister rasps. ‘Sir, this looks like a formidable cyberattack. Even our secure network has been breached,’ the NSA says. ‘We are unable to contact anyone.’ The prime minister of India’s office has turned into an island. In a few minutes it becomes dear that the PMO is not the only one to fall off the internet highway. The ministries of defence, home, finance, as well as the service headquarters of the armed forces have all gone offline. The Government of India has been thrown backwards by more than three decades. Even the phone lines are not working. A sense of foreboding descends on the room. The prime minister walks back to his office, followed by the NSA. The principal secretary is tasked with physically summoning the members of the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), the chief of defence staff (CDS), and the three service chiefs for an immediate meeting. ‘Could this be a rogue attack?’ the prime minister asks. ‘Unlikely,’ replies the NSA. Beads of perspiration appear on his forehead. ‘China?’ ‘That’s most likely.’ China had been issuing warnings to India since the previous year when the prime minister had visited Bum La in Arunachai Pradesh and addressed the troops in Tawang. China had termed this a grave provocation. Consequently, it increased military activity in its Western rvj

Theatre Command (W T C ) close to the border with India. According to the intelligence reports that the NSA has been receiving over the last few months, the activity appeared to be more than the regular exercises that the People s Liberation Army (PLA ) regularly conducts. Convoys of all kinds of trucks are frequently spotted moving stores, ammunition, and fuel on the multiple tar roads heading towards Lhasa (the headquarters of Tibet Military Command), and sometimes on the arterial roads linking up to the LA C1. Since 2020, the PLA has built robust and technologically advanced underground facilities (UGFs) to protect all aspects of its military forces, including command and control, logistics, ammunition, and missile systems. Started around 2012, the UGF building programme in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) had been upgraded and expanded. The deeply buried UGFs were traditionally meant to protect military assets from the effects of penetrating conventional munitions and nuclear strikes. According to intelligence reports, after the 2020 Ladakh face-off, the PLA deployed electronic and cyber warfare units in TAR. Dualuse airports were upgraded for combat jet and drone flights. Huge communication towers had been set up. Blast pens or hardened shelters for combat aircraft had been built. Numerous air defence and missile sites had been dug. But India had been ignoring these provocations. On 26 January 2024, India invited the Dalai Lama to the Republic Day parade. China was livid and threatened to snap diplomatic ties with India. It dismissed India’s assertion that the Dalai Lama had been invited in his capacity as a spiritual leader along with the gurus of other faiths. Despite all the threats, the prime minister and the NSA were convinced that China would not enter all-out war with India and imperil its own economic growth. This view was also supported by the military establishment led by the CDS. Even in 2024, the Indian military held the view it had formulated back in 2009—that China would not want to wage a war with India because a stalemate on ground would be*

‘The term LAC (line of actual control) was dropped in the 10 September 2020 Moscow joint statement between India and China. However, till the writing of this book, the joint statement had not been implemented.

xvn

viewed as defeat. And stalemate it would be, they believed, because the Indian military of 2024 was not the same as 1962. It was prepared to fight and was battle hardened by decades of fighting terrorism on the Line of Control (LoC ) with Pakistan. The Indian Air Force, with some 250-300 combat aircraft from ah bases located at much lower altitudes, had many advantages over the PLA Air Force (PLA A F). It would make sure that it sent back thousands of body bags of PLA soldiers, thereby destroying China’s reputation as a world power. But was the Chinese military of 2024 the same as the one in 1962? This was an uncomfortable question with an unsavoury answer. Since the prime minister was not in the habit of listening to unpleasant answers, nobody raised this question. Perhaps nobody knew that this was a question that needed to be asked. Despite ongoing studies on China, the Indian military, even in 2024 was oblivious of the war China had been preparing for. Traditionally, the Indian military believed that China was at least a decade ahead of Indian capabilities. Sanguine in this assessment, it was clueless about the rapid transformation that had been taking place in the neighbourhood. But if China does not intend to go to war with India, why would it mount such a formidable cyberattack on the seat of the government? Looking through his notes based on a recent intelligence report, the NSA runs the prime minister through what he knows about the PLA’s presence in TAR. The combat support forces (Rocket Force, Strategic Support Force, and Joint Logistics Support Force) in the W TC have been conducting training with combat units to deploy and manoeuvre with them. The reported PLA convoys into TAR include large numbers of unmanned vehicles—combat as well as reconnaissance. One report mentions sighting thousands of humanoid robots in military buses and trains to Lhasa. ‘Humanoid robots?’ ‘They are likely to be used for combat support like maintenance, readying of ammunition, supplies, fuel and so on,’ the NSA says in a slightly dismissive tone. ‘Why have they launched a cyberattack on the PMO?’ asks the prime minister. ‘Phishing?’ xv m

‘Difficult to say. But it’s unlikely that a phishing attack would disrupt our networks. This seems to be something else/ By this time, the CCS has assembled in the conference room. Breaking protocol, the chief of air staff (CAS) blurts out, ‘This is not an ordinary cyberattack. The malware that has attacked us is extremely sophisticated. It has breached all our firewalls. Our entire communication network has collapsed. We have been rendered blind and deaf/ A cold frisson runs through the conference room. The army and the navy chiefs have similar reports to share. The navy chief is particularly worried. The navy has lost contact with the INS Vikrant carrier battle group that includes two destroyers, four frigates, three submarines, fifteen fighters, eight helicopters, two long-range maritime patrol aircraft, and a number of smaller vessels. Seeing the prime minister’s quizzical look, the NSA explains stoically, ‘Sir, if we have lost contact with them, it means they have also lost contact with ground control. This can lead to accidents/ The CAS interrupts. ‘It’s a very serious situation. We have deployed six aircraft for this exercise. All communications with them have snapped/ The ground situation was equally dire. The troops deployed in the mountains had long lines of communications. These were on the blink now. ‘Sir, for troops posted 18,000 feet and above, communication is the lifeline/ the chief of army staff (COAS) says. ‘In Ladakh we have an emergency. As you know, in certain places, our soldiers are eyeball to eyeball with the PLA / Glancing at the NSA, he adds, ‘In Ladakh, the PLA has also deployed a large number of unmanned and autonomous systems, including combat systems. If they get up to some mischief using machines, we won’t get to know. Of course, our troops are trained and prepared for all eventualities. But communication with headquarters is critical.’ Despite the apparent calm in the room, the panic was palpable. The COAS’s remark was foreboding, but it also held a clue to the motive for the cyberattack. The principal secretary was told to summon the director of National Critical Information Infrastructure’s Protection Centre (NCIIPC) that works under the National Technical Research

Organisation (NTRO), the head of the Defence Cyber Agency under the Integrated Defence Headquarters, and the National Cyber Security Coordinator who works directly under the PMO. The reports are worse than expected. ‘Sir, it doesn’t look like a mere cyberattack. The internet in peninsular India has stopped working. Most DRDO laboratories, ISRO, and the DPSUs have no internet. We don’t know yet how much of the infrastructure has been affected,’ the NSA says, running his hand over his forehead. ‘It’s a major cyberattack,’ the prime minister says. After a moment’s silence, the NSA adds, ‘It looks like some of our submarine cables that connect us to the global internet have been tampered with. Maybe they have been cut.’ ‘But that’s an act of war/ the prime minister says to the now silent room. The conference room turns into an impromptu war room. ‘I need updates every half hour,’ the prime minister declares and storms out. It is early evening by the time the primary servers are salvaged and wire connectivity is re-established. Wireless is not working yet. There are no signals from the satellites. This could mean that the Indian satellites have either been destroyed or disabled. Around this time, reports start to come in from various Indian military field formations (using oldfashioned line communication) that several radars in the eastern border areas have been electronically disabled by drones. The entire air defence network in and around Delhi has collapsed. The prime minister is told that he cannot step out of the PMO. The NSA’s suspicions about the submarine cables are correct. Vast parts of the Deccan plateau have fallen off the internet highway. Another CCS meeting is convened. ‘Our radars have been disabled, our networks compromised, and our satellites have most likely been rendered dysfunctional,’ the NSA says. ‘Sir, it is war. China has started a war against us.’ ‘Where has it attacked? Which sector?’ ‘As of now there are no reports of any physical attack, sir/ the CDS

finally speaks. ‘Right now, it appears that China wants to immobilize us through cyber and electronic warfare.’ ‘Why? To what purpose?’ ‘Perhaps to smother us before it mounts the ground attack/ the CDS says stoically. ‘I must address the nation/ declares the prime minister. ‘Organize the telecast; The CDS and the NS A exchange glances. ‘That’s not possible, sir/ says that NSA. ‘We cannot connect with our satellites. All links are broken/ The prime minister understood war as it was fought in the physical dimensions. But this...what was happening.... This was unfathomable. How can something that doesn’t hurt physically be dangerous? There is no time to deliberate this. The conference room plunges into darkness. ‘Looks like our electric grids are also under attack. We must leave immediately/ the NSA says. The war room shifts from the conference room into the underground command and control centre, fortified to withstand nuclear attack. Using emergency communication, the NSA reaches out to select intelligence officers to get a complete picture of the state of the nation. Over the next few hours, a picture emerges. In parts of Tier I cities, the power grids have been attacked by specialized cyber malware, rendering areas without electricity. Metro railway lines have stopped functioning, stranding passengers. Following numerous fraudulent activities, the banking sector and the stock exchanges have been shut down to prevent further damage. Mobile phones have stopped working, as well as satellite television. There is widespread panic. A government besieged. A nation terrorized. The CDS and the service chiefs spend all night ascertaining the extent of the damage to military facilities and how quickly the situation could be salvaged. The CCS assembles at 7 a.m. on 23 February in the underground command and control centre. Not waiting for the customary opening remarks from the NSA, the CAS blurts out: ‘The reports are devastating, sir/ he walks across to the floor-to-ceiiing

display monitor, which comes alive with a wave of his digital pen. He zooms in to the northeastern part of India so that the sweep from Sikkim to Arunachal Pradesh fills the screen. It is a static image. ‘This is from yesterday afternoon before we stopped receiving a live feed from our satellites. There are no images to back what I am going to say now.3 The CAS tells the stunned prime minister that uncountable numbers of intelligent armed drones, perhaps 15,000 or more, are coming in waves of swarms to attack military defences, communication networks, and ground-based radars. Hypersonic and cruise missiles had destroyed several hardened bunkers, command and control bunkers, and many other facilities deep inside Indian territory. Ballistic missiles had hit targets all the way to the Brahmaputra River. Most of the airstrips had been hit by runway missiles. All 1AF forward bases—Agartala, Kolkata, Panagarh, Shillong—as well as permanent bases like Chabua, Guwahati, Bagdogra, Barrackpore, Hasimara, Jorhat, Kalaikunda, and Tezpur have been attacked. All advanced landing grounds in Arunachal Pradesh have been rendered inoperative. ‘There are unconfirmed reports that missiles including hypersonic glide vehicles have hit and destroyed the S-400 anti-missile units in the forward areas. The Pinaka and BrahMos missile sites have also been destroyed/ the CAS points on the screen with his digital pen. ‘The carrier group?’ the NSA asks. ‘Three fighters are missing. One AWACS2 seems to have been downed.’ The CNS rises from his chair. He starts to walk towards the monitor, then stops. His usually expressionless face has a stricken look. ‘Sir/ he pauses to clear his throat, ‘INS Vikrant had sent a distress call last night. We have been trying to ascertain its status but there is no news yet. It could be in trouble/ At 40,000 tons, the INS Vikrant is a floating city with a manpower

^Airborne Warning and Control System. It is a mobile radar fitted on an aircraft for re a1 t ime surve i!ian ce.

complement of 1,600. This would be the biggest military disaster in Indian history. The prime minister appears to be wearing a mask. His face betrays no emotion when he throws a question at the room, his first since the meeting began. 'Will China go so far?’ In an attempt to put off the bad news as much as possible, the NSA interjects. 'We are trying to confirm it.’ ‘But what does it want?’ the mask starts to slip a bit. ‘Ladakh,’ says the COAS. ‘And maybe Arunachal too.’ ‘It can’t be serious about that,’ irritability creeps into the prime minister’s voice. The COAS gets up and walks towards the monitor. ‘Sir, my boys in Ladakh are in great distress. They first spotted swarms of what seemed like genetically engineered bees. It turns out that these are intelligent macro and mini drones, each smaller than a bullet. They penetrate the human forehead at great speed and explode. They seem to have some kind of facial recognition technology. They are only hitting the humans. We have lost many men. This number is likely to increase.’ According to the COAS, the bigger worry was that these swarms are unending. As the size of the drone is extremely small and their numbers very high, the troops don’t know how to deal with them. No place is safe and there is no place to hide on the battlefield. ‘These bee swarms have caused panic in a few sectors leading to indiscriminate fire to ward them off. As a result, at least two incidents of fratricide have been reported.’ ‘What else?’ the prime minister asks abruptly. ‘Sir, panic among troops is terrible news. It can lead to demoralization,’ says the COAS. All military commanders understand what demoralization implies. Loss of nerve. Unwillingness to fight. Tendency to flee. 1962 once again? Addressing the silence in the room, the prime minister says, ‘We have to respond, and respond fast. I don’t want to hear more bad news. xxm

I need to know what we can do and what we have done/ ‘The first thing we need is situation awareness. We need to know what is happening in real time/ the CDS says. ‘We have to ask our friends to give us satellite feeds. We also need air defence coverage so that our aircraft, fighters, and refuellers can take off from the mainland. Most importantly, we have to find a way to dea1 with micro and mini drones. They cannot be taken out one at a time/ The minister of external affairs speaks for the first time. ‘We will ask the United States for a satellite feed.../ ‘We can also ask them if they can disrupt the Chinese electromagnetic spectrum/ interrupts the CAS. ‘That will be a great help/ ‘Two of our submarines are still in the Bay of Bengal. They can sail further east/ the CNS ventures. ‘We must also approach the United Nations against this unprovoked attack on our territory/ says the NSA. The mood changes from despair to optimism. In this exultation, nobody notices that the COAS is quiet, lost in thought. It is his boys on the ground who are facing an invisible enemy. They are peerless in courage and unwavering in enthusiasm. They can take on any enemy, even when the fight gets dirty and comes down to hand-to-hand combat with the enemy. But who do they fight? Since yesterday, they have been huddling inside their defences trying to swat bees. They didn't train for this. The meeting disperses. The COAS is the last to exit, moving with leaden feet. He knows the war is lost. The army had war-gamed a conventional war several times over the last two decades. Of course they had not factored in the invisible enemy and micro drones. But even without that, and with the possibility of the PLA airdropping a large number of specialized assault forces in the Brahmaputra valley to cut off the Indian Army's supply lines, saving Arunachal was going to be very tough, if not impossible. But in Ladakh, how do they take on the unmanned ground systems, the humanoid robots, once they start rolling down the plateau? Worse, with communications cut off, how can the men fight? How can he tell them to hold the lines? Today, the Chinese had deployed bee swarms. What

monsters would they unleash tomorrow? What if those humanoid robots are actual combatants and not mere logistics carriers? How can he pitch men against the machines? An involuntary shudder goes through him. Increasing his pace, he catches up with the CDS. ‘Sir, we need to talk.’ ‘Meet me it 10. I have a lor of calls to make before that ’ ‘The chiefs of staff committee need to meet, sir. We seem to have missed the real import of the war,' The CDS stops. ‘W hat are you saying? We know what we are up against. That’s why we are reaching out to our friends. We have suffered early losses. But we will give them a bloody nose.’ The COAS bristles. It is this sort of foolhardiness that has got them here. ‘Sir, I don’t think it will stop at cyber, space, and electromagnetic spectrum. I think these are only ways of softening the targets before the kinetic war begins in big way.’ ‘Of course, that is clear. This is the reason we need to get the satellite feeds and air defence umbrella right away, so that the air force is ready to take off.’ ‘Sir, the bee swarms are not the only unmanned attack that we are going to see. I think this is just the start of China unleashing its unmanned capabilities on us. My reports tell me that the bees were moving autonomously but with a purpose. They didn’t collide with bunkers or equipment. They systematically targeted human beings, even chasing them. One bee to one human. They were like living creatures that could smell blood.’ The CDS looks at the COAS sharply. He now had the attention of the CDS. ‘My point is that if the Chinese have managed to miniaturize to this extent, why wouldn’t they use more autonomous and unmanned platforms, both on the land and air?’ ‘L et’s go to my office,’ the CDS says, briskly walking towards a small chamber across the conference hall connected by a narrow cheerless corridor. He gestures to the CAS and CNS to follow him. Meanwhile, the ministers of external affairs, defence, and home

affairs leave the command centre to go to their respective offices. Not returning to their offices would add to the panic. That's the last thing the nation needs. Besides, it will be easier reaching out to the world from their offices. By noon, the news is released through the prime minister’s press statement that China has mounted an unprovoked attack on India, Thaf India stands as one to defend its sovereignty. The people living in the border areas of Ladakh, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Assam, and West Bengal have nothing to fear. Their lives, interests, and properties would be protected by the selfless, courageous Indian armed forces, who, as always, are fully prepared to defend their motherland. The prime minister is satisfied with the message he has been able to communicate to his people. It has been twenty-four hours since his screen blanked out. And he feels he just might be regaining control. At 3 p.m., the CCS meets again. The US has agreed to share its satellite feed. Not live though. There will be a time lag of nearly an hour as the feed will be processed by US ground stations before being relayed to India. The US has also agreed to help India with electronic countermeasures. As far as cyberwarfare is concerned, it will help India with restoration and greater protection but will not participate in any offensive activity. ‘It does not want to show its hand in a war against China/ says the foreign minister wryly. ‘We are not military allies/ The prime minister is disappointed. After the disruption of the Summit the previous night, the US president had reached out with assurance of full support. The CDS plays the images that the US has provided of the last twentyfour hours on the monitor. They are devastating. The Indian Army's defences all along the border areas, from Tawang in the west to Walong in the east, had been flattened. All the helipads in Arunachal had been destroyed. The runway of the closest civilian airport, Lilabari in Assam, had been ripped down the middle. The ATCs and runways at IAF bases at Guwahati, Bagdogra, Hasimara, Jorhat, and Tezpur had been destroyed. The forward bases at Agar tala and Shillong had been obliterated. However, the real horror was in Ladakh—it was a bloodbath. The

Indian Army and the paramilitary Indo-Tibetan Border Police force had suffered unimaginable casualties. The short video feeds looked like something out of a science fiction movie. One video showed bee-like creatures in the hundreds swarming the weatherproof habitats of troops on the mountains. A few bees hit soldiers on sentry duty outside the habitats, penetrating the helmets and blowing up inside the skull. Others continued to buzz around the habitats. In another video, a bee is seen chasing a soldier before finally penetrating his helmet from behind and blowing off his head. Yet another video shows unsuspecting soldiers getting hit the moment they step out of the habitat. ‘Do you see, sir,5the COAS blurts out. ‘These are intelligent drones. They have been programmed to penetrate the helmets. They are not attacking any other part of the body. And they seem to wait for the soldiers to appear. They are not randomly hitting targets/ The CDS nods, scribbling something on his notepad. The prime minister remains impassive. Encouraged, the COAS continues. ‘Our men don’t have a fighting chance against these drones. It seems that they lie in wait and catch the soldiers unawares. Maybe they are programmed to identify these helmets. If we change the helmets or remove them perhaps the drones will be misled/ ‘The soldiers appear frightened,’ points out the CAS. ‘Can’t blame them for that. I think we should not expose the soldiers to these drones unless we know how to disarm them. We have lost enough men already/ ‘Absolutely,’ the COAS says gratefully. The next few images and videos further underline the horror that had been visited upon the Indian armed forces all along the border areas. Yet, there was something unusual about the imagery. ‘Where is the PLA?’ the NSA asks. ‘There is no presence of the Chinese here/ The COAS replies. ‘There is no PLA on the ground, sir. They have used stand-off weapons, a mix of smart, intelligent, and autonomous munitions, intelligent cruise and hypersonic missiles, and intelligent drone swarms. The entire campaign is driven by artificial intelligence/ xxvn

'What are our options now?* the prime minister is sombre once again, his sense of control ebbing slowly. 'Our fighters can take off from the hinterland, refuel close to the border, and attack PLA’s command and control centres in TAR. We have the targets/ says the CAS. ‘So why don’t we do that?* ‘These will be suicide missions,1 CAS says. ‘We no longer have control over our airspace. Our ISR3 is borrowed and delayed by an hour. One of our AWACS was hit yesterday. We can fly others, but without a direct satellite link, they will be useless.’ ‘Can’t the US help us restore our satellites?’ ‘They have been disabled electronically through lasers and highpowered microwave weapons.’ The foreign minister adds, ‘The US has assured us that they will try to repair them. But they can’t say whether it will be possible or how long it will take.’ Silence descends upon the room. It’s nearly a minute before the prime minister speaks again. ‘If it’s going to be a suicide mission, so be it. We have to defend our territory by all means possible.’ With that he walks out. He will have to call the world leaders himself. As a member of Quad, India deserves more cooperation. After all, it has openly aligned itself against China. The US, Japan, and Australia have to help India tide over this crisis. The other ministers start to leave the room too. However, the three chiefs, the CDS, and the NSA remain. Though he has only notional power, the defence minister also decides to stay. The secretaries huddle closer. Clearing his throat, the CAS addresses the NSA, ‘Sir, there is a reason why the Chinese have destroyed our ISR system. We are blind. But they can see us. The moment our fighters take off, they will be ready targets. We will be offering our pilots as fodder.’ ‘So, we should not do anything. Is that what you are saying?’ ‘Not at all, sir. But we need real-time ISR. Without that we won’t be able to do anything.’

•Tntefligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance.

‘I will speak with the prime minister/ says the NSA. The meeting disperses. Later in the evening, the NSA meets the prime minister. There are three items on the agenda. One, get live ISR from the US, Israel, or Europe. Two, talk to Russia to persuade China to cease fire and open talks with India. Tnree, boild international pressure against China. The prime minister must reach oat to the world leaders. A few hours later, the NSA meets with the three chiefs. ‘The US has agreed to share live ISR / he says, much to the relief of the service chiefs. ‘It will also help ISRO repair our satellites. Additionally, the Russian president has assured us that he will speak with China to halt the military campaign. ‘The world is on our side. There is widespread condemnation of China’s unprovoked aggression/ he says, turning to switch on the now restored television connection. On the screen is the press conference helmed by a spokesperson of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He says China has taken a pre-emptive step to stop India’s aggression on Chinese territory. China has been extremely patient with India. It has repeatedly told India that while Arunachal Pradesh was historically part of China, the status of Ladakh was undefined and needed to be resolved. Yet, India went ahead and changed the status of Ladakh despite Beijing’s repeated objections and protests. Not only does the Indian Army continue to occupy Chinese territory in Ladakh, but it is also digging itself in with permanent facilities. For the sake of peace, we have been urging India to maintain the status quo. But India wants to take over Chinese territories. It has been repeatedly violating the agreed status quo. It left China no choice but to act in national interest. The Chinese spokesperson concludes the press conference, ‘While China has nuclear no-first-use policy, it will not hesitate to pre-empt India if it tries to use its nuclear weapons/ There is silence in the room. Clearly, China will not back off. It will not listen to Russia either. The NSA storms out of the room, returning a few minutes later. Looking at the CAS, he asks, ‘Can we launch the strikes on TAR tomorrow morning?

‘Yes, sir.’ ‘We also need to keep our boys supported and in good spirits/ NSA says, looking at the COAS, ‘Please ensure that nothing comes in the way of road convoys. Increase the frequency if you must, as it would not be sensible to employ the IAF for maintenance right now.’ As an afterthought, he adds, ‘Perhaps we will need to move some troops from the west to tbe east. Given Pakistan’s silence, maybe it wants to stay out/ ‘Looks like it does not want the tag of being an aggressor/ adds the CDS. ‘Yes/ says the NSA pensively. ‘Maybe we need to reach out to them. Ensure that they stay out of the war/ Then looking at the COAS, he says, ‘I think reserves can be moved to the east/ ‘Roger, sir/ the COAS says. The worry lines on his forehead deepen. At first light, the IAF fighters, a complement of 250, take off from various locations in central and southern India with their full weapons load. Two AWACS and four flight refuelling aircraft take off too. Well short of the LAC, the fighters refuel. A few minutes after they take off, they are hit by the Chinese anti-access/area denial (A 2/A D ) firewall comprising a range of missiles vastly outnumbering the fighters. It’s a massacre in the air. The ground control room is overwhelmed. As is the underground command and control centre. Everyone, including the prime minister is speechless. The pre-programmed Chinese missiles had been waiting for the fighters. A few minutes after the fighters were airborne, the missiles engaged them. This was technology India had not anticipated. Within hours of the air massacre, China unleashes its propaganda in Ladakh, Arunachal Pradesh, and Sikkim. Dominating the air waves, Chinese commentators or political commissars, start broadcasting programmes on how the merger of these territories with the motherland will be a homecoming for the people who have suffered Indian occupation for a hundred years. It announced the economic progress, hi-tech infrastructure, and first-world quality of life that

awaited them after reunion. The panic in the country is matched by the confusion in New Delhi. Cooped up inside the command centre, the Government of India is unable to judge what exactly the Chinese intent is. Could it really be thinking that it can wrest Arunachal and Ladakh from India through sheer military power? Or is it a replay of 1962 when the Chinese overran Indian positions in Arunachal Pradesh, rolled down the Brahmaputra Valley, then voluntarily went back after a display of its military might? Is it retaliation for what it thought was India’s muscle-flexing? Meanwhile, bad news continues to pour in. The long army convoy from Sonamarg to Dras is attacked at several places by Kashmiri fidayeen. There was a suicide attack just short of Zoji La and sniper killings of several drivers as they were negotiating the bend after the pass. Further ahead, on Zero Bridge, several vehicles came under artillery fire from across the LoC. Pakistan had joined the war. The nightmare of a two-front war was now turning into a reality. Suddenly, all lines of communication throughout the union territory of Kashmir are exposed. Reports start trickling in that Pakistan has also unleashed a propaganda war in Kashmir, urging the people to rise up. What exactly is China’s endgame? Government trusted China experts are called in for their assessment. But there are no convincing answers. Finally, China provides the answers on 24 February. After a lull of a few hours, hypersonic munitions started hitting the bridges on Brahmaputra and all the roads that connect Arunachal with the rest of India. The satellite imagery shows a pockmarked line marking the border. Below the line are several dashes where the bridges used to be. In the north, Zero Bridge that connected Dras with Kargil, the only connection between the Kashmir Valley and Ladakh, is obliterated. Towards the southwest, the bridge on the river Chenab is destroyed, separating Himachal Pradesh from the Zanskar Valley of Ladakh. For ail practical purposes, Ladakh is now an island with no road connectivity with the rest of the country. Finally, there is no doubt about the Chinese intent.

Huddled inside the command centre and friendless for the moment, the Government of India weighs its options. While the rest of the world has expressed support for India and condemned China, no one has come to New Delhi’s assistance. ‘Since the border between India and China is disputed and remains unresolved, there is m ambiguity about the status.of Ladakh and Arunachai Pradesh from the West’s perspective,’ the external affairs minister offers by way of explanation. ‘W hat if we use our submarines to attack the Chinese mainland?’ the prime minister wonders. Everyone looks at him in horror. ‘Sir,’ says the CNS, ‘there are reports that China has moved its “carrier killer” DF-21 land based anti-ship ballistic missile and its airlaunched CH-AS-X-13 anti-ship ballistic missile fitted with hypersonic glide vehicle to Gwadar. If we open any other front, there will be serious consequences.’ ‘But we can’t be sitting idle while China goes on battering us,’ the prime minister’s voice is a combination of anger, frustration, and desperation. ‘Sir, we have no choice but to increase our diplomatic efforts. We have to bring to bear international pressure on China,’ the external affairs minister looks hopefully across the room. With no more ideas emerging, the onus of saving India’s honour once again falls to the diplomatic corps. However, China is not done yet. On 25 February, at the break of dawn, its combined arms brigades start to roll down the Himalayas into Ladakh, north Sikkim, Chumbi Valley, and all along the northern border of Arunachai. In the vanguard are unmanned vehicles—tanks and artillery guns—some on wheels and some hovering just above the ground. Marching alongside on their metal feet are humanoid robots. Tearing through the moisture-laden low clouds and mist that clings to the valleys in these areas, the stealthy march of this space age force is both mesmerizing and frightening. There is not a human being in sight. US analysts at the ground station watching the satellite images are speechless. In Delhi, where the images appear in real time, there is

immobilizing fear. The army of machines is unending. And it seems unstoppable. The world was witnessing its first unmanned systems warfare. Meanwhile, the soldiers of the Indian Army open fire, using whatever remains of their artillery and heavy weaponry. The fallen robots are trampled by the ones behind them and they continue their forward movement—a sight that fills one with revulsion and fear. While in Sikkim the Chinese machines stop at the plateau of north Sikkim, in north Bengal, they fill up the Siliguri Corridor, forming a wall between east and west India, effectively cutting off the Northeast from the rest of the country. In Arunachal Pradesh, the march continues, unaffected by Indian firepower. The machines are not impeded by the absence of roads. The hovering UAS (unmanned aerial systems) simply drift over the gorges and the valleys. In several places the unmanned ground vehicles form bridgeheads for the humanoids to walk over. In Ladakh, their job is much easier. They roll down from the east as well as the north across the LoC, right till Zoji La. Between the Chinese propaganda and the display of phenomenal technological power, the cowering civilians can’t help but be awe­ stricken. The Indian troops are in disarray. While some try to get out of the way, others continue to attack the machines, despite the fire against them being ineffective. Long-range missiles are being fired from the mainland on the Chinese machines in the Siliguri Corridor. Given the limited number of these missiles, the government is forced to choose targets pragmatically. Clearing the Siliguri Corridor is critical. But the success is short-lived. Each time the ground is cleared, it’s quickly filled up by more machines. In the early afternoon, humanoid robots and small unmanned attack vehicles are airdropped all along the plains of Assam bordering Arunachal Pradesh. Something similar happens all along Ladakh’s border with Kashmir and Himachal. Thousands of Indian soldiers are now trapped inside, both on the plateau and on the Siachen glacier. Resistance is pointless. Late on the afternoon of 26 February, the Pakistan Air Force starts attacking Indian positions on the LoC. Fuel and ammunition dumps are xxxm

set on fire. Several forward high-altitude posts come under relentless artillery and missile fire. The Indian Army retaliates, pounding Pakistani posts. But Pakistan seems to have taken a leaf out of China’s strategy book. The PAF drops ordnance on several roads that connect the remote LoC posts with the headquarters, leaving them isolated. Clearly, Pakistan intends to push the LoC as much as it can and succeeds in many places. Finally, on 30 February, even as br atal fighting continues on the LoC, the PLA soldiers arrive in Tawang. Seventy-three years after the first Indian officer Ralengnao ‘Bob’ Khathing raised the tricolour in Tawang in 1951, a senior colonel of the PLA hoists the Chinese flag just across the memorial commemorating the 1962 war. The PLA then asks Indian troops to surrender to save a bloodbath. The war is over. ♦ This fictional account may appear to be a flight offancy. But it can become a terrifying reality if the Indian military ignores the situation today and persists in preparing fo r a war that no longer exists.

n the event of another war between India and China, the latter will

I

wrest Amnachal Pradesh and Ladakh from India. At the same time,

Pakistan will take the Siachen glacier. And the Kashmir resolution will top the items at the post-war negotiating table. Nuclear weapons, which were a major cause of fear all these decades, will have no role to play. The war will be over within ten days, with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA ) demonstrating its prowess in disruptive technologies and imaginative war concepts in the first seventy-two hours. The Indian military leadership believes that the war will be a skirmish or salami slicing operation fought at the tactical level. Therefore, India has placed undue importance on infrastructure building, which is meant to cater to the threat from the PLA’s excellent border management1at the tactical level—this is a distraction from priorities essential to meet the enemy’s juggernaut. The PLA’s border management threat began with India’s 1998 nuclear tests when China’s intrusions and transgressions on the LAC increased. This threat was enhanced to forces-in-being or troops in situ requiring little or no preparatory time for assault after the 2017 Doklam crisis. The present threat is a combination of the PLA’s informatized (information domination and its denial to the enemy by systems destruction warfare) and intelligentized war (combat operations conducted with intelligent weapons using intelligent platforms with artificial intelligence as its core, and with technical support by intelligent networks, cloud, big data, and Internet of Military Things [IoMT]) preparedness where border infrastructure meant to facilitate Indian troops and weapon platforms movement to the LAC for tactical war will not help meet the Chinese military challenge. According to American-Chinese scholar Yun Sun, ‘[I]n the event* 'Border management refers ro infrastructure and fortifications aimed at improving the efficiency of the troops guarding the border.

that a conflict is unavoidable, China could mobilize to an overwhelming capacity to achieve a decisive victory on the battlefield—which is why the Sino-Indian border war of 1962 was constantly mentioned during the Doklam standoff.’2The PLA’s decisive operational level campaign—in line with its Active Defence doctrine of combat on enemy soil—will involve two war theatres: the entire state of Anmachal Pradesh, which China claims—it calls it Zangnan and considers it a part of Xizang (Tibet)—and Ladakh-Kashmir where the PLA will launch combined operations with Pakistan’s military against India. The PLA will likely be ready to go to war with India by early 2024. But China is known to beat timeline assessments. For example, according to the US’s 2021 Pentagon report on China, ‘the People’s Republic of China likely intends to have at least 1,000 warheads by 2030, exceeding the pace and size the Department of Defence projected in 2020’.3 Moreover, following its 2015 military reforms that were completed in 2020 (they were to be done in five years), the PLA has geared up with its force structure, force posture, and force command for peace and war. This includes its Western Theatre Command (W T C ) whose sole job is to fight the war with India. Is war inevitable once the PLA is ready with its new age war capability? No. Whether or not a war takes place will depend on how China assesses the geopolitical landscape at that time. What is certain is that the PLA will permanently maintain pressure on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with its grey zone operations below the war threshold, thereby ensuring that the Indian Army is unable to reduce its forces substantially in the foreseeable future. These grey zone operations will rise and ebb depending on Chinese ties with India at the given time, irrespective of a mutually agreed peaceful LAC. An additional complication has been added by a new boundary law enunciated by China which became

^ u n Sun, ‘Chinas Strategic Assessment of India’, War on the Rocks, 25 March 2020. ^Yasihwant Raj, 'China to have at least i,0Q0 nuclear warheads by 2030: US defence report’, Hindustan Tim es , 5 November 2021.

effective from 1 January 2022.4 By stating this law, China has framed the territorial problem as an issue of its sovereignty, which will be defended at all costs. Beijing, therefore, will never give up its claim on Arunachal Pradesh. To reiterate this, China has given fifteen places in Arunachal Pradesh Mandarin names,5 which is in addition to the six names it gave ip April 2017, weeks before the Do 1:1am crisis. This has put paid to any hope that the LAC, with some give and take, will become a mutually acceptable international border. Moreover, grey zone operations conducted in peacetime will acquire a new meaning: while the PLA will be free to undertake them, any tactical action by the Indian Army on the LAC will lead to an escalation since it will be seen as an assault on Chinese sovereignty. For example, in August 2020, the Indian Army, in a daring tactical operation, occupied Kailash range in south Pangong Tso in Ladakh which overlooked the PL As garrison. In a quid pro quo move, the two sides agreed to disengage troops: the PLA from the north, and the Indian Army from the south of Pangong. Given this precedent, and the fact that the PLA’s border guards, unlike the Indian Army, are unlikely to physically hold the LAC, the possibility exists—according to army officials who make light of Chinese boundary law—of occupying Chinese territory by tactical operation. This window of opportunity has been closed. Besides, since China is expected to go for the decisive war as the last resort, it will, until then, explore all possibilities to reset relations with India on its terms. It will also meticulously analyse the long-term global and regional trends including its ties with the US, the situation in the western Pacific Ocean especially the Taiwan Strait, the East China Sea and South China Sea, the Belt and Road Initiative (BR I), the integration of the Indian military into the US’s Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) strategy, the progress on the Quadrilateral (Quad) dialogue, the Australia, United Kingdom, and United States (AUKUS)

4Huang Lanlan and Yan Yuzhu, ‘China adopts land borders law amid regional tensions, vowing to better protect territorial integrity at legal level', Global Tim es , 24 October 2021. sLiu Caiyu and Cao Siqi, ‘China standardize names of 15 more places in Zangnan “based on sovereignry, history”’, Global Tim es , 30 December 2021.

nuclear powered submarine deal, Asia Pacific6 NATO and the fallout of the war on these, Only when it concludes that war is unavoidable would it unleash a lightning campaign, as sudden as its 2020 Ladakh operation. The PLA’s conventional war will exhibit ten distinctive characteristics. One, the PLA will exercise total war control by-dominating the primary battlespace comprising cyberspace, electromagnetic space, and outer space domains. It will, therefore, exert control over war aims, war concepts, speed, tempo, intensity, and outcome. 'This involves seizing the initiative, paralysing the enemy, dominating the escalation ladder, and laying grounds for war termination on one’s own terms. Two, consequent to total war control, the PLA will combat simultaneously at strategic and operational levels of war, bypassing the tactical level of war, which is the strength of the Indian Army and the Indian Air Force (LAF). Moreover, the war will be unleashed suddenly without warning, crisis, and pre-war periods. The PLA’s strategic level, called the war zone, will include the whole-of-nation, while the operational level will be the combat zone across the two war theatres mentioned above. It will be the PLA’s war zone and combat zone operations versus the Indian military’s tactical operations. This requires explanation. All wars are fought on three levels: tactical, operational, and strategic. The lowest level is tactical and involves battles with force on-force engagements, focused on attrition. Given this, bean-counting of assets on both sides assumes significance. The second level is operational, where the outcome of the series of battles is determined. This level is influenced by the highest level—the strategic level—which, for an optimal outcome, needs total synergy between the political and military leadership. The latter helps in maintenance of credible nuclear deterrence, and closing the loop quickly on political objectives, conventional war aims to meet the objectives, procurement of strategic and operation sustenance (ammunition, spares, and war materiel), and

6Lu Xiang, ‘Be vigilant and prepared for NATOs growing interest in Asia’, Global Tim es , 13 April 2022.

training for war. A strong strategic level gives wider options in planning and execution with fulsome initiative at the operational level Traditionally, war outcome is determined at the operational or campaign level in terms of war aims achieved, territory occupied, destruction or attrition of enemy combat power, and prisoners of war. Taking war to strategic level usually involves use of nuclear weapons for countervalue (on cities and society) and counterforce (on enemy nuclear weapons and military) targeting, which, except for the big bombs dropped by the US on Japan during World War II, has never been done. Undeniably, combat at strategic level will have maximum impact on political leadership leading to its early cognitive defeat or capitulation. The PLA’s cyberwar, operating at the strategic level with countervalue and counterforce software weapons, would do exactly that. Unlike the use of nukes, which would kill and maim millions of civilians, cyberwar will not kill people but will bring life to a grinding halt. Cyberattacks have definite roles in peacetime, crisis, pre-wrar, and war. The war zone will witness coordinated employment of cyber, outer space, and psychological operations. The PLA will disable or destroy Indian space assets by non-kinetic and kinetic means. Since Chinese submarine cable ships are already in the region, they will snoop, disrupt, or destroy submarine cables which deliver the internet to India. Meanwhile, the entire combat zone—the rear and front of the batdespace, for instance, the whole of the state of Arunachal Pradesh— will be assaulted with accurate, coordinated, and intense firepower salvos with ballistic, hypersonic cruise missiles, hypersonic glide vehicles and Al-enabled swarms of subsonic and supersonic cruise missiles, and long-range precision munitions at the forefront with minimal collateral damage. The PLA has the largest inventory of missiles in the world. Three, the PLA and Indian military will combat at different tempo and speed of war. The PLAs tempo of war will be determined by the speed of light through cyberspace, and conventional surface-to-surface missiles with the ability to hit targets thousands of kilometres away at speeds of over Mach 20. One Mach, which is the speed of sound, is 1,235 km per hour, and the speed of light, which is in nanoseconds, is

300,000 km per second. In addition to the traditional missiles, bombs, and monitions, the PLA will place a premium on electronic warfare, cyber warfare, and directed energy weapons operating at the speed of light. The Indian military’s pace of war, on the other hand, will be determined by its fastest platforms. The conventional BrahMos cruise missile has a maximum speed of Mach 3.7 The lA F ’s frontline Rafale aircraft’s speed is 2,450 kmph, and the Indian Army soldiers’ ,peed will be less than 5 km per hour in high altitude. Four, the PLA’s massive sensors network on land, air, and in outer space will provide real-time situational awareness of the combat zone, operational logistics lifeline, and high value targets in the hinterland. There will be no place to hide from the PLA’s accurate multi-domain firepower. Five, the PLA'will dominate the information war, popularly referred to as grey zone operations, comprising ways to defeat a nation without direct military confrontation. Working under the PLA’s Political Work Department, it involves political, legal, economic, propaganda warfare, and the famous Chinese ‘wolf warrior diplomacy’ or aggressive diplomacy meant to weaken the enemy’s resolve to fight. This is in line with Chinese strategic culture of winning without fighting. For the Indian Army, information war comprises cyber war, electronic war, and psychological war, which it hopes to develop and apply across the entire spectrum of conflict including "no war no peace’ or counterterror operations. Six, once the interoperability developed between the PLA and Pakistan military since 2012 translates into combined operations, there will be many operational surprises for the Indian military. Especially with the war in the Ladakh theatre extending across Ladakh and Gilgit-Baltistan to Siachen, Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK), and the Kashmir Valley. Seven, the PLA will fight a totally or partially robotized war with human-machine collaboration. Instead o f ‘human in the loop’, it will be

"India’s ballistic missiles in service - •Agni and Prithvi series—arc with the Strategic Forces command with a nuclear role.

‘human on the loop* (human controlled autonomy) or ‘human out of the loop* (total autonomy). Tlie loop refers to the sensor to shooter cycle. Eight, the PLA will be bold, aggressive, and experimental in its war conducted at an accelerated pace by AI against the Indian military. With the enemy’s capabilities and war theatres known, there will be little fog or uncertainty or surprises in war for the P L A. It would, therefore, freely employ its unmanned systems, killer robots, and the Internet of Military Things (loM T ), which demonstrate the ultimate integration of unmanned ‘Things’ like guns, tanks, fighters, and so on in robotic war. Nine, while the P LA will deliver intense and massive salvos of guided munitions and missiles, the Indian military will be conservative in its rates of firepower for two reasons: it would have to cater for two fronts (against China and Pakistan), and its entire specialized ammunition is imported. A PLA officer once told me ‘without a developed military industrial complex, any country can forget about military success’. And ten, the Indian Army will face a paradoxical situation with its trained and acclimatized manpower. While more manpower would be an asset in peacetime to prevent the PLA’s intrusions on the LAC as part of its grey zone operations, in war, more manpower would lead to more body bags of Indian soldiers. It will be an unmatched war, with the Indian military fighting with the 1980s Air-Land battle concept in the three physical domains of land, air, and sea versus the PLA’s campaign comprising three wars: information, informatized, and intelligentized, in the seven domains of air, land, sea (preferably undersea), outer space, cyber, electromagnetic spectrum, and near space or hypersonic8 (between 20 km and 100 km altitude beyond which outer space begins). The PLA’s seven war domains can be categorized under four battlespaces: physical, virtual, information,9 and cognition. For example, the physical battlespace will comprise land, air, sea, outer space, and near space domains. The virtual

’Patrick Tucker, ‘China Wants to Own the Hypersonic “Domain”, DOD Official Says’, D efense O ne, 7 February 2022.

9A distinction has been made between information war, which is grey zone operations, and information domain, which refers to information flow through networks.

battlespace will include cyberspace and the electromagnetic spectrum. The information battlespace will have wired and wireless networks through which data passes. And the cognition battlespace—where information war will be unleashed—will involve a mind war, which will entail assaulting the enemy’s judgement. The PLA will emphasize cognitive confrontation and an early cognitive defeat of the enemy. Hence, the Indian military’s single physical battlespace will be pitted against the PLAs four battlespaces. In operational or campaign terms, the PLA’s seven war domains can also be divided into primary battlespace and secondary battlespace comprising land, air, sea, and near space. Without competitive capabilities in the primary battlespace, the war will be lost in the secondary batdespace. In the war between the PLA’s capabilities and the Indian military’s finite platforms, it will ultimately be a test, as Congress politician Rahul Gandhi said, ‘between the two nations’ industrial systems.’10*The Indian Army might be smug in the belief that without PLA boots on the ground—human soldiers fighting for capture of physical territory—the war will not be won. Without doubt, the Indian soldier will fight valiantiy. But what if the enemy facing him comprises unmanned machines and humanoid robots with no blood to spill? For example, the PLA could assault thousands of Indian soldiers holding the forward edge and operational depth of the combat zone with its version of slaughter bots.11 These have Al-based facial recognition (the Chinese are world leaders in this capability called Computer Vision) and a nose-shaped explosive meant to hit and penetrate the human face. These could be released in the thousands by the PLA. Thus, instead of the traditional Indian Army slogan of ‘one bullet, one enemy’, it will be ‘one slaughter hot, one enemy’ with no PLA human soldier needing to be in close combat. The PLA has successfully demonstrated its capability

10In a virtual conversation with the writer on 1 July 2020. "Analytics India Magazine, 'New Dystopian Short-Film ‘Slaughterbots* Shows Dangers Of Autonomous Killer Drones’, YouTube, 21 November 2017, available at ch ttp s:// www.youtuhe.com / watch ?v= vR9 i F 3tp6e Q >.

of releasing swarms of hundreds of mini suicide drones12 from an army truck and helicopters in Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR); these could be converted into slaughter bots. Thus, boots on the ground are no longer essential for the PLA. The cognitive dilemma of the Indian Army will be compounded since the PLA will fight bv bringing all domain capabilities across the entire combat zone. This could be done in two ways: as mission set loMT comprising the PLA’s multi-domain capabilities. Or, by employing capabilities to wage independent wars, namely, cyber war, invisible war (for the electromagnetic spectrum), missile war, light (directed energy weapons) war, drone war, and political war (information warfare). Building capabilities and going to war are different issues. Senior Colonel Xu Weidi of the PLA’s National Defence University told me during my August 2012 visit to Beijing that, ‘Since capability cannot be hidden, intentions should not be disclosed/ China did precisely that after the 2017 Doklam crisis. It built capabilities, but never disclosed its deep disappointment with the Modi government until it concluded that 2020 Ladakh had become unavoidable. The Wuhan Spirit During the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Astana (now called Nur-Sultan in Kazakhstan) in June 2017, Prime Minister Narendra Modi sought a separate summit with Chinese president Xi Jinping. The Doklam stand-off, addressed in detail later, was ongoing and it appeared that China had dug in its heels. However, once Modi sought the summit with Xi, indicating his desire for talks at the highest political level, the Chinese softened their position, and the crisis was diffused after seventythree days. To ensure that the bilateral summit took place, Modi ensured that there was no triumphalist rhetoric after Doklam, at least at his level. The bilateral summit, described as informal, took place in Wuhan, China, in April 2018. After the summit, the Indian External Affairs

“Joseph Trevithick, ‘China Conducts Test Of Massive Suicide Drone Swarm Launched From A Box On A Truck', The D rive, 14 October 2020.

Ministry released an official statement mouthing the usual platitudes.13 Curiously, within weeks of the Wuhan summit, in May 2018, Modi went to Sochi in Russia to meet President Vladimir Putin. It was not usual for a head of the state to seek two summits in quick succession. Clearly, something was troubling Prime Minister Modi. The mystery was solved by the Chinese ambassador to Lidia (presently vice foreign minister) Luo Zhaohui in the 6 May 2018 article in the Tribuned4 In the article titled ‘My interpretation of the Wuhan Summit’, Luo, who was privy to the nine hours of talks between Modi and Xi in Wuhan, wrote that the two leaders agreed on the need for strategic communication to develop a ‘closer developmental partnership’. According to Luo, Xi told Modi that China and India working together was relevant in the evolving international structure of ‘rise of the east and decline of the west’. In concrete terms, ‘the two sides agreed to carry out “China India Plus” cooperation in Afghanistan and speed up the cooperation under the Bangladesh China Indian Myanmar (BCIM) framework’. While India and China trained a few Afghan diplomats under the ‘China India Plus’ model, nothing was done on connectivity and infrastructure on the BCIM. This did not dampen Chinese spirits. Within months, Luo said, ‘This new model of cooperation can also be extended to South Asian countries, including Nepal, which is conducive to enhancing mutual trust between China and India.’iS India did nothing on the BCIM and no more on the ‘China India Plus’. Why did Modi agree to the BCIM when it is one of the six physical corridors of the BRI whose flagship corridor—China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (C P E C )—India had refused to accept on grounds of sovereignty since it passes through Gilgit-Baltistan that is under Pakistan’s occupation and claimed by India? Modi’s action can only be explained as political expediency. '^Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, ‘India-China Informal Summit at Wuhan’, 28 April 2018. ,4Luo Zhaohui, ‘My interpretation of the Wuhan Summit’, Sun da y T ribun e, 6 May 2018. KK. V. Prasad, ‘China-India Plus can be new model in South Asia’, V ie Tribune, 1 October 2018.

What could have driven Modi’s political expediency? With the beating of war drums by China during Doklam, Modi was likely worried that the prolonged border stand-off would affect his ‘strongman’ image, impacting the impending state elections and eventually the general elections in 2019. So he agreed to everything China proposed in Wuhan, in exchange for calm on the LAC. He sought Putin a few weeks later to stand guarantee for the Wuhan unders tanding. Modi had rightly assumed that Putin was the only global leader the Chinese supremo was likely to agree with. Since the details of the summit were not mentioned in the official MEA statement, the Chinese wondered whether Modi intended to stand by any of the commitments made in Wuhan. China started to get exasperated with India after Modi’s re-election in 2019, when, despite the size of his electoral victory, he continued to dither on his commitments. Thereafter, China started pressing India on the dates for the second informal summit to be held in India, as agreed in Wuhan. While procrastinating on the Chinese request, India, on 5 August 2019, changed the status of Jammu and Kashmir by dispensing with Articles 370 and 35A of the Constitution of India. Pakistan went ballistic and its foreign minister rushed to China for consultations where he was advised to exercise patience.16 After constant prodding by China, India agreed to hold the second informal summit in Chennai in October 2019. The Indian Army’s month­ long exercise Him Vijay to be held in Arunachal Pradesh was also scheduled during this time. Perhaps it was hoped that, taking umbrage, Xi would cancel his India visit as China claims Arunachal as part of its territory. Beijing did the unexpected. It denied the existence of the exercise. ‘As far as we know the so-called military exercises is not a fact, it is not true/ Luo said.17 Just as Modi was desperate to have the first informal summit, Xi was determined to have the second summit.

:.

mission is to fundamentally understand intelligence. Then we create it artificially. Once we have done that, we feel that we can help society use that to solve all sorts of other problems.'4 One measure of DeepMind’s progress was mastering the game everyone thought was impossible to crack. Hence, AlphaGo was not a mere vanity project but a learning tool But it needed to be tested and only a professional Go player of some standing could do that. So Hassabis invited Bordeaux-based Fan Hui, who had won the European Championship in 2 013,2014, and 2015. Fan, who is of Chinese origin, had moved to France at the age of eighteen and had been playing the European-British circuit since then. Fan arrived in London, confident of defeating the programme. And Hassabis and Silver didn’t have any illusions about what they were up against. As Hassabis said, the idea of inviting Fan was not only to test the programme but also to get Fan to help further improve AlphaGo.5 Despite Fan’s European titles, he was only a 2-dan6 professional (the highest ranking is 9 dan). In a game of five sets, AlphaGo defeated Fan 5-0. Once Fan recovered from the shock of defeat, he accepted the offer to work with DeepMind on the AlphaGo programme. Over the next few months, Fan repeatedly played against AlphaGo, deploying both conventional and non-conventional moves to continuously challenge the programme. Since he was not competing any longer, he could take risks that he wouldn’t in a tournament. As a result, AlphaGo was exposed to an exponential amount of data. By the process of self-learning, it continuously improved itself. It was now time for another test. DeepMind approached Sedol. Sedol accepted the challenge. He reasoned that Hui was not at the same level as he was. So he expected to be able to defeat the programme easily. The five-match contest was fixed 9 to 16 March 2016. Well before the AlphaGo team arrived in Seoul, public interest had shot through the roof. Preparations were made for live webcasting of the tournament to be held at the Four Seasons hotel with running

4Ibid. slbid. bA Go grading of players’ handicap. Fan was a 2-dan player and Sedol 9-dan.

commentary by fellow Go players. It was a momentous occasion not only for research in AI but also for the game of Go. For the former, the result of the tournament would prove whether a computer programme could be trained to think better and respond better than a human being. For the Go players, the result would show whether the game is about human intelligence or about training and memorizing. The first game began at 1 p.m. on 9 March, Sedoi lost in 186 moves. In the second game on 10 March, Sedoi held out longer, but resigned the game by the 211th move. By the third game on 12 March, Sedoi appeared both unnerved and reckless. He lost in 176 moves. In the fourth game, played on 13 March, AlphaGo misinterpreted one of SedoFs moves and committed a series of errors. It eventually resigned in 180 moves. The victory was no consolation, either for Sedoi or the world of Go. It was clear that AlphaGo would have learnt from its errors as it was capable of self-learning through multiple games. Sure enough, it won the final match on 15 March in 280 moves. AlphaGo was not the only entity that learnt from the contest. Sedoi learnt too. Following the contest, he went on to win all the tournaments he played over the next two months. Yet, there was a realization that the AI had passed the litmus test. Sure enough, the following year, AlphaGo defeated the Chinese grandmaster Ke Jie in a three-game match. Talking to the media after the game, Ke said, ‘Last year, it was still quite humanlike when it played. But this year, it became like a god of G o/7 With nothing left to prove, Hassabis announced the retirement of AlphaGo, saying that the company would focus on advanced general algorithms ‘to address some of the most important and urgent scientific challenges of our time. We hope that the story of AlphaGo is just the beginning/8 A world of possibilities had opened up for AI.*

7Paul Mozur, ‘Googles AlphaGo Defeats Chinese Go Master in Win for A.I.\ N ew York Tim es , 23 May 2017.

*Tas Bindi, ‘Google’s AlphaGo retires after beating Chinese Go champion', Z D N et, 29 May 2017.

Sputnik Yet Again The defeat of Sedol, watched in utter disbelief by millions of Chinese, was China’s Sputnik moment. It resembled the moment in 1957 when the Soviet Union shook the US by becoming the first nation to send a spacecraft named Sputnik-I into outer space. Observing the Sedol game were Chinese companies, the PLA, and the Chinese government. It was d ear to Chinese internet companies that the new buzzwords were data and intelligence. These concepts had replaced the digital revolution that was about connectivity by mobile internet. It would be intelligence first rather than connectivity first. This was the beginning of the fourth industrial revolution ‘characterised by a much more ubiquitous and mobile internet, by smaller and more powerful sensors that have become cheaper, and by AI and machine learning’.9 This meant that for the PLA, warfare moved from informatization, which was about information supremacy, to intelligentization, which was about intelligence supremacy. If machines could be made more and more intelligent and could become able to think for themselves like humans, they could have more and more autonomy. Questions such as how much autonomy machines should have, and if they can be allowed to become terminators worried policy makers, activists, and analysts. The scientific community knew that once the genie was out of the bottle there would be no going back. Militaries, though, notwithstanding their public posturing, knew that throughout history, ethical considerations have seldom come in the way of developing military capabilities. Within months of Sedol’s defeat, China, in July 2017, released its super ambitious ‘New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan’ to become a global leader in AI by 2030. Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, described the plan thus: ‘By 2020, they [Chinese] will have caught up [with the US]. By 2025, they will be better than us. And by 2030, they will dominate the industries of AI.’*10 Accompanying the plan was the call made by the Chinese government to its industry to TClaus Schwab, The Fourth Indu stria l R evolution, New York: Currency, 2017, p. 7. i0Christian Brose, The Kill C hain, New York: Hacheue, 2020, p. 90.

invest in AI. It was clear that the partnership between Chinese industries and the PLA would become stronger. To those wondering how Beijing could announce a comprehensive AI 2030 plan within months of the Sedol moment, the reality was quite different. The inflection point, for the Chinese government, its industries, and the PLA had come ye?*rs before, in 2012, when a team of computer scientists led by cognitive psychologist and computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton demonstrated the power of deep learning, a subset of machine learning. Computer scientists believe that the discovery of deep learning algorithms was the biggest scientific breakthrough since nuclear weapons and the internet in the twentieth century. Deep learning revolutionized AI. According to American analyst Christian Brose, 'Artificial intelligence exploded further in 2012, when a team of computer scientists led by Geoffrey Hinton demonstrated the power of deep learning/11 So, while 2012 was the beginning of the Chinese civil-military fusion (developers represented by the industry and PLA as the end user), 2017 was the second Sputnik moment for the US. This started the technology war between the US and China with Washington resolved to checkmate Beijing’s AI ambitions. The challenge for China was to become self-sufficient in semiconductor chips which power AI and to project General Secretary Xi Jinping’s super ambitious project of the century—BRI—as the harbinger of prosperity for mankind (and not just its own geo-strategic reach).

"Ibid., p. 62.

TW O S E C U R IT Y A R C H IT E C T U R E S

n an unprecedented move, heavy with both symbolism and messaging,

I

the 9th Beijing Xiangshan Forum held in October 2019 had two

keynote speakers. Speaking one after the other, the Chinese defence minister General Wei Fenghe and his Russian counterpart, General Sergei Shoigu, announced the arrival of a new security structure in the Asia-Pacific region.1 ‘The Chinese will not relinquish a single inch of territory passed on by their forefathers/ declared Wei Fenghe to the audience comprising twenty-three defence ministers, six chiefs of staff, and 600 delegates from around the world. Then, explaining the concept of prosperity and cooperative security, he said, ‘China wants to work with all nations to enhance development and security through cooperation and to build a community with a shared future for mankind/*2 Shoigu dispensed with diplomatese when he took the podium after Wei. ‘The US wants to create tensions in the Asia-Pacific and Europe. They will create conditions for conflict/ he warned. Adding that the terms of the Indo-Pacific strategy are vague and did not include all nations in the region, he went on, ‘It is an alliance of interests with grave consequences. It will undermine multilateralism and they [United States] will have no choice but to get involved in conflict. The Indo-Pacific concept will harm common security concerns by not strengthening military cooperation for all nations. This will also lead to an arms race/ Ultimately, like Wei, Shoigu also concluded his address on a note of peace. Russia, he said, ‘would work with its Asia-Pacific partners. It

JThe US renamed Asia-Pacific as Indo-Pacific region in May 2018 to set itself apart from Cihina and Russia as well as to demonstrate its geo-strategic closeness with India. 2I attended this forum.

will be ready to provide bilateral and multilateral military cooperation to all nations for common security in the Asia-Pacific.’ Wei’s and Shoigu’s exhortations were unmistakeablv aimed at the US and those in Asia who look to the US as their security provider. However, the immediate provocation had been the National Defence Strategy of the US, released by the Trump administration in 2018. It said, ‘China is a strategic competitor using predatory economics to intimidate its neighbours while militarizing features in the South China Sea/3 This was a clear reference to China’s BRI. Topping that was its Indo-Pacific strategy report released by the Department of Defense on 1 June 2019, which described China as a ‘revisionist power’ and Russia as a ‘revitalised malign actor’.4 This couldn’t go unchallenged. And China-Russia chose theXiangshan Forum to retaliate. The forum is an annual congregation of serving and retired politicians, diplomats, military officials, and defence experts from across the world. Begun in 2006 as low-key track two (non-government) gathering of academics, it was catapulted to track 1.5 (mix of government officials, civilian experts, and the PLA) and run exclusively by the PLA from 2014. With Xi Jinping becoming the general secretary and chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) in November 2012, China’s aggressive posture came to the fore, and with it the need for the PLA to monitor and shape the security landscape in the Asia-Pacific region. With its growing economic clout and military might, there were apprehensions about China’s intentions. This required transparency, that China felt could be achieved through the PLA-organized annual security dialogue. The centrepiece of the China-backed Asia-Pacific security architecture is Xi Jinping’s signature connectivity project: BRI—with Afro-Eurasian nations (across the three continents of Asia, Europe, and Africa)—as the main body and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road d ep artm en t of Defense, United States of America, ‘Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of The United States of America’, available at < https://dod.defense. gov/Portals/l/Documents/pubs/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf>. “Department of Defense, United States of America, Tndo-Padfic Strategy Report’, 1 June 2019, available at < https://niedia.defense.gO v/2019/jul./01/2002152311/-l/-l/l/ DEPARTMENT-OF-DEFENSE-INDO-PACIFIC-STRATEGY-REPORT-2019.PDF>.

(MSR) extended to Oceania comprising fourteen nations. The BRI was further stretched to Latin America and as ‘Silk Road on ice’ to the Arctic region. The BRI was created in two phases: Phase 1, which was announced by Xi in 2013, has two physical connectivity components, namely, the Silk Road Economic Belt on land and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road in the maritime domain. Phase 2, the Digital Silk Road (DSR), which was adopted m the 2015 government plan and was officially mentioned by Xi at the first Belt and Road Forum in Beijing in 2017, is about hard and soft cyberspace connectivity. Since the prosperity and security7 of a nation are indivisible and proportionate (i.e. with more prosperity more security is needed), the BRI’s ultimate purpose is to offer ‘development and security through cooperation’, as Wei mentioned in his keynote speech, to the nations which join it. For low income and developing nations, joining the BRI is a compelling proposition. But with exceptional focus on development, how ‘security through cooperation’ would work in the BRI has never been explained by China. Since the BRI trajectory is aligned with the arrival of the third and fourth industrial revolutions, some discussion of these is essential. The first industrial revolution occurred in Great Britain in the eighteenth century with the invention of the steam engine, power loom and other machines. This resulted in a boom in factories, especially in textile industries. The second industrial revolution was made possible by the discovery and advent of electricity in the late nineteenth century. The third industrial revolution was the digital revolution—with computer hardware, software, and networks as its fundamental components— which became possible with the development of semiconductors in the early 1970s and continued with the invention of the personal computers and finally the internet in the 90s. The term ‘fourth industrial revolution’ was coined by the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, at Davos in 2016 where he spoke about the interaction between the physical, digital, and biological domains. This revolution, building upon the earlier digital revolution, was vastly different since it was predicated on AI and machine learning, which had acquired a certain aura with the discovery of deep learning in 2012.

Months before Xis announcement of BRI, Chinese prime minister Li Keqiang had offered the BCIM economic corridor to India in May 2013 and proposed the setting up of the CPEC on his visit to Pakistan the same month. The CPEC was formally signed in April 2 0 IS.5 China had proposed four other corridors to nations along the path of the BRI. These were China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor; China-Centraland-Western Asia Economic Corridor; China -Indochina Peninsular Economic Corridor; and the n e w Eurasian Land Bridge Economic Corridor. The distinctiveness of BRI is that it combines the concepts of British geopolitical theorist Halford Mackinder who in 1904 put forward the theory of the Eurasia land mass being the pivot of the world and the American thinker Alfred Mahan who postulated the strategic importance of the seas. The BRI vision is about physically connecting Asia, Africa, and Europe through a network of roads, rails, coastal and port infrastructure, power plants, shipping routes, industrial parks, and oil and gas pipelines, as well as through policy coordination, connectivity, unimpeded trade, monetary circulation, and people-to-people ties supported by the Chinabacked Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) New Development Bank, Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank (AIIB), Silk Route Fund, and so on. According to former US treasury secretary Larry Summers, the AIIB s establishment ‘may be remembered as the moment the US lost its role as the underwriter of the global economic system’. The AIIB’s governing principle—that the largest contributor to the multilateral organization gets the largest say in running it—would ensure that China, which has initially committed US$ 50 billion of the total corpus of US$ 100 billion, would rule the roost.6 According to the report released in March 2015 by China’s National Resource and Development Commission that is responsible for the BRI:

5Matt Harris, ‘Who Started C PEC ?’, Think CPiC blog, 22 February 2019, available at ch ttps: / /vvww.cpicglobai .com / who-started -cpec>. 6Pravin Sawhney and Ghazala Wahab, D ragon On O nr Doorstep ; M a n a g in g China Through M ilitary P ow er, New Delhi; Aleph Book Company, 2017, p. 168.

‘the initiative to jointly build the Belt and Road enhancing the trend towards a multipolar world, economic globalization, cultural diversity and greater IT application is designed to uphold the global free trade regime and the open world economy in the spirit of open regionalism'.7 The BRI projects are a mix of old ones that have been upgraded or refurbished as well as new ones. Ail nations in South Asia, except for India and Bhutan, are part of the BRI. The ostensible reason for India declining to join is that one of its corridors—the C PEC —that happens to be the flagship project, passes through Gilgit-Baltistan, a disputed territory between India and Pakistan. By the same logic, India withdrew from the BCIM once China made it part of the BRI. India's w7orry is that with Russia and Iran likely to join the CPEC, it would, by becoming a multilateral project, impact its territorial claims. The real reason why India is hesitant to join the BRI (that China calls an economic project), is that it neither has deep pockets nor international infrastructure building technology and expertise comparable with China. It is no coincidence that India and the US have called BRI a ‘debt trap’ meant to lure developing nations into borrowing more money from China than they can afford. Consequently, they are forced to lease their properties to China. An example often given is of Hambantota port in Sri Lanka that has been leased to China supposedly under Beijing’s coercion for ninety-nine years. However, an investigation by two US scholars points out that Hambantota is a complicated case where China cannot be blamed outright.8While similar stories emanating from Nepal and Bangladesh also have two sides, the point is that it is the sovereign decision of nations to join the BRI and the projects and conditions that they accept. Surprisingly, the DSR, with the ability to shift the geopolitical balance of power, has got little attention in India. China’s forays into international cyberspace connectivity started in 2009 (much before the 7Tne State Council, People’s Republic of China, ‘Action Plan on the Belt and Road I n i t i a t i v e 30 March 2015, available at < http://english.wvw.gov.cn/archive/ publications/2015/03/30/content_281475080249035.htm >. ‘Deborah Brautigam and Meg Rithmire, ‘The Chinese “Debt Trap” Is a Myth’, Ihe Atlantic, 6 February 2021.

DSR was first mentioned in 2015) as a junior partner in the joint venture for submarine or subsea cables with the UK-based Global Marines. By 2019, Chinese Huawei Marine had completed over one hundred projects involving shorter and longer trans-Atlantic distances using indigenous advanced submarine grade fibre material where Chinese acquired expertise in laying undersea cables. Vi hss than a decade China became the fourth largest supplier of subsea cables in the world and required no further assistance from foreign partners.9 Around the time the DSR was officially announced, the worldwide demand for subsea cables with greater bandwidth had increased. China was among the nations making advances in material sciences, optics, and data processing to enable higher capability in submarine-grade fibre. They were conscious about investing heavily in advanced subsea cables, terrestrial fibre optic cables, and other standalone infrastructure for the Huawei 5G wireless network that would allow data flow at greater speed, higher volumes, and minimal latency when compared to existing 4G networks. With advanced subsea cables and by quick 5G deployment, China was preparing to seize first mover advantage. The broadband subsea and terrestrial cables were the backbone of the third industrial revolution centred around connectivity by internet, while the 5G network will become the backbone of the fourth industrial revolution. The performance of subsea cables had improved at the time the DSR was announced, and China is one of the few nations that owns subsea technologies. According to experts, ‘at the core of today's most advanced cables are multiple pairs of ultra-low-loss glass fibre that carry beams of light over long distances. Each pair functions as a separate conduit for data, and the fibres are encased in protective layers of material/10 The same year that DSR found mention in an official Chinese report, ‘Made in China—2025' was announced with one of its strategic targets ’According to one estimate, ‘Chinese firms’ involvement in subsea projects rose from six per cent of ail projects from 2012-2015 to twenty per cent from 2016-2019. Kristin Shi-Kupfer and Mareike Uhlberg, ‘China’s Digital Rise’, Mercator Institute for China Studies, No. 7, 8 April 2019. ^Jonathan E. Hillman, S ecu rin g the Subsea N etw ork, Centre for Strategic and International Studies, 2021, p. 4.

being the capture of 60 per cent of the global market for advanced fibre optic communications (terrestrial and subsea) equipment. Unlike the US where subsea cables are in the private sector, the Chinese government is backing its strategic cyber connectivity plans with policies, timelines, resources, subsidies, and loans. Since subsea cables carry over 95 per cent of all international data, and with demand for data having increased exponentially, higtt-speed internet is expected to spur innovation, increase employment opportunities, and unlock 5G’s potential. Two prominent subsea cables that need mention are the Pakistan East Africa Cable Express (PEA C E) and the Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN). Built by China’s Hengtong Group, a leading subsea cable company, the 12,000-km long PEACE will provide the shortest high­ speed cable network route with minimal latency between Pakistan (Asia) and Africa and on to Europe. According to reports, work on the Pakistan to Africa section with a direct link to the landing station in Djibouti (China’s overseas military base that it calls a support base in the Horn of Africa) started in March 2021.15 Its landing station in Pakistan will be in Karachi or Gwadar and the stretch to Africa would include landing stations in Kenya and Seychelles. Meanwhile, terrestrial fibre optic cables are being laid from General Headquarters (Rawalpindi) to Karachi and Gwadar. The 850-km fibre optic cable connecting the PLA’s Xinjiang Military Division and GHQ Rawalpindi, has been functional since 2018. Two things worth noting are that none of subsea cables coming into Pakistan will be routed through India. And, with broadband connectivity in Gwadar, it could become an international transit hub. It is hoped that within five years, with Chinese help, Gwadar will be connected to China, Nepal, Afghanistan, the Central Asian republics (Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan), Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman. The cyber hardened connectivity between China and Pakistan will serve both commercial and military purposes. On the commercial side, Pakistan, with China’s support, will step into

KMifrah Haq, 'China builds Digital Silk Road in Pakistan ro Africa and Europe’, N ikkei A sia , 29 January 2021.

the third and the fourth industrial age before India. Speaking at the US's Wilson Centre in October 2021, Pakistan minister Asad Umar said that the second phase of CPEC had begun.12 Apart from setting up of special economic zones for CPEC including the Gwadar free zone where foreign investors are welcome, what was significant was the formation of 2 joint working group on information technology between Pakistan and China. It involved cloud computing, big data, Internet of Things (IoT), cyber security, and digital commerce with relevance in warfare. On the military side, with cyber hardened broadband communications available with fibre optic cables and 5G, the interoperability between the Pakistan military and the PLA will increase, and it will become easier for the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) to run the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Computing (CENTAIC) and imbibe the essentials of algorithm warfare. Moreover, Pakistan will not be the sole beneficiary of Chinese subsea and terrestrial connectivity. All South Asian nations including Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Maldives are being provided with Chinese connectivity. The PLCN, on the other hand, marks the beginning of decoupling between the US-led western nations and China-led eastern nations. Started in 2018 as a joint venture between US's Facebook and Google with China's fourth largest telecom company, Dr Peng Telecom and Media Group, the 13,000~km trans-Pacific high-speed subsea cable was to connect the US with Hong Kong. In 2020, citing China's 2017 National Intelligence Law that requires Chinese corporations and citizens to support the work of Chinese intelligence agencies, the US asked its software technology companies to formally end their business with the Chinese subsea cable company and take their cables to Taiwan and Philippines. In the past, Google and Facebook had worked with the Chinese companies to cater to the ever-increasing network traffic between the US and Asia. Given the high volumes of trans-continental network traffic, most subsea cables are no longer owned by telephone

1JWoodrow

Wilson

Centre,

‘What

Next

For

the

Chma-Pakistan

Economic

Corridor', YouTube, 23 October 2021, available at < https://www.youtube.cotn/ watch ?v--8A2S i6Xer91> .

carriers, but by content facilitators like Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft.

The US believes that having Chinese companies constructing and maintaining subsea cable is a grave security risk since China will be able to monitor and divert data traffic and cut off links with entire countries at will. This makes the likelihood of decoupling and spiinternet—a separation of US-led western world from China-led eastern world technologies-a real possibility. Since the internet is the mainstay of the US’s way of life, experts have suggested more ways to keep subsea cables secure from Chinese cyberattacks. For example, the US could undertake ‘advanced encryption and advanced intrusion detection, and supporting technologies, such as ultra-low-loss fibre, that enable it to operate more securely in untrustworthy environments’.13 Of the 426 subsea cables that criss-cross the world, those that come to India do so through five landing stations in Mumbai, Cochin, Trivandrum, Tuticorin, and Chennai.14 Mumbai is the busiest station, with connections to eleven cables, followed by Chennai with seven connections. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands have a connecting line from the Chennai landing station. Since subsea cables coming into India are owned, operated, and maintained by a European consortium, India remains at grave risk of its cables getting spied upon, disrupted, or destroyed by Chinese companies in case of war. This could be done by China’s cable repair ships in the region. Amother vital component of the DSR is China’s BeiDou Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), which, with a total of thirty-five satellites (more than the US’s Global Positioning System) was completed in 2020. Commonly referred to as Space Silk Road, the BeiDou GNSS would, like other DSR disruptive technologies, be dual purpose. It would help the MSR component of BRI with space connectivity for which it has ‘established a new remote sensing satellite data centre in Fuzhou, Fujian Province, which is able to receive, store, process, and distribute

"Hillman, S ecu rin g Subsea N etw ork , p. 29. "Monit Kiianna, ‘A Giant Web Of Submarine Cables Connects India To 'Ihe internet And World’, India Times, 3 April 2021.

data from 26 Chinese Yaogan remote sensing satellites to promote information integration and provide services to BRI countries’.15 Moreover, ‘China is actively promoting the use of BeiDou and other satellites amongst BRI participants, including for military use. For instance, following a 2013 agreement, Pakistan was the first partner country to be granted access to BeiDou s restricted high-precision signals for military use.’1'" While China’s subsea cables, terrestrial fibre optic cables, and BeiDou GNSS are important components of DSR, the Huawei 5G wireless network, also called ‘the last mile connectivity’ will transform the way the BRI nations do business and usher in prosperity. Cellular 5G Wireless Network The mainstay of China’s intelligentized war, what the US military calls algorithmic war, and the backbone of the fourth industrial revolution will be 5G, which will provide three big advantages: enhanced broadband with fast speed data transfer, which will support ultra-highresolution services; massive machine communications with low energy consumption using IoT; and low latency and reliable communications. A good start to understanding 5G is with the oft-repeated quote: ‘First-class companies make standards, second-class companies do services, and third-class companies make products.’17 In early 2010, Chinese companies like Huawei and ZTE used to make handsets and other support gear for US telecom giants like AT&T and Verizon, which had won the 700 megahertz (MHz) spectrum at an auction in 2008. US digital companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Netflix took advantage of the 700 MHz bandwidth, which was the fourthgeneration wireless network (4G) and made billions. As handset and product vendors, Chinese telecom companies learnt that determining the right choice of spectrum for next generation (fifth

tsA!cxander Bowe, ‘China’s Pursuit for Space Power Status and Implications for the United States’, U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, li April 2019. •‘Ibid. 17Klsa B. Kama, 'Securing Our 5G future’, Centre for a New American Security, 7 November 2019, p. 10.

generation) of telecom communications was crucial. They reasoned that it was better to go for the mid-spectrum band below 6 GHz, primarily in the 3 and 4 GHz bands, which provided a good mix of coverage and capacity without risk of interruptions from environmental factors at affordable prices for a large population. The higher millimetre wave (mm Wave) band spectrum provided best capacity but lower coverage (than mid-band) since it has shorter wavelength, and hence needed more base stations to deliver mid-band coverage for the same geographical area. Moreover, since the mid-band spectrum was also good for usage in the industrial sector, the companies argued that it should be made the standard. Once the standard specifications were decided, Chinese companies moved quickly to build 5G subcomponents and products that would ultimately drive interoperability across networks. By 2019, the first set of 5G services were made available worldwide to support the handset and telecom vendors market in Asia all the way to Africa to much of Europe along with domestic semiconductor and other systems. By first mover advantage in 5G, Huawei hoped to establish global standards and become the leader in this domain with all 130 BRI nations and many others following their standards in services and products. Experts noted that, ‘Huawei has shipped over 150,000 5G base stations worldwide by June 2019.... In addition, Huawei commands the greatest number of patents in 5G, which amounts to 1,529 in total as of late 2018.’18 This did not mean that Huawei had become world leader in 5G. What it meant was that it had become a strong contender for the first place, since its lead over the lagging western 5G companies appeared massive. To make sure that its strategic partner went along, Huawei signed a deal to develop 5G in Russia in June 2019. Moreover, cognisant of the importance of owning standards in new disruptive technologies that would fuel the fourth industrial revolution, China, in 2020, launched its ‘China Standards 2035’ with the intention to emerge as the ‘standards superpower’ in technologies ranging from high-speed railways to artificial intelligence.

l8Ibid., p. 9.

Meanwhile, in July 2021, the Chinese smartphone company OPPO unveiled its 6G wireless communication strategy, in which AI would directly help the smartphone to ‘self-optimise and dynamically administrate itself’.19 Unlike 4G and 5G, 6G software with AI imbedded in it will cater to the needs of both humans and intelligent robots which will be commonplace by 2035. For sample., in the case of autonomous car s, the 6G system wih determine the most appropriate AI algorithm for the autonomous vehicle to drive safely and comfortably in the given terrain. In the larger sense, 6G will make IoT more useful, widespread, and reliable for smart cities, healthcare, 3D printing, medicine, and all industrial and personal activities. It will turn smartphones into intelligent smartphones capable of choosing the best and optimal solution from the options available (in its stored data library) without human intervention. According to OPPO’s 5G chief scientist, ‘Mobile communication technology evolves in decade-long periods, and standardisation of the next generation (6G) technology is expected to begin in 2025, with commercial implementation following in around 2035/ The Am erican Lag The US has had a delayed start on 5G as it was unable to decide on the spectrum. The US was considering mm Wave spectrum since most of its 3 and 4 GHz spectrum was in extensive use with the Pentagon and federal departments. Eventually, the US, South Korea, and Japan decided to explore both sub 6 GHz and mm Wave. If the US continued to use mm Wave that needed more base stations, it would have difficulty setting global standards in 5G since it might not have many takers. This dilemma is at the heart of its campaign of dissuading allies, European nations, and India from adopting Huawei 5G. While it is known that Huawei, like all Chinese companies working overseas, has links with the Communist party, there is little evidence to support that it has breached security assurances by sharing overseas data with the Chinese government According to reports, China launched 5G services in fifty cities ‘’ IANS, 'OPPO releases 6G strategy, bets big on Al-driven 6G networks in next decade', Husiness S ta n d a rd , 13 July 2021.

SH

including Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen (the headquarters of Huawei) in November 2019.20 In the US, at that time, 5G service was in limited areas of major cities, and Apple iPhone 11 did not have 5G capabilities, which most Chinese brands had installed. Meanwhile, India’s roll-out of 5G has been a sorry story. In May 2021 ? recently retired secretary from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Arana Sharma, made three important points on Indian 5G.21 One, since 100 per cent of 5G hardware (electronics) would have to be imported, India needs a robust cyber testing system, which it lacks. Obliquely referring to Huawei 5G which has been debarred from trials by India, she said that the hardware provided by global supply chains could come from any country in the world. Global companies that are debarred could change their identity, or a reliable supply chain could source material from the banned company. Thus, even the ‘Made in India’ products with imported hardware should be tested rigorously at select government nominated centres. Having lost the race for 5G, India, let alone setting standards or being a service provider, could at best hope to become a product vendor, something that China was doing a decade ago. Two, the technical report on Huawei 5G released by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology had found no evidence of spyware or backdoors. So banning Huawei 5G without empirical evidence suggested that it was driven by political considerations. Moreover, there is no guarantee that electronics bought from European companies will be secure or that they would not insert spyware later. And three, in the spectrum auction bid held in March 2021, none of the leading Indian telecom operators bid for the 700 MHz band of 4G, saying that its reserve price was too high.12 Meant to cater to metro ^Catherine Thorbecke, ‘China launches 5G networks in 50 cities’, A B C N ew s, 1 November 2019. ilrThe Wire, ‘State of India’s Cybersecurity | NSC j Happymon Jacob j China | India | Cyberattacks’, YouTube, 21 March 2021, available at < https://www.youtube.com/ watch ?v=CrJNdbqrp74>. UET Telecom, ‘700 MHz band can be sold in next auction, will refer back to Trai for pricing relook: Telecom secy’, E co n o m ic Times, 2 March 2021.

and urban areas, the telecom companies settled for the 3 3 -3 .6 GHz band of 5G spectrum rather than pay more for higher bandwidth in 4G. According to Sharma, not rolling out the 700 MHz band, which has the highest penetration in rural India, was a mistake. The Modi government had the option to sell the 700 MHz band at a lower price and make 'ess money to ensure that the 4G network reached rural India. This would have transformed quality of life with improvement in healthcare, education, farming, and many other vocational and civic facilities. The ‘internet lifestyle’ would have facilitated e-commerce and e-entertainment, partially obviating the urge to migrate to overcrowded urban centres. Considering that most Indians live in rural areas, good penetration of cellular phones into these areas should have been the government’s priority. An example from China puts these priorities in sharp relief. China pulled 800 million people out of poverty in one generation with cellular 4G. Having reached the inflection point with 4G mobile network in 2 0 14-15, China became the first country in the world with total mobile economy. Even if terrestrial internet did not reach remote places, everyone could do e-business with a smartphone’s mobile network. Not making the 700 MHz band operational would impact heavily on small and medium enterprises (SM Es) which are the backbone of the economy. This is where smaller nations in South Asia which are part of the BRI would likely score over India. The impact in terms of prosperity will become visible by 2030. From Mobile to Digital Econom y China’s second inflection point officially came in 2 0 1 7 -1 9 when it moved from the mobile internet economy (third industrial revolution) to the digital economy (fourth industrial revolution)—from connectivity to intelligence and d a ta -in a big way. However, China s push towards AI digital economy started in 2013 when the government, conscious about deep learning in 2012, started promoting information consumption in the traditional industry. In 2015, the government released its ‘internet plus’ strategy to encourage industries to use information or data obtained via

the internet to remould their business models. Giant internet companies like Alibaba and Tencent started thinking about building cloud units for data intensive computing. The PLA too was not unaffected by deep learning. It was one of the main reasons for the military reforms studies that started in 2012 when Xi Jinping came to power; the reforms were announced in 2015. However, the big push towards AI digital economy came in May 2017, when the Chinese internet companies realized that the boom of consumer-focused internet (mobile internet) was over. If they wanted to stay in the global race, they had to reorient themselves to enterprise or industrial internet (AI digital economy). The use of AI had become critical. According to founder and chairman of Tencent, Pony Ma, ‘The next era of the internet is the industrial internet meant to develop new industry-facing services to connect industries and consumers to build a more open ecosystem.’23 Chinese internet giants like Alibaba, BeiDou, and Tencent, big companies like Megvii, SenseTime, and CloudWalk, and hundreds of SMEs were encouraged by the government’s ‘A Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan’ released in July 2017 with sweeping strategy and policy initiatives. To emphasize the importance of the industrial internet and to attract global participation in it, China started an annual Industrial Internet Global Summit where a special message from Xi Jinping was delivered annually. Speaking at the Industrial Internet Global Summit held in Shenyang in October 2019, vice minister of Industry and Industrial Internet, Wang Zhijun said, ‘The industrial internet is a key foundation and pillar for the fourth round of industrial revolution.’24 Through three connected developments starting 2017—industrial internet, blockchain technologies, and China’s Central Bank Digital Currency (C BD C )—China’s second phase of DSR was planned to be extensively experimented within the country before being offered to BRI nations as the new digital ecosystem with which to work smoothly,

JJWinston Ma, The Digital W ar: H ow China's Tech P o w er S h a p ed the F u tu re o f AT, Blockchain, a n d Cyberspace, West Sussex: Wiley, 2021, p. 15,

J4Xu Wei, 'Xi stresses role of industrial internet', China D aily , 19 October 2019,

efficiently, and cost-effectively with China. The ecosystem was to comprise broadband connectivity, e-commerce hubs, transformation of industry for better productivity, data-enabled proficient business models, smart cities, and digitization of education and healthcare, to name a few. However, starting 2018, technologies of industrial internet started being offered piecemeal to ASKAN countries. Coincidentally, the year 2017 was also when the technology war broke out between the US Trump administration and China. The US alleged that China had committed cybertheft to the tune of billions of dollars from US technology companies to stay ahead by unfair means. The US was also worried about China’s growing clout because of BRI’s physical connectivity, and Phase 1 of DSR cyberspace connectivity by its subsea cabling, rolling out of Huawei 5G networks, and BeiDou’s navigation satellite system. China too was conscious of what lay ahead—with the US as the incubator of original disruptive technologies and China, given its huge population, as the best place for their commercialization—Washington couldn’t have been happy with Beijing making billions at its expense. Unfazed by the contretemps, China set out to usher in the industrial internet. As Chinese investor Winston Ma explained in his seminal book The Digital War, there was a need to bring in Taster 5G mobile networks and more advanced digital technologies including the Internet of Things (loT ), Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Cloud computing, and Data Analytics (iABCD).’25 This would help big internet companies reorient themselves from consumer-only businesses to cater to industries as well. Converting internet companies into technology companies would also help launch start-ups. To optimize the digital technologies, Alibaba, BeiDou, and Tencent among others started cloud services for users to rent and remotely access a range of computing services including servers, data storage, network, analytics, and data bases. Realizing that data was a strategic resource, the Chinese built industrial data centres for manufacturing and production data to help further the capabilities of traditional industries. Hie market for AI, blockchain, cloud, and big

KMa, Digital War, p. xxiv.

data grew rapidly since SMEs too wanted to benefit from the industrial internet. The overall idea, according to Ma, was to bring synergy within 5G iABCD where ‘different technologies can feed into each other and create an ecosystem of automation—loT devices collect data on millions of criteria, which is then collated in the cloud and managed by Blockchain, analysed by Big Data, and used to train and improve AI algorithms for real Life applications. As 5G iABCD technologies interact and improve one other, the huge synergy will spur more innovation in China/26 A slight digression here. The PLA had been following the rapid progress being made in the industrial internet. All commercial technologies and their synergy had direct relevance for warfare. Given this, profound interaction between the industry and the PLA with government encouragement had started in 2013. It has strengthened with time. Meanwhile, Xi, in a major speech in October 2019, officially attested that blockchain technology was ‘an important breakthrough that would play an important role in the next round of technological innovation and industrial transformation’.27 Blockchain, used in digital cryptocurrency like bitcoin, is a distributed ledger which is open for anyone to join. As the name suggests, it has a number of connected blocks, with each block having three items: data, hash (like a fingerprint, it is unique to a block), and hash of the previous block. When any data is added or deleted in a block of this digital ledger, changes get automatically made in all blocks of the chain and the hash also registers it. With many checks in the system, tampering with data becomes impossible. This makes transactions quick, convenient, controlled, traceable, secure, and stable, with peer-to-peer review since all the people in the chain get to know the changes made in a block. Given this, blockchain technology is expected to ‘offer an excellent solution to synchronize data, especially sensitive information, across companies, industries, and geographical boundaries. It can facilitate network that enables multiple parties to

MIbid., p. 35. 2?Ibid., p. 7.

exchange data, information, and access directly, as in the case of supply chain finance/28 The third development was the launch of the world’s first digital currency, CBDC, by the People’s Bank of China in April 2020 piloted simultaneously in four major cities: Shenzhen, Suzhou, Chengdu, and Xicng’an New Area (the smart d ty meant tc become China’s vicecapital). Starting May 2*320, the digital currency renminbi was adopted into these cities' monetary system and government employees received their salaries in this digital currency. American financer and author of Cashless: China's Digital Currency Revolution, Richard Turrin, has explained why China’s digital renminbi was a global path-breaking event. Digital renminbi is the world’s first digital currency issued by a country’s central bank, which is not the case with cryptocurrency. Unlike the digital wallet system of Alipay and WeChat, digital renminbi is representation of an actual amount in a bank, and not in some digital wallet. His two other remarks on China’s digital currency are startling. One, digital renminbi ‘will not replace the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency but displace it’. This means that China is creating a new monetary transfer pathway which is independent of the existing ones dominated by the US like the SW IFT system. So, on the face of it, the reserve currency (usually in US dollars) will not be affected by an alternate Chinese money transfer system. But once the BRI nations find out that the Chinese payment system is faster, cheaper, and more efficient, the importance of systems like SW IFT will diminish. This led to his other remark that all BRI countries that do business with China will realize that digital renminbi is not just China’s central bank issued currency but ‘is a token or ticket to China’s new digital payment system, which would be supported by blockchain service network’. For example, if a customer in a BRI nation buys physical containers from China, all he needs to do is make the payment in digital renminbi. Everything else, from customs clearance to shipment to exact delivery date will happen automatically and he will be able to trace and monitor the progress

MIbid., p. 9.

through the blockchain digital logistics system, After Xi’s endorsement of blockchain technologies, the government supported research in its development and standardization since it would not only facilitate digital trade, finance, shipping, and monitoring system, but would underpin development of smart cities, China launched a new vice-capital smart city based on the industrial internet concept (5G iABCD) in April 2017. Some aspects of this project, discussed in Ma’s The Digital War need to be highlighted to explain how the blockchain service will deliver reliability, transparency, optimization, and speed in building smart cities: As China's city of the future, Xiong’an (meaning brave and peace) has been designed to become a smart city zone for innovation. In this context, the integration and application of the Internet of Things technologies, artificial intelligence, Big Data, and cloud computing has been strongly encouraged in the city planning. In particular, the new city is set to become the blockchain hub in China and has taken a lead in rolling out blockchain-based services. The blockchain DNA of the megacity had started even before its construction. To build the vice capital over swampland, the government purchased land from local farmers. Those transactions were made via blockchain to keep them transparent,... Since April 2020, DCEP (Digital Currency/Electronic Payment), the blockchain-based digital currency, has been tested at hotels and convenience stores in the New Area.29 According to Klaus Schwab, who announced the arrival of the fourth industrial revolution, ‘smart cities are continuously extending their network of sensor technology and working on their data platforms, which will be the core for connecting the different technology projects and adding services based on data analytics and predictive modelling’.30 There will be many positive impacts of smart cities, like improved efficiency in using resources, more productivity, better quality of life,

29Ibid., p. 6. “ Schwab, Fourth Industrial Revolution, p. .142.

lower cost of services, improved mobility, better access to healthcare and education, reduced crim e—the list is endless. Before moving to have smart cities, the small South Asian nations will experience the role of the industrial internet in building physical infrastructure when smart sensors and Al-backed monitoring systems will help ensure optimal utilization of resources. Their industry could, in collaboration with Chinese companies, construct data centres and use cloud services for increased productivity. Meanwhile, once China is satisfied with the use of the industrial internet in the improvement of economy by smarter and more productive industrialization, better ways of doing business, and meeting customer expectations by big data predictive analytics, collaborative innovation, and with new operating models, better e-commerce, and smart cities combining the physical, digital, and biological worlds, it will take the second phase of DSR to the BRI nations in a big way. This could happen by 2025. Against this backdrop, China was compelled to bring in more economic reforms in 2018. The reforms were the consequence of the following factors: • Worsening US-China relations that made the prospect of de­ *

coupling of global supply chains real; the US Trump administration-imposed sanctions and curbs on

Chinese trade and technology business; • the Covid-19 pandemic, which took a heavy toll on global economy; and ♦

the growing protectionism and unilateralism across the world.

Given all this, China announced the dual circulation policy in September 2020. This had two aspects. One, to strengthen the domestic economy by supply chain structural reforms and distribution of wealth with the aim to lift more Chinese people out of poverty. This involved more medium companies working on digital industrial economy with AI, 5G, big data, and cloud computing rather than a few big corporates like Alibaba, Weibo, and Didi Chuxing. And two, foreign investments, free trade agreements, and free trade ports for engagement with the outside world

were encouraged but not actively sought. With a financial market worth US$ 31 trillion and bond market worth US$ 16 trillion, no international company could think of not being in the Chinese market. The dual circulation policy came in for global criticism—that the Communist party did not want more power centres in the shape of huge Chinese corporations. This may not be entirely untrue but the point was that this policy was to sharpen Chinese fourth industrial revolution at home before it was sold to the BRI nations. The Rise of the Middle Kingdom In about eight years, perhaps by 2030, the BRI nations in South Asia surrounding India and Bhutan (if they remain outside the BRI) will be in the third and fourth industrial revolutions—depending on their domestic policies—ushered in by the BRI. Most will be operating on China's industrial internet ecosystem, with financial transactions done by digital renminbi through a blockchain-assisted Chinese digital logistics system. According to Ma, ‘If the United States and China—the two technology giants—are unable to arrive at an understanding that free flow of capital, trade, data, human resources, and internet freedom are fundamental to progress of humanity, splinternet, or division of internet into US and China-led tech ecosystems is inevitable.’31 While everyone hopes that this does not happen, no one is under any illusion that the world is not fast headed towards this eventuality. In the subcontinental matrix, India, outside the BRI, will face the prospect of strategic and commercial irrelevance in its own backyard. It will find doing bilateral trade with neighbours who are on a different commercial ecosystem difficult. Worse, India’s strategic irrelevance will get more pronounced when one considers what China will get in return for helping BRI nations with its industrial internet. A China­ centric digital order will be established where hardware and software used by South Asian nations in its digital industry will be based on Chinese standards. It will be Chinese technology, capital, expertise, and management that will create SMEs ecosystems, start-ups, and i!Ma, Digital War, p. 42.

unicorns. China will help set up hundreds of data centres in the host nations. This will provide China with valuable data (strategic resource) of all kinds, which in turn will give first mover advantage to Chinese companies and businesses. China’s market share and commercialization of its technology will grow. With overwhelming virtual control over host nations’ hardware, software, and information-ware, China will be able to set cyber standards and cyber norms. This will result in two outcomes: fulfilment of the China Dream and security through cooperation. The China Dream, unveiled in 2013 by Xi Jinping, is anchored on a new approach to international relations, based not on a zero-sum game but on win-win cooperation, mutual trust, and mutual understanding. Following a different format of power politics based on economic rather than military power, China is determined to portray its growing national power as benign and meant for the prosperity of BRI nations. China with a distinctively different strategy not seen so far in history is resolved to emerge as a global power. The China Dream implies rejuvenation (rise) of the Chinese nation through a better life (material and cultural) for the Chinese people. This requires bilateral, regional, and global cooperation in economy, trade, investments, connectivity, energy, and strategic security; with this in turn benefiting the people of Asia and the world. The BRI is the vehicle to accomplish all this. Moreover, the China Dream is about China seeking greatness through "rejuvenation’ which harks back to history and traditions. This implies transformational changes through continuity, and that no single leader or a generation of leaders since the formation of Communist China by Mao in October 1949 is responsible for China’s prosperity. In Mandarin, the word for China is ‘Zhong-guo’ which literally means middle state, a state that straddles north and south and east and west. According to Chinese scholars, China once dominated the East Asian international system with its ancient Confucian cultural thoughts (based on the sayings of Chinese philosopher Confucius who lived in 6 b c e ) . In this system, China was the centre of the world and all nations its tributaries. Hence, all nations had a tributary obligation towards China in deference to its central position. This did not mean that China had

to physically conquer other nations or rule them by force. In present times, Confucian thought translates into recognizing China as a risen power, which expects deference to its viewpoint by its neighbours near and far. Without being imperialistic, China wants grateful BRI nations to consider its opinion seriously in their foreign policies. Security Through Cooperation In August 2012, I attended a PLA briefing at the Ministry of National Defence (MND) in Beijing, barely three months before Xi Jinping assumed leadership. While giving a presentation on the PLA’s higher defence organization, the MND spokesperson, Colonel Yang Yujun, mentioned four threats that the PLA would need to be prepared for. The first two were the traditional threats for which China had been preparing—increased threat to its land borders and maritime interests caused by the imbalance in strategic military power. This imbalance was the consequence of the end of Cold War. The second threat, according to him was the social transformation underway in the world which could lead to three evils: terrorism, extremism, and secessionism—which China had to guard against. The third and fourth threats were the consequence of China asserting its position in the world. Hence, predictably, there were threats to its interests and facilities abroad and its overseas investments. At that time, I was baffled by the mention of the latter two threats. In 2012, China hardly had any facilities and investments abroad that would merit the PLA’s protection. However, once Xi announced the BRI in 2013, I understood what it meant. China had been working on the Silk Road connectivity concept well before Xi came to power and gave it a new name. Much in sync with the Chinese approach, the PLA’s protection of BRI would be asymmetrical. According to China’s July 2019 White Paper on Defence, it would be ‘building a new-model security partnership featuring equality, mutual trust and win-win cooperation’.32 What would this new security model be? uThe State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China ,‘China's National Defence in the New Era’, Beijing: Foreign Languages Press Co. Ltd, 2019, p. 31.

With so much invested in the China Dream, China is unlikely to militarily threaten the Sea Lanes of Communication (SLOCs) in the Asia-Pacific region. Speaking at the 6th Xiangshan Forum in October 2015, the director of the Centre for China-American Defence Relations, Major General Yao Yunzhu (retd), said, ‘China is the largest stakeholder for safety -and security of SLOCs. Since 2013, China’s trade (mostly maritime) exceeded US$ 4 trillion which is 12 per cent of the world trade. China has the largest trading partnerships with 120 countries, and it has the largest shipping fleet. Moreover, China has learned lessons from the 1980s Iraq-Iran war and the earlier Suez crisis on the importance of having secure SLOCs especially at choke points like the Straits of Malacca and Hormuz. Then there is piracy, natural disasters, and environment challenges to contend with. China opposes militarisation of SLOCs and would like to play a larger role for making rules for maritime security.’33 The key points that Yao made were that China did not want military rivalry with the US that dominated the SLOCs across the western Pacific Ocean and IOR and that it wanted a big role in making maritime security rules. US analyst Robert Kaplan, in his seminal book Monsoon, noted, ‘A one-ocean navy in the Western Pacific makes China a regional power; a two-nation navy in both the Western Pacific and the Indian Ocean makes China a great power, able to project force around the whole navigable Eurasian rim-land.’34 Going by an understanding of the BRI, it becomes clear that there was a significant difference in how the US and China perceived things: China did not want to project ‘force’ as Kaplan claimed, it wanted to project ‘influence’ through geo-economics—this is the essence of the China Dream. China never hid its maritime intentions. For example, in ‘May 2009, Admiral Timothy J. Keating, the US Pacific Command chief, reportedly met up with India’s chief of naval staff, Admiral Sureesh Mehta, in New Delhi to discuss the import and consequences of an off-the-cuff remark

3\Sawhney and Wahab, D ragon On O u r Doorstep, p. 136. ^Robert D. Kaplan, M o n so o n : The Indian Ocean a n d the F u tu re o f A m erica n Pow er, New York: Random House, 2010, p. 289.

made by a Chinese admiral. The Chinese admiral had told Keating, ‘You [the US] take Hawaii East and we [China] will take Hawaii West and the Indian Ocean. Then you will not need to come to the Western pacific and the Indian Ocean, and we will not need to go to the Eastern Pacific. If anything happens there, you can let us know and if something happens here, we will let you know/35 Ashton Cartel, the US Pentagon chief from 2015 to 2017, noted that when Xi Jinping came to the White House to meet President Obama, ‘I was especially concerned by the implication of China's (Xi's) successful attempt to convince the president to endorse wThat it called [a new model of superpower relations] in the Pacific. In China's view, Asia over the past 70 years was dominated by one superpower—the United States—and now it was time for the United States to step back and let China exercise dominance.'36 Coming back to what Yao said, she was referring to China's ‘Malacca dilemma’ which was first mentioned by Chinese president Hu Jintao in 2003. The Strait of Malacca lies between the Sumatra Islands and Malay Peninsula with Singapore to its east. With some 80 per cent of Chinese international trade passing through this choke point, China worried that rival nations could easily block it, especially when China had disputed maritime borders with some ASEAN nations. The US, with its powerful navy, provided security cover to many of them. The alternate routes through the Sunda, Lombok, and Makassar Straits were unsatisfactory since the first is shallow and the other two are much too long. To strengthen its maritime security, China opened the land route through the CPEC to the Gwadar deep seaport and started reclamation work on the disputed South China Sea (SCS). Around 2012, Chinese think tanks started making the case for SCS being its territory. In 2014-15, Chinese work on reclaiming land in the disputed Spratly Islands picked up pace. In 2015, Xi Jinping told Obama that the reclaimed land on SCS would not be militarized, only to renege on his assurance within

“ Ibid., p. 162. J6Ash Carter, ‘Reflections on American Grand Strategy in Asia’, Belter Centre for .Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, October 2018, p. 18.

a year. At present, China has built forward operating bases with 10,000 feet of runway on three of these islands. It has also built shelters for jets, bombers, and missiles. These militarized islands are undoubtedly China's first military base outside the mainland. China was concerned about two more choke points: the Strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb. The Strait of Hormuz, sandwiched between Iran, Oman, and the UAE, should not pose security problems for China since it has good ties with these nations and Pakistan’s Gwadar is close at hand. However, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which is a choke point between the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden through which Chinese trade from Europe comes to the JOR, posed a major security risk. The Republic of Djibouti at the tip of the Horn of Africa had US, French, Italian, and Japanese naval bases. These NATO nations could block Chinese trade from Europe. To overcome this problem, China, in 2017, acquired a logistics support base in the Djibouti. This logistics base is spread across some 200 acres where an aircraft carrier and number of surface ships can be berthed. Having acquired the base, China started doing what it does best: building infrastructure. According to Chinas 2019 White Paper on Defence, ‘The base has provided equipment for the maintenance of four escort task groups.’ Through joint ventures, the Chinese companies have built a railway line and gas and water pipelines linking Ethiopia with Djibouti. It has built the largest free trade zone in Africa in Djibouti which will bring prosperity to the entire region. Dismissing the US charge that China was leading Djibouti towards a ‘debt trap’, Chinese assistant foreign minister Chen Xiaodong in September 2019 said, ‘the logistics base will help Chinese with peacekeeping, disaster work, and other things which bring stability and security in the region’.37 This of course is one side of the story. The PLAN started its forays into the IOR since 2008 in an anti-piracy role; this has helped PLAN officers test the endurance of its surface fleet over long voyages. It has trained and familiarized the crews in long passages. After seventeen

JVNeo, ‘Why Chinns First Military Base Abroad is in Africa’, YouTube, 7 September 2019, available at < https://wmv.ytmtube.corn/watch?v=cg6uir\vgbkY>. tvi

years of these voyages, Djibouti provided the perfect anchor for PLAN ships to (a) undertake regular port calls (naval diplomacy) in the I OR littoral nations onboard BRI (b) move westwards towards Africa where China has invested heavily through the BRI (c) prepare for visits of larger number of PLAN vessels in the IOR at any given time, and (d) tnin submarines for special tasks. Submarines have no anti-piracy role—they help in deep sea familiarization in the IOR. The PLA had, in its 2015 military reforms, listed deep sea (more than 300 m depth) as the focus of the sea domain. Much of the naval rivalry between the PLAN and the US Navy will be tested in the deep-sea domain whose militarization is imminent. Moreover, missions like peacekeeping, anti-piracy, counterterrorism, natural disasters, search and rescue, and development of tactical skills through security consultations with littoral nations will help China become the security provider in the region. These activities will also help in better understanding of each other’s tactical capabilities. Given that China’s logistics base in Djibouti is just 10 km away from the US naval base which it acquired from the government of Djibouti post 9/11, it is anyone’s guess whether China will convert its logistics base into a full-fledged military base. What is certain, however, is that, at some time in the future, Pakistan is likely to have joint air and naval base with the PLA close to its Gwadar deep port, which is being turned into free trade zone area. Moreover, the northern end of the CPEC is being extended to Gilgit via Swat, Chitral, and Shandur. This will put military pressure on India from both ends of the CPEC. Having taken care of the security of critical choke points, the next tier of Asia-Pacific architecture will be provided through various forums like Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia, ASEAN Regional Forum, ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting (ADMM), and ADMM Plus (Plus includes eight additional countries, namely, Australia, China, India, Japan, New7 Zealand, Russia, the United States, and the Republic of Korea). Undoubtedly, the SCO, with China and Russia as its core members, has been the most stable and productive security7 forum. Moreover, since 2012, China has held over 100 joint exercises and

training with more than thirty nations in traditional and non-traditional security fields with land, air, and naval forces. China also has a vibrant military exchange programme with over fifty nations where Chinese and friendly nations (including all BRI nations in South Asia) attend one another’s military educational institutions. In South Asia, the security architecture will be built on the military relationship that China has with Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. After Pakistan, Bangladesh is the largest importer of Chinese arms in the subcontinent. Since the two nations signed the defence cooperation agreement in 2002, arms exports from China to Bangladesh have included tanks, jets, submarines, anti-ship missiles, and a range of small arms. China has built a submarine base for Bangladesh with facilities like wharfs, barracks, ammunition depots, and repairing docks. The PLA provides Bangladesh with technical military support and the two militaries conduct regular training. Moreover, China has made significant investments in Bangladesh as part of BRI projects. It is financing construction of Payra deep-sea port, and, in 2019, Bangladesh gave China access to two of its largest seaports: Chittagong and Mongla. China has even offered to manage and restore the Teesta River which flows from India. The range of bilateral cooperation, including military, is breathtaking. Meanwhile, China’s close ties with Sri Lanka, including in infrastructure and port development, are well documented. Like Bangladesh, China is Sri Lanka’s biggest arms supplier. The visit of Chinese defence minister Wei Fenghe to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka in April 202138 attracted plenty of attention. According to analysts, with India moving close to the Quad nations, militarization of the IOR seemed inevitable with geopolitical implications for South Asia. Weis visit was meant to develop deeper military to military ties with these two nations on the MSR. As these nations prosper consequent to the BRI, China, as the world’s fifth largest arms exporter, and second largest manufacturer

^Chulanet* Attanayake, ‘Chinese Defence Minister’s Visit to Sri Lanka: A New Dynamic to Bilateral Ties’, Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore, 18 May 2021.

of munitions, could offer closer security, including military ties, to police and protect their extra economic zones against common threats. Over time, this could result in regular PLAN and PLAAF platforms getting logistics support and harbouring facilities with the host nation's consent. Since the PLA would be involved in multi-tier security architecture, it was necessary that its officers and soldiers be upright and disciplined. This important issue has been catered for in PLA’s 2015 military reforms. It created 'discipline inspection commission' and 'office for international military cooperation’ reporting directly to the CMC headed by Xi Jinping. Thus, the PLA, with a foothold in littoral nations that dot the AsiaPacific, will be able to dominate the global commercial traffic through what are the world's busiest sea lanes using its real-time global satellite coverage and strings of land-based radars in host nations. Therefore, for the present, China might have no need to seek traditional military bases across the Asia-Pacific rim. It will accomplish this by progressive and subtle means through its unique BRI strategy. In land-locked nations like Nepal, the story will be the same: by mutual consent, the PLA's presence will rise with increased military to military cooperation including arms sales. For India, being outside the BRJ, the outcome of China's subtle Asia-Pacific security architecture will not be pleasant by 2030. On the one hand, it could become commercially and strategically irrelevant in its neighbourhood. On the other hand, it would have to contend with a sizeable PLA presence throughout its neighbourhood. With this, the military threat, both land-based and maritime, from the PLA and Pakistan military will only increase. Indo-Pacific Security A rchitecture First, three home truths. One, in 2009, China announced its sovereign claim over SCS dismissing the other claimants, namely, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei. In 2014, China started land reclamation, at which the US commander-in-chief, Pacific Command

(PACOM) Admiral Harry Harris, famously scoffed in May 2015, calling it ‘the great wail of sand'. By 2015, China started building expansive military infrastructure on the disputed islands. The US did not use force to dismantle China’s military infrastructure. The US instead conducted freedom of navigation patrols through the SCS and a few air patrols asserting the international right of freedom of seas. Finally,

in

April

2018,

the

US

Indo-Pacific

Command

(INDOPACOM) commander Admiral Philip Davidson said in his Congressional testimony that ‘once occupied [by PLA forces], China will be able to extend its influence thousands of miles to the south and project power deep into Oceania, threatening traditionally secure US sea lines of communication. Admiral Davis further offered that the PLA will be able to use 3 of these bases to challenge the US presence in the region, and any forces deployed at the islands would easily overwhelm the military forces of any other SCS claimants. In short, China is now capable of controlling the SCS in all scenarios short of war with the United States/39 China had won the SCS without firing a shot. Given this reality, ASEAN cannot lean on the US to protect its territorial rights. The US will only fight China if it blocks freedom of navigation in SCS, which it has no reason to do. China worries about freedom of navigation in the SLOCs as the US and other democracies do. There is a mutual sense of military threat. Meanwhile, the SCS argument holds good for India too: the US will not fight its war against China in the Himalayas. Two, there is a vast difference between defence and security. The Indian military has traditionally been focused on defence against Pakistan, while maintaining relations with China was left to the diplomats. This is the reason why infrastructure building on the LAC, which was sanctioned by the Vajpayee government in the year 2000, was never a serious proposition. The External Affairs Ministry maintained that the modus vivendi arrived at since Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s China visit in 1988—that border resolution will be one of the issues, and

39Derek Grossman, ‘Military Build-Up in the South China Sea’, The South China S ea : F ro m a R egional M a ritim e Dispute to Geo-Strategic Competition, ed. Leszek Buszynski

and Do Thanh. Hai, London: Routledge, 2020, pp. 182-200.

not the only issue, in relations with China—had stood the test of time. All subsequent bilateral agreements starting with the 1993 agreement on peace and tranquillity had reaffirmed faith in the diplomatic assertion. In this context, it is interesting that a former Indian foreign secretary should say that ‘Maritime dimension has been added by [Prime Minister Modi]. India now looks towards the ocean rather than the Himalayan frontiers as its principal area of foreign policy operations.’40 Vijay Gokhale, who retired in 2020, said this while talking to a US think tank. While it can be argued that he said this because he was talking to an American analyst who has an interest in the future of the Quad pegged on maritime cooperation, the timing couldn’t have been stranger. In April 2020, China had marched across the LAC and occupied Indian territory in Ladakh. So for Gokhale to say that the ocean, and not the Himalayas, would be the main foreign policy priority, is either lack of understanding or misplaced opportunism. India needs whole-of-nation focus—including defence and foreign policy—to recalibrate its China policy, which lies in tatters. Securing the SLOCs in the IOR is a security issue, unlike the US, for who it’s a military issue as challenging China on the SLOCs would be one of the objectives of the US’s INDOPACOM. This, however, is unlikely to become a military issue for India if it formulates a smart strategy of a modus vivendi for peace with China. And three, except for India, the other member nations of the Quad dialogue, namely, the US, Japan, and Australia are military allies. The US is under no obligation to defend India against the PLA on the high seas or in the Himalayas. Moreover, India’s tight military embrace of the US will alienate it from Russia, its traditional partner for strategic, technology, and defence support. Twice in Modi government’s tenure thus far, Russia has come to India’s support in restoring peace with China. First, at Sochi in 2018, when Modi sought Putin to persuade China for maintaining peace on the LAC and later at the signing of the 10 September 2020 joint statement by the foreign ministers of India and China in Moscow.

*°Center for a New American Security, ‘The Quad Equation j Day 3: CNA3 2021 National Security Conference’, YouTube, 11 June 2021, available at < https://www.youtube.com/ watch ?v=aSY9aeUgPtl.J>.

This opened the political dialogue between India and China after the May 2020 Ladakh crisis. The US, despite its good intentions, cannot replace Russia, since, as the world’s sole policeman, and as the victor of World War II, and the Cold War, it has global obligations and responsibilities that might not be favourable for India. The reality is that the Indo-Pacific security architecture based on muscle power is a relic of the Cold War. Much like the Indian assumed area of influence in South Asia, the US’s Indo-Pacific strategy seemed to work well until an alternative created by China and supported by Russia—the BRI—made an appearance. The US did attempt to meet the BRI challenge with its ‘rebalance’ for Indo-Pacific region announced in 2011. It had two components: the economic component under the US state department, and the military component under the US’s then PACOM. Unfortunately, any hope that the US’s Indo-Pacific security architecture would reinvent itself by rebalancing were dashed when the US Congress abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership (T P P ) after the 2016 election. The TPP, with twelve member states, was meant to deliver the economic component. According to Carter, ‘The T P P ’s defeat wasn’t just a missed opportunity. It provided space for China to expand its already significant economic influence over key economics—influence it is unlikely to wield in as open and respectful a manner as the United States has done. It was a missed opportunity to strengthen our strategic relationships in Asia by helping our friends and allies in the region to counter the enormous economic leverage China has over them—leverage it is increasingly willing to use to bend the region to its will in the security realm. I meant it when I said I would rather have TPP than another (aircraft) carrier to deploy to the Pacific.’41 Supporting free trade, China took further steps. In August 2021, it applied for membership of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agrement for Trade Pacific Partnership (C PT PP), an economic and trade framework under Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (A PEC ). Moreover, China joined the Regional Comprehensive Economic

“ Carter, ‘American Grand Strategy in Asia*.

Framework Partnership (R C E P ), which is not joined by the US and India. Using its economic strength, China has sought a leadership role in World Trade Organisation (W T O ) global free trade frameworks. Meanwhile, while explaining rebalancing, Admiral Harry Harris told me in February 2015 in New Delhi (before the T PP was dispensed with), ‘Rebalancing'is real: By the end of 2020, the US will have 300 ships, 60 per cent of which will be in the Pacific (55 per cent are presently in the region), while 60 per cent of the submarines are already here. We will invest in new capabilities and strengthen our alliances and partnerships/ He added, ‘Rebalancing serves diplomatic, economic, strategic and military interests. However, the most important component is economic not military. We will have a forward presence when it comes to humanitarian needs and for this, we will have bilateral readiness programmes with various countries/42 Once the TPP was off the table, the US media, fascinated by the US’s military prowess called it ‘pivot’—a military term. The Trump administration which came to office in January 2017 did not bother with economic re-balancing. With his ‘A merica First’ mantra, President Trump, fearing that the multi-lateral trade agreement of the TPP will flood the US with foreign goods, withdrew from it. It instead directly assaulted China using technology war in three prominent areas—5G wireless communications, semiconductors or chips, and global supply chains. And it decided to boost the military component of the IndoPacific strategy by strengthening military relations with India. The two oceans—Western Pacific and IOR—were converted into a single theatre by the renaming of the US PACOM to US INDOPACOM on 30 May 2018. According to the then US defence secretary, James Mattis, ‘this was in recognition of increased connectivity of Indian and Pacific Oceans’. The outgoing INDOPAC commander, Admiral Harry Harris, was forthright: ‘Great power competition is back—geopolitical competition between free and oppressive visions is taking place in the Indo-Pacific/ The US ‘pivot’ is the traditional cornerstone of the US defence based on deterrence.

42Sawhney and Wahab, D ra gon On O ur D oorstep, p. 136.

With the Biden administration taking eharge in January 2021, three significant changes were introduced to the Indo-Pacific strategy: the Build Back a Better World (B3W ) concept; the elevation of the Quad; and operational integration of the Indian military into the Indo-Pacific strategy. Introduced by President Joe Biden at the G7 meeting In the UK in June 2021, the B3W is supposed to be the major western democracies' answer to the BR1. It was estimated that developing nations needed about US$ 40 trillion for transparent infrastructure building which the G7 nations would provide. While this was a laudable endeavour, it overlooked three things: one, there was no clarity about where the money would come from, since the G7 nations like the rest of the world have suffered due to the Covid-19 global pandemic. Two, the BRI is a dynamic concept—encompassing land belt, maritime road, space road, mobile internet road, and industrial internet road—with mutual gains for all participants. The same cannot be said for the B3W. And three, being eight years behind the BRI, it seems impossible that B3W will catch up. The B3W should not be assessed as anything more than belated realization by the US that it should not have abandoned ‘rebalancing’ to settle for the ‘pivot’. The second change related to strengthening of the ‘pivot’ by an empowered Quad. The Quadrilateral dialogue between the US, India, Japan, and Australia was formed consequent to the 2004 devastating tsunami in the Indian Ocean that killed over 200,000 people. Since these four nations voluntarily pooled their maritime resources for disaster relief, it was felt that they should have an informal Quad dialogue for maritime security including anti-piracy and counterterrorism. China was not a consideration for coming together of the Quad grouping. China became a consideration for the Quad during the Trump administration. Meetings at various levels of the Quad nations were held culminating in the first ministerial level meeting in Tokyo in December 2020. But the Quad was not a regularized and formalized platform like the ASEAN Defence Ministers Meetings (ADMM) since its role vis-a-vis the Indo-Pacific strategy was not defined. The clarity on the Indo-Pacific strategy came when President Trump visited Japan

in November 2017. The then US ambassador to Japan, William Hagerty, told media that Trump discussed the Indo-Pacific concept with Prime Minister Abe Shinzo. The Indo-Pacific concept was the brainchild of Abe; and there were two major disagreements between the American and the Japanese understanding of the concept. Abe was keen that the Indo-Pacific concept should cover Eurasia and the African con tin en treplicating the expanse of the BRI. Trump, on the other hand, was not interested in going westwards beyond the 1 0 R. Moreover, Japan was not keen to give importance to security over development. It was not enthused about the US’s Quad, which in China was viewed as a militarized mechanism of the Indo-Pacific strategy. Given Japan’s bilateral problems with China, Abe was not interested in the elevation of Quad as anything more than a political talking group. This was not palatable to the Trump administration which was determined to showcase its muscle through the Quad to assuage anxieties of the regional nations about China. India too was sceptical about Quad. After the Wuhan understanding was reached with China in April 2018, Modi, in his keynote address at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on 1 June 2018, had said: ‘India does not see the Indo-Pacific region as a strategy or a club of limited members. And by no means do we consider it as directed against any country [China].’ Modi proposed a different vision of the Indo-Pacific concept, which was dissimilar to the US, but was in line with Abe’s thinking. However, not willing to displease the US too much, India’s foreign minister, S. Jaishankar, speaking in Moscow on 28 August 2019, gave an expanded version of his government’s Act East policy. This, he said, had matured into the Indo-Pacific policy. He, nevertheless, made it known that he was referring to the economic aspects. What came out of all this was an inherent dissonance in India’s policy. One the one hand, Modi’s Act East policy differed from the earlier Look East policy in terms of giving importance to security issues. On the other hand, the new IndoPacific policy emphasized economic issues over security matters. Coincidentiy, the Biden administration came to power when India was confronted with the Chinese challenge in Ladakh. The US supported

India by providing the bulk of high-altitude clothing needed for the sudden accretion of Indian forces to the disputed border, and with intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, Having already signed the US’s four military foundational agreements by the end of the Trump presidency, India finally decided to go the whole hog in becoming a part of the US’s deterrence. Having acquired the tag of the US’s Major Defence Partner in 2016, the visit of US Pentagon chief, Lloyd Austin, to India in March 2021 would go down in history as the point of no return for military relations between India and the US. Austin started his India visit with a meeting with Prime Minister Modi. He also met Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, who said after the meeting, ‘We reviewed the wide gamut of bilateral and multilateral exercises and agreed to enhanced cooperation with the US Indo-Pacific Command, Central command and Africa command. Acknowledging that we have in place the foundation agreements, LEMOA [Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement], COMCASA [Communication Compatibility and Security Agreement] and BECA [Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement], we discussed steps to be taken to realise their full potential for mutual benefit.'*3 India had decided to be a part of what the US Pentagon chief, Llyod Austin, calls ‘Integrated Deterrence’. It differs from the traditional US ‘deterrence’ in three ways: one, it is about preparing for the future Mosaic or Algorithmic war (against the PLA) involving Joint All Domain Operations (JADO) based on Joint All Domain Command and Control (JA D C 2) strategy. Two, it would involve working with allies (Japan, Australia, South Korea, Philippines, and Thailand) and partners (India). And three, the INDOPACOM would work closely with the US’s Central and Africa commands. According to Austin, ‘We must redouble our efforts to work together—with allies and partners, across commands, across services, and across our fiefdoms and stovepipes.’*44 Meanwhile, to provide strategic direction to the new Indo-Pacific

4VLndia, U.S. resolve to deepen strategic cooperation’, The H in d u , 20 March 2021. 44Lloyd J. Austin III, ‘Opinion: The Pentagon must prepare for a much bigger theater of w ar’, Washington Post, 5 May 2021.

strategy for ‘Integrated Deterrence’, the Biden administration formalized the Quad by holding its first (virtual) summit meeting in March 2021, a physical one in September 2021 in Washington and second virtual meeting in March 2022. Holding two summit meetings in one year, and deciding to make it an annual feature was exceptional and signalled militarization of the Quad. While addressing the need to define the ‘rules-based order’ for the Indo-Pacific strategy to provide security to the SLOCs across the Western Pacific and Indian Ocean, the main agenda would be to strengthen Integrated Deterrence for success of the INDOPACOM. India and the US’s Integrated D eterrence India came a long way from being a net security provider in the IOR in 2014 to becoming a part of the US’s ‘Integrated Deterrence’ by March 2021. The bulk of this journey was done under the Modi government starting 2014. To put the relationship into perspective, India and the US had been doing military exercises, with a focus on navy-to-navy exercises since 1992. The Malabar series of naval exercises have been carried out both bilaterally and trilaterally (US, India, and Japan). The understanding among Indian naval brass of what was required from these exercises was that the US wanted India to become the net security provider in the IOR. Never spelt out by either side, this term was assessed in India as helping smaller littoral nations with non-traditional threats like disaster relief, anti-piracy, anti-terrorism, and so on. But what the US had in mind was entirely different. According to Admiral Harris ‘The US wants India to be the pivot in the IOR. We want to do joint combat patrols with India.’ As mentioned earlier, this was accomplished in April 2022 when India and the US decided ‘to undertake sea patrols (combat patrols), whether in a joint or coordinated manner’.45 This was the ultimate step which took the US thirty years (1992 to 2022) to complete, from basic naval manoeuvres to combat patrols under the Malabar naval exercises bilaterally and with the other . ^Sundhya Ramesh, ‘Modi’s Balakot "cloud cover” theory fails our accuracy test 100%’, 7 he P rint, 13 May 2019.

analysis of these five missteps will put this erosion of professionalism into perspective.

Counter-insurgency/counterterror Operations in J& K As early as 1999, the army had realized that unending C I/C T operations were taking a toll on its conventional capabilities. Lieutenant General Mohinder Puri, who had to reorient his troops within days to switch from Cl ops to conventional war during the 1999 Kargil conflict, noted, ‘While Cl ops require immediate and expeditious response with rapid planning lest militants run havoc, conventional ops require deliberate and unwavering coordination not only amongst those assaulting, but also with the array of supporting arms and services, including the Air Force/25 The post-Kargil Review Committee had a similar realization. It observed in its 2000 report that, ‘Twelve years (since 1990) of crossborder proxy war was deliberately designed by Pakistan to offset the perceived overall conventional superiority of the Indian Army since deployment in counter-terrorist operations disrupts the normal training programme of the army and adversely impacts on its mind-set and state of readiness/26 Pakistan was aware of this shortfall. A former director general of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence said in 1999, ‘The Indian Army is incapable of undertaking any conventional operations at present, what to talk of enlarging conventional conflict’.27 This situation has not changed. Even today the Indian Army does not have credible counter-offensive capability to take the war across the LoC. Despite all this, the army persisted with C I/C T ops. This was the time when the US war on terror, in both Afghanistan and Iraq, was

wLt Gen Mohinder Puri, ‘How raw courage and grit triumphed’, The Tribune, 25 July 2014. ^Kargil Review Committee, From Surprise to Reckoning: The Kargil Review Committee Report, New Delhi: SAGE Publications, 2002, p. 76. J7Lt Gen Javed Nasir, 'Calling the Indian Army Chief’s bluff’, Defence Journal, FebruaryMarch 1999.

underway. Phrases like low-intensity conflict operations (LIC O ) and counterinsurgency (COIN) were being bandied about. Hence, it was not difficult to elevate the Indian Army’s internal security operations in Kashmir to real warfighting, at least theoretically. Oblivious to the Indian Army’s capitulation, Pakistan president General Pervez Musharraf, who was deeply involved in the US war in Afghanistan, was worried about the Indian offensive action on the eastern flank. In a masterstroke, he proposed a ceasefire on the LoC. The Government of India accepted it. The ceasefire came into effect on 26 November 2003. With the silencing of the guns on the LoC, the battlefront became an extended peace station. The ceasefire ended the debate on what military posture—offensive with tactical level defence or total defence—the army should adopt. The matter was resolved when army chief General N. C. Vij ordered the Northern Command to fence the LoC. The fence was erected at a breakneck pace in the 15 and 16 Corps sectors. Interestingly, the Pakistan Army did not disrupt the construction as it had years ago when the Border Security Force (B S F ) was building the fence on the International Border. The explanation given was that because of the meandering nature of the LoC, the fence was well inside Indian territory, sometimes up to 5 km inside (hence, at a distance from Pakistan). This was illogical given that the LoC is a military line, susceptible to change by military force. The only reason the Indian Army was able to construct the fence in record time was because the Pakistan Army allowed it to do so. Interestingly, the Indian Army also understood this. According to army chief General S. Padmanabhan (General Vij’s predecessor): ‘When Vij asked my opinion on the fence, I told him that this idea had been there since 1993. The reason why it had not been implemented so far was that it was unsuited for the terrain along the LC. Moreover, a fence would instil a defensive mind-set in our troops/28 Yet, despite the fence (which has been reinforced several times), the 2016 surgical strikes against the terrorist camps inside POK, revocation

28‘It's no Wall: The Fence has added pressure on the army at the L oC ’, F O R C E , November

2005

of Articles 370 and 35A from the state ofJ& K in 2019, and the Covid-19 pandemic, the terrorist camps in POK remained full. In an interview to PTI in May 2020, GOC 15 Corps, Lieutenant General B. S. Raju, said, ‘Hie back of terrorism is virtually broken. Because of the success in eliminating terrorists operating in the hinterland, we expect crossborder infiltration to increase in the summer season.... I anticipate more attempts to replenish the depleting cadres.... All the terrorist camps and around 15 Iaunchpads in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PO K ) are full.129 In January 2021, he said that infiltration was down by 70 per cent.30 And yet the army insists that it is not time to quit CT ops. Clearly, the only thing that the fence has successfully achieved is instilling the Maginot mentality' in the army. Any worthwhile military commander will attest that a fortification induces a false sense of security and stifles offensive spirit and offensive action. To give C I/C T ops a professional mandate, the army released its ‘sub-conventional warfare doctrine’ in January 2007, inspired by the US doctrine/operational manual for counter-insurgency. C I/C T ops had officially become one of the army’s primary roles, which would have higher priority over hot war. By 2009, the basic training at army schools of instructions was changed from teaching tactics for conventional war to CT ops. The message for young men aspiring to become army officers was that CT ops would be their main task. Once this happened, there was no turning back. Even when the political leadership periodically reviewed the possibility of reducing the military numbers from the valley, the army hierarchy always found an excuse to thwart it. Officers who said that army needed to get back to its primary job were stonewalled.31 After the 2008 state assembly elections, which went off peacefully with a record voter turnout, Kashmiri politician Omar Abdullah, whose National Conference party was expected to win, declared that ‘[i]n

” Ghazala Wahab, ‘The Quicksand of Kashmir’, FORCE, August 2020. 3c"LoC infiltration down by 70%, surrender policy for terrorists in the works: Army’, Hindustan Times, 17 January 2021. 1:Sawhney and Wahab, Dragon On Our Doorstep, p. 198.

view of peaceful elections, there is a case to be made for force (army) reduction in the state and a gradual increase in the role of the J&K police.... There are areas now where this gradual withdrawal can take place.../32 He repeated this once he became the chief minister. In an interview to FORCE magazine in December 2009, he said, T believe that the revocation of AFSPA will happen in this government’s term.... [T] he discussions to modify AFSPA are at a very advanced stage/33 He was referring to his conversations with Home Minister P. Chidambaram, who was keen that the army be progressively withdrawn from Cl ops in J&K. However, the army leadership was determined that its internal security role would be permanent. It didn’t help that the peace process between India and Pakistan had unravelled with the shocking Mumbai terrorist attack on 26 November 2008.34* Though it had nothing to do with Kashmir, the national sentiment was favourably disposed towards the military, which was seen as the saviour of Mumbai. The government sensed that any move perceived as against the wishes of the army would be seen as insensitive. Hence, when the government sought the army’s opinion, it reiterated its Cl ops role. In a Unified Headquarters meeting held in Kashmir in November 2011 chaired by Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, the 15 Corps commander, Lieutenant General Ata Hasnain, gave a presentation to the assembled officials from the state police, CRPF, and the Intelligence Bureau. One of his slides read: ‘while the State people were seeking bijli, sadak, paani (electricity, roads, water), calls for lifting the AFSPA were coming from four categories: Pakistan, the Inter-Services Intelligence

32‘“Not Only is There a Case for Phased Withdrawal of the Rashtriya Rifles but also Review of the A F(SP)A as well as the Disturbed Area A ct’: FORCE met Omar Abdullah on December 23, a day before the last phase of J&K poll’, F O R C E , January 2009. ^ ‘“In the short term, we need the modification in A F(SP)A , but I would like to believe that in the course of my term the situation will improve so much that there will be no need for this Act: Chief minister Jammu & Kashmir”, Omar Abdullah’, F O R C E , January 2010. '■ •Government of India, ‘Mumbai Terrorist Arracks (November 2 6 -2 9 ,2 0 0 8 )’, Intelligence Resource Program, Federation of American Scientists, available at < https://fas.org/ irp/eprint/inumbai.pdf>.

pirectorate, terrorists and secessionists/35 A miffed Abdullah told the corps commander to leave the slide behind so that he could see ‘where I fit in’.36 Meanwhile, the army also roped in a set of retired general cadre officers to write articles in the media, setting new benchmarks. The first one w'as on the US drawdown from Afghanistan by the end of 2015. The army argued that once the US forces left Afghanistan, the Taliban would have a free run, and Pakistan would transfer the hardened fighters from Afghanistan to Kashmir. A year later, the bar was set even higher, by a person no less than a former army chief, General Vij. Writing in a national newspaper, he said that AFSPA can only be revoked once normalcy returns to Kashmir. And what would count as a sign of normalcy? When ‘Kashmiri Pandits will feel confident enough to return../ wrote the general.37 The Indian Army’s and the Government of India’s interest coalesced in 2014, when the Modi government officially pronounced terrorism as the main threat facing India.38 The army’s role in CT ops now had government sanction. Encouraged by the government, the army gave itself additional responsibilities—the integration of the Kashmiri people into the national mainstream. In an article for a defence magazine, which was uploaded to the Indian Army website, a former GOC Corps wrote: ‘With very few terrorists left to eliminate, the path conflict termination and ultimate victory over the adversary lies smart operations where the contributory effort towards integration

15 to in of

the population is most focused. The task of the RR (Rashtriya Rifles) is to mainstream the entire J&K with rest of the nation. Until that happens the RR is there to stay in the state of J& K /39 It’s very clear that the biggest challenges facing the Indian Army “ Pravecn Swami, ‘Array raises “secession” spectre to counter plan to lift AFSPA’, The H ind u , 1 J November 2011.

“ Ibid. 37General N. C. Vij, ' Dilution is no answer’, In d ia n Express, 17 January 2014. “ ‘PM warns Defence chiefs of “invisible enemies”’, H in d u BusinessLine, 17 October 2014. 19Lc Gen Syed Ata Hasnain, ‘Rashtriya Rifles: 'Ihe Fearless Force’, D efen ce Secu rity A lert, January 2015, pp. 2 2 -2 4 .

today are its own mindset and vested interests, perpetrated by the growing tribe of retired officers. Having spent most of their military career chasing nameless, faceless insurgents, these officers-turnedanalysts understood that CT operations were a sure wTay of instant recognition, which continues to yield dividends post-retirement. With time the officers also realized that CT ops had other concomitant benefits—opportunities for corruption,40 power (including over local politicians), and access to the national political leadership, which in many cases has accrued post-retirement appointments as governors,41 ambassadors,42 advisors, and so on. To elevate the level of CT ops in J&K, these military analysts progressively coin new terms—‘attack by infiltration’, ‘low-intensity conflict’, ‘proxy war’, ‘irregular warfare’, etc. Of course, successive governments of India have played a big role in this. To avoid resolution of the Kashmir issue (for various reasons, including political), preferring to maintain status quo, they incentivized CT ops.43 This was done in several ways—from instituting new categories of awards/rewards and additional monetary compensation to lionizing personnel engaged in CT ops. The biggest example of this was the deep selection of Lieutenant General Bipin Rawat as chief of army staff superseding two more senior officers.44 Subsequendy, Rawat was elevated as India’s chief of defence staff. The message to the military was obvious—CT ops in Kashmir will accrue incomparable benefits. 40M. Saleem Pandit, ‘Array captain “stage-managed” J& K encounter fo r?20 lakh’, Times o f In d ia , II January 2021. Also see, ‘CBI names 7 army officers, 16 others in corruption

case involving recruitment of candidates’, F re e Press K ashm ir, \6 March 2021; and Patricia Gossman, 'Behind the Kashmir conflict’, H u m a n Rights Watch, July 1999. 4,Smita Gupta, T 5 Governors are former civil servants, police officers, Army men’, The H in d u , 12 March 2013. Also see, PTT, ‘Nirbhay Sharma sworn-in as new Governor of

Mizoram’, In d ia n E xp ress , 26 May 2015. ^Elizabeth Roche, ‘Ex-army chief Dalbir Singh Suhag appointed India high commissioner to Seychelles’, M int, 25 April 2019. 4 Revised Rates Of Risk And Hardship Allowances/Concessions’, available: h ttp s:// www.mod.gov.in/dod/sites/default/fites/Rcvisedrates.pdf +‘Ajai Shukla, ‘Controversy Clouds Out-Ol-Turn Appointment of Bipin Rawat as Next Army Chief’, 7 he W ire , 19 December 2016.

VA

The biggest consequence of this has been the erosion of the army’s conventional war-fighting capabilities. Preparing for conventional war is not only complex—because one must keep abreast of technological and doctrinal developments among the adversaries—it also requires deep thinking and planning. CT ops only require repetition of the standard operating procedures. Once the government and the army leadership accepted that CT ops were the only war that it needs to ,prepare for, it progressively whittled away the intellectual capability of the service to such an extent that it is unable to comprehend global developments in warfare. Developing intellectual capacity is a slow and multipronged process. While basic intelligence is indeed a prerequisite, unless that intelligence is honed through the rigours of learning, training, practising, and reflection, it remains basic. Unfortunately, the Indian Army is doubly disadvantaged here. The army is not the first choice for most young people seeking a career. Apart from those who come from a military background or government-run quasi-preparatory institutions, such as Sainik Schools, not many join the army if they have other options.45 With this kind of intake, the only hope for intellectual development is through learning and training. However, conscious of the fact that its pool of young officers is not the brightest, the army hierarchy works on ensuring that they do not indulge too much in independent reading and thinking.46 Add to this the training that is geared entirely towards combating zealous but ill-trained and ill-equipped insurgents, it is no surprise that over the last two decades the intellectual profile of the army has diminished rapidly.47 In all the earlier wars, victory came through the valour of individual officers and men who unquestioningly sacrificed their lives on the orders of their superiors. But the war of the future will have no place for such .

Surgical Strikes: 29 Septem ber 2016

When DGMO Lieutenant General Ranbir Singh told the media on the afternoon of 29 September 2016 that after carrying out the ‘surgical strikes’ against terrorist launch pads in POK the previous evening, he had ‘just spoken to the Pakistani Director General of Military Operations and explained our concerns and also shared with him the operations we had conducted last night’,57 implicit in the statement was Indian anxiety about Pakistan’s retaliation. To make doubly sure that Pakistan understood that the ‘surgical strikes’ were carried out for domestic consumption and that there were no hard feelings between the two nations, Singh made sure that his words were unambiguous. He told the media, ‘The operations aimed at neutralizing the terrorists have since ceased. We do not have any plans for continuation of further operations/58 Any lingering doubts about the Indian government’s confidence in its armed forces’ capability to take on Pakistan in case it retaliated was removed by the presence of the spokesperson from the Ministry of External Affairs, Vikas Swarup. Swarup opened and closed the press conference saying no questions will be taken. His presence implied that India had also pushed diplomatic buttons to mollify Pakistan. That afternoon, I got a call from the editor of the edit page of a leading national daily. He asked me to write an article on the surgical strikes, which I duly sent to him the same evening. I made four key points in my article. One, a surgical strike is carried out against legitimate military targets. In this case: the Pakistan Army. The term ‘surgical’ implies swift and clean military operation with minimal collateral damage. Yet, it must have demonstrative impact at strategic (policymaking) or operational (warfighting) level. Two, surgical strikes are predominantly carried out by the Special Forces and have an element of deniability. The country carrying out ^ ‘India’s surgical strikes across LoC: Full statement by DC7MO Lt Gen Ranbir Singh’, Hindustan Times, 29 September 2016.

"Ibid.

the strike does not admit to it, least of all, confess to it voluntarily, as India did. It is the country against who the strikes are carried out that makes noise about it, protesting at the highest level, depending on how impactful the strike was. Three, for the sake of surprise and precision, air operations are the preferred means of surgical strikes whether by precision missile attack or insertion of special forces through an airborne platform, for example, the US operation against Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. In some cases, the troops are subsequently also extricated by air. Ground-based, shallow cross-border operations are called raids by militaries the world over. The Indian Army also used to call them raids through the 1990s when such operations across the LoC were commonplace. The target of such raids was always the Pakistan Army. The latter too used to conduct raids against Indian Army positions. Four, if indeed a surgical strike is carried out as claimed by the Indian Army, then the retaliation would be swift and proportionate, because for the Pakistan Army, operational parity with India is critical. In this case, far from retaliating, Pakistan denied the occurrence of the strike. All of the above suggest that the government had just given a fancy name to a low-level and shallow CT op across the LoC for political purposes. My article was not accepted. Instead, staring at me from the editorial page of the aforementioned newspaper was a congratulatory article by a retired lieutenant general. An old Kashmir hand, he understood the dynamics of the LoC well. He had also been a part of a few cross-border raids that I had alluded to in my article, but the general had chosen to not mention them. What he mentioned was the bold leadership of the prime minister that has trickled down the rank and file of the army, filling them with enthusiasm and risk-taking. According to the officer, the surgical strike was unique and showed how the Indian Army was capable of hitting hard at a time and place of its choosing. I called up the editor to ask why my article was not accepted. He was candid. Your article was against the national mood, he told me. And the national mood was that of exultation. The mainstream media, both print and television, carried quasi-fictional reports detailing

lo w the surgical strikes were planned and carried out in the dark of die night. While some claimed that ALH Dhruv was used to drop the troops across the LoC ,59 others showed the visuals of the helicopters on the screen, thereby suggesting, without actually saying, that helicopters were used. As the government allowed the charade to play out, it b e c a m e clearer that the message of the surgical strikes was not meant for Pakistan, but for Indians. Lest it be accused of lying on the record, the government let the truth out in instalments over the next few days. First the minister of state for Information and Broadcasting and former army officer Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore clarified in an interview60 that the surgical strikes ‘did not involve any aerial operations’ and that the Indian Army crossed the LoC on the ground for ‘pre-emptive strikes’. ‘That is not like crossing the international border/ he said.61 A few weeks later, on 18 October 2016, Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar (now foreign minister), told the Parliamentary committee on external affairs that the army ‘had carried out target specific, limited calibre, counter terrorist operations (across the Line of Control)’. He added that they had been done in the past too, except this time the government had made them public.62 None of this, however, stopped sundry ministers and retired army officers from equating the 29 September CT ops with a battle victory. In an article in FORCE, former DGMO Lieutenant General Vinod Bhatia wrote, ‘The military option finally exercised has raised the bar. Pakistan can no longer perpetuate terror strikes in India with impunity.... For the

^Manjeet Negi, ‘Surgical strikes in PoK: How Indian para commandos killed 50 terrorists, hit 7 camps', India Today, 29 September 2016. MPuja Mehra, ‘Rathore rules out use of copters, aerial strikes', The H in d u , 30 September 2016. Also see, ‘Backtracking: India says no helicopters used in "surgical strikes'", E xp ress Tribune, 30 September 2016.

6lSince LoC is a military line, militaries on both sides have frequently crossed it for small tactical operations like raids. An international border has legal sanctity. Violations are regarded as acts of war. wPravin Sawhney, ‘It’s time India moves beyond the so-called “surgical strikes’”, F O R C E , January 2021.

first time, the military has been permitted to launch punitive operations across the LC. Even during the Kargil war in 1999, the Indian Army and the Indian Air Force (IA F) were not permitted to cross the L C /63 The prime minister himself said during different occasions how anxious he had been on the night of the strikes, that he couldn’t sleep a wink. Thereafter, in September 2017, the government decided to celebrate its perceived victory by holding Parakram Parv exhibitions at fifty-three locations in fifty-one cities across the country. Prime Minister Modi attended the exhibition at a military station in Jodhpur. In this din of cacophonic nationalism, a mildly contrarian voice was finally heard on 1 October 2017 from former army commander, Northern Command, Lieutenant General D. S. Hooda, to who the credit of planning and executing the surgical strikes appeared on a news programme commemorating the strikes.64 He said that it all started with the Indian Army’s successful counter-border operation in June 2015 against NSCN-K terrorists hiding in Myanmar by then 3 Corps commander, Lieutenant General Bipin Rawat. The killing of about thirty-eight terrorists in a flash operation got the Indian Army wondering what if the government asked it to conduct similar operations on the LoC against Pakistan, he explained To prepare for such a probability, the two special forces regiments under Northern Command were trained in Udhampur in the winter of 2015-16. The 18 September 2016 attack on the Uri brigade set in motion what Hooda called a ‘revenge operation’.65 Within hours, New Delhi gave the go-ahead, allowing Hooda to decide the plan, its execution, and timing. By now, Rawat, the hero of the Myanmar strike was in Delhi as the vice chief to General Dalbir Singh, who did not mind Rawat talking over his shoulder to the political leadership through NSA Ajit Doval, with who he had personal association, being from the same district.66 63Lt Gen Vinod Bhatia, 4'Ihe Elephant Strikes Back’, F O R C E , October 2016. “ Republic World, ‘Lt Gen DS Hooda On Nation Wants To Know With Arnab Goswami’, YouTube,

1 October 2017, available at < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v==QI-

6Av3mjoA> . “ Sawhney, ‘It's time India moves beyond the so-called “surgical strikes’”. “ ‘This district is the birthplace of many Indian W IP s ’, E co n o m ic T im a , 21 March 2017.

The Hooda plan, which required special forces to cross the LoC at multiple points across the Pir Panjal Range (covering both 15 and 16 Corps' zone of operations), to strike at launch pads 3 km to 5 km across the military line, had ‘simplicity of purpose’. Since Pakistan was not Myanmar, the planning, execution, and contingency arrangements had to be considered meticulously and secretively. How to extricate the special forces teams if the Pakistan Army got wind of the operations? Should more special forces be sent across, or should the IAF be used for extrication? To finalize many of these finer details, Hooda made three secret visits to Delhi in seven days, where he met with the army chief and others (who he did not name). Once the finer details of the operation were cleared by Delhi, it was left to Hooda to conduct the execution. When asked, Hooda said he did not know if the IAF bases were put on alert. Obviously, they were not, for it was a small operation. Hooda kept in constant touch with the commanding officers of the two regiments who executed it. The launch was postponed by a day by Hooda and Delhi was kept in the loop. Finally, the special forces teams crossed the LoC around ‘midnight of September 2 8 -2 9 and in five-and-half-hours the operation was done; with all soldiers counted back’. Finally, Hooda remarked that ‘surgical strikes were overhyped and politicised’.67 That, perhaps, was an understatement. The surgical strikes remained a subject of election campaigning for the next three years,68 and retired military officers helped the government glorify it. In early 2019, a Hindi film, Uri, which was a semi-fictional account of the operation, was released. Interestingly, the film started with the June 2015 counterborder operation against NSCN-K terrorists in Myanmar and climaxed with the prime minister hosting the heroic military officers at a formal banquet after the successful culmination of the POK surgical strikes. The film, a runaway success that came out a few months before the campaign for 2019 general elections was to start, was made with the

67RepubIic World, ‘Lt Gen DS Hooda On Nation Wants To Know’. MSujata Anandan, ‘When surgical strikes become a poll issue’, H industan Times, 9 October 2016.

cooperation of the Indian military, whose officers trained actors to walk and talk like soldiers.69 That the army was working alongside the political party, probably mistakenly conflating party with the government, was too obvious to ignore. Dokiam: 16 June to 28 August 2017 On 7 July 2017, around noon, eighteen days into the stand-off between Indian and Chinese troops on the Dokiam plateau (Dong Lang in Chinese), I got a call from the defence section of the Chinese embassy in New Delhi. The assistant defence advisor was on the line. ‘Would you like a briefing on the crisis?’ he asked. ‘Of course,’ I said. The meeting was fixed for 3 p.m. that day. At the appointed hour, I was met by two Chinese officials from the defence section. Just as we settled in, a senior Chinese diplomat70 walked in. We had barely shaken hands when he broke into an agitated monologue. ‘We [China] had informed the local Indian Army commander at flag meetings [at Nathu La] twice, once in May and then in the first week of June, that we would construct a road in Dong Lang. We need to do this to facilitate patrolling by our troops. Dong Lang belongs to us. In the 90s, Indians had pressed Bhutan to claim the area as theirs. Now, the Modi government is trying to deny China’s claim [by blocking our road construction].’ If Dong Lang belongs to China, what was the need to inform India? I asked. ‘We did that to build trust with India. Look, China always reaches out, but India misjudges China.’ In the same vein, he added, ‘Instead of talking with us, the Indian Army blocked our road construction party on the morning of 18 June. It sent 270 troops 153 m inside our territory. This is the first time* *9$anyukta Iyer, ‘Vicky Kaushal to play a Para Commando in Uri’, M u m b a i M irro r , 25 May 2013. ;t,I was requested not to name the official.

;fkat foreign troops have come into Chinese territory. Your previous governments recognized Sikkim as border, but the Modi government £as betrayed that understanding/ The meeting was less of a briefing and more of a rant, as the diplomat vented his anger and frustration over what he believed was Indian intransigence. ‘Your government told us that Bhutan had asked them to strengthen security in Doklam. This is a lie. We checked with the Bhutanese, they denied inviting Indian troops. The Bhutanese ambassador [to India] came to meet our envoy [in Delhi].’ According to the Chinese diplomat, the Indian Army had moved about 3,000 troops to east Sikkim border in a three-layer formation. Given that they were moving more troops into Sikkim from other areas, China also had to strengthen its troops in the area. With additional troops on both sides, the situation had clearly become volatile. ‘Our soldiers are losing sleep and patience. They are angry at the aggression on Chinese territory. It will not be very long before someone pulls the trigger which could start a war. Since flag meetings have not helped, we want diplomatic channels to resolve the problem. But there will be no talks until India pulls back its troops from our territory/ he said. ‘You must understand that by breaching security of the recognized border under the 1890 treaty, India has broken the status quo. This will open a Pandora’s Box since the foundation of the border talks71 would become null and void. China might also be forced to change its position on Sikkim/ Pausing neither for a question nor an interjection, the diplomat continued, ‘Your government thinks that it can do a surgical strike on China. This will not be possible. You are not the superpower that you regard yourself to be. Indian foreign policy is opportunistic, obdurate, and arrogant. You overstate your strength/ He insisted that China does not recognize India’s privileges in Bhutan, despite the security agreement between the two nations.

71Special Representative talks started ic 2003 and nineteen rounds of border talks had been held until March 2022.

‘Bhutan is a sovereign country and should be allowed to take its own decisions. The present issue is a bilateral one between China and Bhutan/ he insisted. I asked if the Indian troops were to go back, would China stop construction? 'No. We will not stop the construction on our side/ he asserted. ‘Dong Lang is our territory/ The ‘briefing’ with Chinese characteristics was over. Walking me to the gates of the embassy, the junior official broke into a smile. ‘China does not want war with India/ he said to soften the effect of the threat implicit in the diplomat’s tone. ‘He spoke like that because we feel let down by the Modi government. The Indian government should have accepted the invitation for talks sent by us though the local commanders/ he said, adding a line of caution. ‘Please don’t name the diplomat as we don’t want bilateral relations to worsen further. He spoke to you frankly so that you could put across our case to the Indian people/ On my way back, I mulled over this unexpected meeting. Some things were obvious. One, China did not want war. Two, it would not stop construction even after the crisis was over. And three, it was not seeking a tactical outcome from the crisis; it clearly had something else in mind. Did India understand what the crisis was about? Was that the reason that the Indian Army had dug in its heels, risking a conflict, even if localized? However, the question that baffled me the most was why China was beating the war drums, indicating that it could go to war on the Doklam issue? The Doklam stand-off—called Operation Juniper72—was a tactical level army action. On the morning of 16 June 2017, a Chinese party with road construction material (bulldozers) and few unarmed border guards73 arrived in the Doklam area and started constructing a road towards 72Juniper is a tree that grows in Sikkim. It is the official sign of 17 Mountain Division (with four brigades) based in Gangtok, capital of Sikkim. 72Border guards are regular PLA troops. Their mandate is not operational (war), but reconnaissance, patrolling, and providing the first line of defence. This was clarified to me by the PLA's .Senior Colonel Dorg during my August 2017 visit to Beijing.

too

the Jampheri Ridge, which provides access to the Siliguri Corridor in north Bengal. While the Chinese foot patrols had been coming until the Jampheri (which has a permanent Royal Bhutanese Army post) in the summer months since 2007, this was the first time that road construction was being attempted to facilitate patrolling in vehicles. Immediately, GOC, 17 Mountain Division, Major General Tejbir Singh instructed commander, 63 Mountain Brigade, Brigadier Gambhir Singh to speak with the Chinese party. Unarmed and unescorted, the brigadier walked up to the Chinese official and explained to him that road construction towards south Doklam was unacceptable; that it was in violation of the standstill agreements—between India and China (2012), China and Bhutan (1988 and 1998)—and security-related treaty obligations between India and Bhutan (2007). The Chinese ignored Indian interjections. So on 18 June, nearly 270 armed Indian soldiers of 9 J& K Light battalion with two bulldozers rolled down from the Doka La (Duo Ka La in Chinese) post and blocked the Chinese construction party. The rest of the battalion was deployed along the international border just in case the PLA retaliated by entering Sikkim. Standing shoulder to shoulder, the two lines confronted each other. Each unarmed Indian soldier did a twelve-hour shift. No hostile incidents were initiated by either side and troops behaved in a civilized manner. This routine was followed for seventy-two days when disengagement was ordered by both sides. However, China alleged that the Indian forces had come 153 m inside its territory. Terming this an infringement of its sovereignty, China demanded that Indian forces go back to Duo Ka La post in eastern Sikkim. Sikkim, according to China, had been delimited (agreed on maps) under the 1890 convention relating to Sikkim and Tibet between China and Great Britain. Consequently, the Chinese foreign ministry released a fifteen-page factsheet on 30 July 2017. It said: ‘The 1890 convention stipulates that the boundary of Sikkim and Tibet shall be the crest of the mountain range separating the waters flowing into the Sikkim Tcesta and its effluents from the waters flowing into the Tibetan Mochu and northwards into the rivers of Tibet. The line com mences at Mount Gipmochi (known presently as Mount Ji Mu Ma Zhcn) on the

Bhutan frontier and follows the above-mentioned water-parting to the point where it meets Nipal (present Nepal) territory. The convention gives a dear and precise description of the boundary in this sector. 'Ihe actual boundary on the ground follows the watershed and its alignment is easily identifiable.’ 74 Thus, according to the Chinese, its demarcation too war not in doubt. With mutually agreed delimitation and understood demarcation, Sikkim\ as per China, had a settled boundary, which made it the International Border (IB). India contested two claims made by China: that Doklam was its territory, and the border between Sikkim and Tibet was settled. Both these issues, India said, were mentioned in the ‘written common understanding reached between the .special representatives of India and China’ in December 2012. Point 13 of the understanding said that ‘the tri-junction boundary point between India, China and third countries (Bhutan) will be finalised with the concerned countries.’ India and Bhutan said the trijunction (India, China, Bhutan) was at Batang La. Based on actual surveys, Batang La is the point where the Teesta and the Amo Chhu diverge. India said that Bhutan’s boundary with China (Tibet) ran from Batang La to Merug La to Sinche La on the watershed, and then down to the Amo Chhu river. China differed. It said the tri-junction point is Gipmochi (also called Gymochen), which makes Doklam part of Chinese territory. Hence, while India maintained that Bhutan was its neighbour at: Jampheri Ridge, China insisted that it was India’s neighbour at Jampheri. Given these differences, India said, ‘Chinese intrusion at Doklam was a blatant but unsuccessful attempt to unilaterally change the status quo by shifting the India, Bhutan, China tri-junction from Batang La to Gymochen, thereby seriously affecting India’s security interests by enhancing China’s ability to dominate the vulnerable Siliguri corridor (through Jampheri Ridge).’75 '■ •Xinhua, ‘The full text of facts and Chinas position concerning Indian border troops’ crossing of China-India boundary’, China Daily, 3 August '2017. ^Committee on External Affairs (2017-2018), Government of India, ‘22nd Report on Sino-Indiarol.uions including Doklam, Border situation and Cooperation in International Organization of Ministry of External Affairs', I,ok Sab ha (16th), 17 December 2018, p. 18.

The strip of the Siliguri Corridor is what worried India, This anxiety has been one of the reasons for Indian Army troop density in Sikkim. This takes me back to the questions that occurred to me when I left the Chinese embassy as mentioned earlier. Why would the PLA set its troops up for slaughter in the Chumbi Valley funnel when the \ Indian forces hold tactically advantageous heights? Especially since it has long-range accurate missiles, and armed high altitude unmanned aerial vehicles capable for precision hitting (with help from space assets) : targets in the Siliguri Corridor and beyond. : Moreover, why would the PLA initiate a crisis at a point with •; international ramifications (since Bhutan was involved) at a time when I it wanted peace to globally market its BRI that was already under ' deep suspicion? Clearly, the military objectives that the PLA sought ' by creating the Doklam crisis were both urgent and distinctive; and certainly not similar to Depsang (2013) and Chumar (2014) which were ! meant to alter the LAC tactically or to put India under psychological pressure. The Indian military and analysts of the Doklam crisis missed this ; rather simple reason. Having raised the W T C under President Xi Jinping's 2015 military reforms, the PLA needed a reason to bring in a large number of troops into the theatre. Without forces being permanently ■ allocated there, the W T C —which is geographically PLA’s largest theatre command covering Tibet, Sichuan, Gansu, Ningxia, Qinghai, Xinjiang, and Chongqing—was meaningless. Located in TAR, the command is ; responsible for war with India and Bhutan. The W T C headquarters and the joint operations command centre are based in Chengdu. The WTC had two group armies (each group army has six combat arms ' brigades with 6,000 to 8,000 troops), three air force bases, one rocket force base, and People's Armed Police (PAP) units that conduct internal security operations assigned to it. (This was before the Ladakh crisis ' of May 2020.) Before the raising of the W TC , the LAC was held by Chinese border guards, roughly equivalent to India's paramilitary forces. The focus was on building infrastructure for rapid induction (by land and air) of large PLA forces (between 32 to 34 divisions) into TAR. The surveillance

of the LAC was largely by technical means. Training for war in high altitude and mountainous terrain was not a PLA priority. This changed with the raising of the W TC . Two agreements, however, came in the way of fulfilling the objective of W TC. The 1993 and 1996 agreements between India and China prohibited amassment of large forces anywhere close to the LAC by either side without mutual consent. These bilateral agreements were signed by China at the time when the PLA’s priority was to build good border management on the LAC, and its ambitious geo-strategic outreach under Xi Jinping was decades away. Once pressure to inhabit the W T C with allocated troops and war materiel grew, China came up with the Doklam plan: start a military crisis at a place where the Indian Army would feel confident about ratcheting up its numbers, thereby giving an excuse to the PLA to do the same. The place of choice was Doklam plateau, in southern Bhutan. Flanked by army defences, this was the place where India was at a tactically advantageous position, and hence felt compelled to come to Bhutan's defence with which it had a special relationship. For good measure, to incite the Indian Army to build up its forces, China unleashed its ‘wolf warriors’ (aggressive diplomacy) and its state-controlled media— behaviour that was rarely seen before—sounding the war drums against India even as diplomats were busy negotiating peace. So, once there was an accretion of forces on the Indian side, the PLA too, under the garb of self-defence, started increasing its numbers in TAR. After the crisis ended, the Indian Army brought the additional forces back from Doklam. But the PLA did not, arguing that its troops were on its own territory. Thereafter, in the winter of 2 0 1 7 -1 8 , the PLA started building massive infrastructure at a fast pace to permanendy accommodate a large number of troops in TAR. By the middle of 2018, the PLA also started comprehensive, varied, and regular training involving small, medium, and large compositions of thousands of troops in the W TC. The PLA combat training was to generate valuable military or training datasets on operations, logistics, administration, and so on, to train unmanned tanks, guns, humanoid robots, to optimize them

to fight by themselves or in tandem with human soldiers. The training datasets were meant to enable the PLA’s artificial intelligence operations called intelligentized war. (More on this in later chapters.) Why did the Indian Army fail to observe and connect these developments? Why did it rise to the PLA’s bait so aggressively and mindlessly? Ironically, India’s then Eastern Army commander Lieutenant General Praveen Bakshi, said at an interaction one year after superannuation that soon after the raising of the W TC , its new commander had come on a goodwill visit to meet him at his command headquarters.76 The PLA commander told Bakshi that Sikkim had always been a peaceful place. Since the PLA commander had walked the entire area many years ago when there were no Indian Army forces there, he wanted troops to be allowed to patrol the areas. Soon after his visit, the PLA started aggressive patrols in the area, and even destroyed an Indian Army bunker which was outside the border. Bakshi said that his operational commanders noted these developments. It did not occur to Bakshi and his senior staff officers that the PLA commander had come to size him up, and to see if he would ask questions on the W TC raising and possible induction of troops there. This would have cautioned the PLA that its Doklam plan might not work and assuming a tough posture against PLA’s deployments on Doklam, the Indian Army might handle the issue at the local level by holding border talks. This would have ensured that the level of the issue was not raised, and China wouldn’t have got the excuse to increase its numbers on the plateau. Moreover, unmindful of the PLA’s plan, Bakshi also said that ‘while signals coming to him from talks (thirteen rounds) in Beijing were that diplomats were on the de-escalation matrix, he [considering military situations can go out of hand without warning] was on the escalatory ladder [of forces accretion into the theatre].’77 This is what China wanted. Once the PLA accumulated the desired

^Institute of Chinese Studies, ‘ICvS Conversation: Doklam Revisited’, YouTube, 17 September 2018, available at < https://\vww.youtube.corn/watch?v=VpgTN_KuMOU>. "Ibid.

numbers of troops in TAR on the pretext of self-defence, China took a conciliatory approach at the Beijing peace talks. There were three reasons why India fell for the PLA bait. One, once Prime Minister Modi told the military that the primary threat was terrorism in the first commander’s conference in May 2014 as mentioned earlier, the military, especially the army, got further encouragement for focusing only on counterterrorism in J& K Officers with less experience in J& K were sidelined in favour of those who were deemed counterterror experts. All this clearly happened at the cost of understanding China, its strategic culture, evolving thinking, doctrines, technology, and war concepts. Two, high on the supposed success of Uri and the electoral benefits it accrued for the government as mentioned earlier, there was a tacit nod from the political leadership to demonstrate another military victory, the credit for which could be accorded to the firm and no-nonsense leadership of the prime minister. The attempt to create this perception of the Indian Army that showed the PLA its place (a far cry from 1962, when poor and weak leadership led to the army’s humiliation) was so obvious that the Chinese diplomat I mentioned before said that ‘India cannot do a surgical strike against China’. Hence, the Indian Army’s response was driven more by political posturing than genuine appreciation of the military threat. The third reason is historic and predates current levels of politicization. Shortly after independence, the Government of India identified Pakistan as its primary military threat, with China assessed as a rival and a long-term challenge which would be handled diplomatically.78 The Indian military was neither expected nor encouraged to consider China as an adversary. Consequently, the approach of the military towards China has consistently been defensive. This has affected both its interest in and understanding of China’s defence and strategic developments. Even when the army developed the concept of a twofront war, and frequently refers to it, it believes what will ensue is a limited border war with China, as we will see in the next chapter.

7*Sawhney and Wahab, D ra gon On O ur D oorstep, p. 157.

However, all of this is meaningless because even before the seventytwo-day stand-off ended, both sides knew how things would pan out. China wanted permanent deployment of its troops on the plateau dose to India for purposes of acclimatization and training. India wanted to show its domestic audience that it had managed to coerce China.79 The calming of tempers started when Modi met Xi on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, on 7 July 2017 and sought talks to end the stand-off. Xi agreed. After this, there was a climb-down in China's position: from demanding the unconditional withdrawal of Indian troops from Doklam, it agreed to talks to break the impasse. India was keen on an early resolution since protraction of the crisis could lead to complications. In any case, India had decided that Doklam was a victory. Finally, China agreed to move about 150 m away from the stand-off site. In return, it demanded that Indian troops go back to their posts on the ridgeline. However, China made it clear that status quo ante— going back to 16 June 2017 positions when its troops were not on the Doklam plateau—would not be restored. China would not vacate the plateau. W hat’s more, disengagement of troops was not simultaneous. Indian troops first pulled back to the Doka La post, after which the Chinese troops left the stand-off site, pitching their tents 150 m away. For Indian spin-doctors this was enough to claim victory. And experts80 didn’t hold back, even though Modi waited until December 2019 to pat himself on the back.81 In 2018, retired GOC-in-C Western Command, Lieutenant General K, J. Singh, raised rhetorical questions on Twitter and answered them too: ‘Was Doklam successful for those who initiated it? Did China achieve its objectives? It appears we fared better, or at best, stalemated the Dragon at local tactical level.’ The reality, however, is something like this. Between June and December 2017, the PLA constructed seven helipads in north Doklam TAbhijit lyer-Mitra, ‘India is winning Doklam war without firing a single bullet. A policy expert explains how', E co n o m ic Tim es, 13 July 2018. ’°Rajat Sethi, ‘Doklam Is PM Modi’s Biggest Geo-Strategic Win To Date', N D T V , 30 August 2017. 91Archis Mohan, 'In a first, PM Modi comes close to acknowledging “victory0 at Doklam’, Business S ta n d a rd , 4 December 2019.

and deployed medium battle tanks and field artillery assets in the area. It established a permanent presence there with the construction of helipads, upgraded roads, pre-fabricated huts, trenches, shelters, and stores to withstand the chill in the high-altitude region. There were shelters for several dozen armoured vehicles close to the stand-off area. Overhead *ecce satellite imagery showed the PLA occupying almost every nook and com er of the northern side of the plateau. A large number of troops and equipment in semi-permanent structures under camouflage could also be seen. Roads and tracks had been widened and developed all around. Large cranes, earth-moving equipment, and construction material could be seen almost everywhere. There was also a massive build-up of troops just below the conflict area of Doklam. A large number of vehicles were seen parked near the riverside in December 2017. All posts, built both prior to and after the crisis, were connected with well-dug communications trenches. In April 2018, CAS Air Chief Marshal B. S. Dhanoa confirmed that there was ‘significant increase in deployment of Chinese fighter jets' in Tibet. Elaborating, he said, ‘The deployment of Su-27 and J-10 fleets in Tibet for continuous operations during winter months affords them a credible year-round capability.'82 Describing the PLAAF as the world's fastest growing air force, Dhanoa said that half of its fleet would be fourth generation plus (advanced multirole and strike aircraft) with adequate reserves to make up for attrition losses. The air chief emphasised that the PLAAF's multilayered air defence systems allow China to fight a ground campaign without the need for a decisive aerial victory. When chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on External Affairs Shashi Tharoor (2017-18) asked for clarification on Chinese troop build­ up in the vicinity of Doklam, the foreign secretary said, ‘This was part of Bhutan's territory that was disputed with China and was not a dispute between India and China. The limited objective of the action taken by the Indian side was to stop the road construction in close proximity of

8JRahul Singh, ‘China deploying fighters in Tibet, Pakistan backing attacks, says fAF chief’, H industan Times, 27 April 2018.

India-Bhutan border which would have prejudiced the determination of the tri-junction point, and which had security implications for India/83 To sum up, ‘The government has categorically denied that there is any direct threat from Chinese troops presently/84 India woke up to the direct threat from Chinese troops three years later in May 2020 when the Ladakh crisis happened. Had India understood the Chinese motive behind Doklam May 2020 Ladakh would not have happened. The Chinese would have been denied the artificially created crisis for accretion of forces, which had raised the PLA threat level substantially from one of excellent border management to forces-in-being (troops in situ, not requiring a mobilization period). Thus, Ladakh, when it happened, was not an intelligence failure as it was made out by Indian analysts. PLA capability (troops) was already in place; a change in Chinese intention cannot be called an intelligence failure. The government position that there was no threat from the Chinese troops post Doklam was echoed by former GOC, Eastern Army Command, Lieutenant General Praveen Bakshi. Speaking at the interaction in September 2018, he said that those areas (North Doklam and TAR) belonged to China, and it was its prerogative to decide what to do there.85 Bakshi took credit for the army’s action on two counts: it had prevented the PLA from building a road to the Jampheri Ridge, and it had forced the PLA to increase its strength in the TAR. Until now, the PLA lived in comfortable habitats far away from the LAC. They relied on their good infrastructure, technical capabilities (for situation awareness on the TAR), and mobile forces to quickly move forward.86 The Eastern Army commander, Lieutenant General M. M. Naravane (later COAS), gave me the same reasons when I met him at his headquarters in Kolkata on 9 August 2018. He also said that the Indian Army had blocked the PLA road construction party forty-eight hours “Committee on External Affairs (2017-2018), ‘22nd Report on Sino-India relations’, p. 20. “ Ibid. “ Institute of Chinese Studies, ‘Doklam Revisited'. “ Ibid.

before the assessment by the IAF imagery that PLA had planned troops build-up. When I told him that PLA had, since the crisis, increased its strength considerably to about thirteen to fifteen Combined Armed Brigades (each with 5,000 to 8000 troops), he assessed their numbers as eight to ten CABs in TAR. Bakshi, incidentally, was overlooked by the government and was superseded by his junior counterterror expert37 commander Bipin Rawat88 when it came time to decide on the selection of the COAS.8v Rawat was the vice chief of the army during the so-called surgical strikes in 2016, for which he had worked closely with both the Northern Army commander Hooda as well as the PMO. Announcing Rawat’s appointment as chief within three months of the surgical strikes, the government made it clear the kind of the army it desired. And the message reverberated across the three services. Balakot Air Strikes: 26 February 2019 The seeds of the Balakot air strikes, called Operation Bandar, of 26 February 2019, were sown during the 2016 surgical strikes. Three months later, at his last press conference before demitting office as CAS, Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha told the media that the IAF has to focus on deterring terrorist attacks, i.e. fighting sub-conventional threats. ‘We are training large number of personnel for this role. We are tweaking our tactics and are looking at equipment for this role/90 Later during the same press conference, he said, ‘We have received government approval for raising 27 additional flights of Garud/ Garud is the lA F’s commando force akin to the Indian Army’s para commandos. In response to a specific question from FORCE magazine, he said, ‘I*

•7Rawat being a counterterror expert was the official reason given in the Government of India press statement for his selection. MAjai Shukla, ‘Controversy Clouds Gut-Of-Turn Appointment of Bipin Rawat as Next Army Chief, The W ire , 19 Dec 2016. *9Rahul Singh, ‘Superseded Lr Gen Pravcen Bakshi goes on 30-day leave till R-Day’, H industan Tim es , 4 January 2017.

^Ghazala Wahab, ‘The Balance Sheet’, F O R C E , January 2017.

no

am not talking about crossing the border, but there is a lot that we can do within the country/91 Basically, the IAF had offered itself to the government for its ‘mission projectionism’, to get similar publicity and national attention that the army got after the Uri surgical strikes. What was needed was a suitable opportunity. That came with the attack on the CRPF convoy in Pulwama a few months before the 2019 general elections. Much has been written about the daredevilry of the IAF in carrying out aerial strikes deep inside Pakistan. Even those who are circumspect about the actual damage caused by the IA F’s strikes, like Major General Ashok Mehta (retd), insist that it ‘introduced the element of unpredictability and ambiguity but not automaticity in (India's) response’.92 In another article written a year later. Mehta quotes CAS Air Chief Marshal R. K. S. Bhadauria: ‘The IAF has redefined [the] use of air power, changed [the] paradigm of sub-conventional action and response in the subcontinent. It is possible now to take out targets below conventional war threshold, previously considered unviable, by using the IAF and still having escalation control/93 Bhadauria's point about the IAF ‘having escalation control’ against Pakistan is debatable. Between military peer competitors (India and Pakistan), once escalation happens, its control by either side will not be possible. The war will assume dynamics of its own. And unlike the Uri surgical strikes, there is no ambiguity about IAF fighters crossing the LoC and entering POK. The confirmation came from PA F’s swift retaliation the following morning. Like the IAF the previous night, the PAF crossed the LoC and entered Indian territory. It carried out its attack in broad daylight unlike the IAF which went in the dark of the night. While all of this is indisputable, the narration of these facts misses some key issues. First, a few more facts. The IAF chose the Balakot seminary as it was located in a hilly and forested terrain away from9

9Tbid. ,2Maj Gen Ashok K. Mehta (retd), 'Game-Changer or One Off?’, F O R C E , June 2019. JiMaj Gen Ashok K. Mehta (retd), ‘The Jury is Still Out’, F O R C E , April 2020.

in

habitation. The area had the least air defence cover from the PAF to thwart enemy aircraft because it was regarded as an area of no military importance. This meant that the PAF did not think that India would attack this region. The nearest civilian airfield is 40 km away at Muzaffarabad, while the nearest PAF station is over 100 km south in Islamabad. And even though Bahawalpnr is a well-known jeM stronghold, it was not considered for the strike as there were four PAF stations in the vicinity. Since it was peacetime and no war was imminent, it would have taken any professional air force (the PAF is no exception) at least ten to fifteen minutes from detection to reaction and interception. Moreover, the PAF did not have its airborne early warning aircraft in the air (AWACS cannot stay in the air for more than twenty-four hours). Given that it was past midnight, observers manning the ground-based air defence system (GBADS) could not have been vigilant. After all, it is not possible to remain on high alert 24x7 in peacetime. With this knowledge, the IAF’s Mirage-2000, supported by other aircraft within Indian airspace, breached POK airspace, and released precision guided payloads at stand-off ranges well before the PAF could scramble and intercept them. Pakistan was faced with a dilemma. Flow to respond to India’s unprecedented action and restore equilibrium in the balance of conventional power? Should the PAF be used or not? It was decided that the IAF action could only be replied to by the PAF. It would breach Indian airspace but would ensure that Indian military installations close to the LoC were not damaged enough to compel India to raise the ante. The PAF package comprising twenty-four combat aircraft struck the next morning on 27 February with a few breaching Indian airspace. They were challenged and a dogfight ensued, which resulted in the downing of one Indian fighter and the capture of Wing Commander Abhinandan who had to eject from his MiG-21 inside POK. Briefing the media on 27 February evening, Indian military spokespersons said that Pakistan had committed military aggression by seeking to hit military installations. They admitted that it was an act of war. In response to a question on how India would respond to Pakistan’s act of war, one of the spokespersons said that India was prepared for all contingencies. As

it turned out, India did not respond to Pakistan’s act of war’. Clearly, there were gaps in what the government was claiming and what was emerging. According to a recently retired senior IAF officer, this is what happened during the two fateful days.94 The expensive Israeli-made SPICE (Smart Precise Impact and Cost Effective) guidance kits, which were fitted, on 2,000 pounds (about 900 kg) bombs and dropped by Mirage aircraft, converts unguided bombs into smart guided air-to-surlace munitions. Since the distance from the LoC (it was breached in Muzaffarabad sector95) to Balakot is around 40 km, the Mirage would have done shallow breaches and delivered the payload. The air raid would have been over in less than five minutes. The bombs hit Pakistani territory while the Mirage was still in POK airspace. Moreover, SPICE bombs, given their accuracy, require Designated Mean point of Impact (DM I); in this case, it would have been given an area target that would avoid collateral damage. All talk of a ‘new normal’ in CT ops established by the Modi government is just that. It would be nigh impossible for the IAF to do another such.strike against Pakistan during peacetime, without it escalating into war. Moreover, despite labelling Pakistan’s retaliation as act of war, there is only one reason why India quietly accepted it without offensive counter-strikes. The political leadership and the IAF were not prepared for an escalation which could have easily led to a full-blown war, whose dynamics are uncontrollable. The same, however, could not be said for Pakistan which, by its aggression, demonstrated that it was ready for an escalation. The Indian leadership was unprepared for war because it did not understand the dynamics of warfighting, including transition of conventional war to use of nuclear weapons. The Modi government was worried by the powerful message from Pakistan on the day the IAF struck. On 26 February, Pakistan held a meeting of its National Command Authority (NCA), the highest civil-military leaders’ body,

’■‘Conversation with the author, New Delhi. 95‘Balakot: Indian air strikes target militants in Pakistan’, B B C News, 26 February 2019.

chaired by the prime minister, which purportedly decides on nuclear issues. In reality, the purpose of the NCA is limited to signalling, since all aspects of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are controlled by the Pakistan Army. Pakistan has declared full-spectrum nuclear weapons capability for all three—strategic, operational/warfighting, and battles/tactieal— levels of war. The IAF (like the army and the navy) does not have adequate capacity and capability for war escalation; the equipment and ammunition shortages are well-documented and are not hidden from Pakistan. In the aftermath of the strike, the Indian Army’s former DGMO, Lieutenant General Vinod Bhatia, noted on Twitter that Pakistan’s strikes were for ‘domestic compulsions and optics’. cPak air force employed on targets within their artillery range. You never employ air assets where groundbased weapons are effective.’ A statement like this misread the message behind Pakistan’s response. Pakistan’s intention was not to hit a target, it was to respond to an air strike with an air strike, and that too in broad daylight. Had Pakistan responded with land-based artillery systems, the credibility of its air power would have been eroded. This would have signalled that Pakistan would use its nukes early in a war, as it doesn’t have air power to match India. With Operation Swift Retort, Pakistan indicated that it has conventional parity with India, hence it would not need to resort to nuclear weapons early in war. Despite its declared full-spectrum capability, Pakistan’s military, given its elongated geography and many high-profile assets close to the border, would desist from early use of nuclear weapons in war. Nukes are not central to Pakistan’s warfighting. To maintain this posture, Pakistan has to ensure parity at the operational (or warfighting) level of conventional war. What appeared a tit-fortat equal and proportionate response helped maintain conventional warfighting space. In technology-driven modern war, the air force, and not the army, would have primacy for a desirable war outcome. The core competencies of air power comprising its enormous reach, unmatched flexibility, information superiority, precision engagements, and air and space superiority are not available to the land forces.

Once the above objectives were achieved, Pakistan took the moral high ground and returned the captured Indian pilot to establish its bona fides as a nation that did not want war. Pakistan's strategy was supported and influenced by China. Contrary to popular discourse, especially in India, the US, Saudi Arabia, and UAE do not have much influence on Pakistan. The only nation that can persuade Pakistan to review its national security strategy is China. Between India's strikes and Pakistan’s retaliation, its foreign minister Mahmood Qureshi spoke with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi twice. This resulted in China criticizing India’s Balakot strike. The Chinese Foreign Ministry statement released on 28 February said that sovereignty and territorial integrity of all nations should be respected. Going back to the claims made by the Indian government, the fact is that the PA F’s attack on 27 February brought into public domain the critical gaps in the IA F’s capabilities. W hen IAF fighter pilot Abhinandan was chasing the PAF fighter in his MiG-21, he didn't realize he had crossed the LoC and entered Pakistan’s airspace. The voice signal from his ground station urging him to turn back did not reach him in a decipherable manner. Demonstrating superior electronic warfare capabilities, Pakistan had jammed IAF's ground to air communication, Essentially, Abhinandan was flying blind, deaf, and dumb. He could only communicate with his own ground station. Once this frequency was jammed, he had no way of communicating with anyone, including other Indian fighters. A modern fighter aircraft has the ability to communicate through voice and data not only with its own ground station but also with the entire air force network both on the ground as well as in the air through operational data link. However, the IAF does not have this critical capability. Even the most advanced fighter in the world would remain an isolated machine in the air without secure datalinks and control over the electromagnetic spectrum. In an interview to FORCE in October 2020, CAS Bhadauria said, ‘Reliable and real time connectivity across various mediums of operation is essential to network centric operations. The IAF is leading in network operations and have fielded a fully networked pan-India Integrated Air Defence Command and Control System. Networking is a continuous

process with newer domains being added even as we continue to refine existing networks to make them robust and cyber secure. Having operationalised the ground segment of IACCS, we are now in the process of integrating and operationalising the airborne and space segments which will enhance our networking to fight the wars of the future.’96 Pakistan, on the other hard, despite limited numbers of platforms when compared to the IAF, has been focused on capability enhancement instead of merely capability addition. According to Pakistani analyst Shahid Raza: ‘During the past two decades...the PAF maintained a steady pace of modernization—it not only acquired new aircraft but also inducted new capabilities by purchasing high-end assets such as the SAAB 2000 EriEye AEW&C from Sweden, ZDK-03 Karakoram Eagle AWACS from China, SPADA-2000+ surface-to-air missile system from MBDA, AN/TPS-77 Long Range Surveillance Radar system from Lockheed Martin, FALCO UAVs from Italy, IL-78 aerial refuelling tankers from Ukraine, and more recently, JY-27A VHF Radar system from China. During this period, the PAF also attained Nuclear Strike Capabilities to complete the aerial delivery element of the “Minimum Credible Deterrence” strategy/97 According to Raza, even though PAF was the first force in South Asia to get precision weapons, it could not use them against India during the Kargil conflict because the IAF had beyond visual range (BVR) missiles, unlike the PAF. Hence, India could fire its air-to-air missiles from a greater distance, putting PAF missiles at a disadvantage. However, subsequently, the PAF acquired BVR capability, along with a greater number of highly precise weapons, including GPS guided, laser guided, and TV guided98 precision munitions. These were acquired primarily to be used against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan during the US-led war. Hence, not only does the PAF have these superior weapons, it also has experience in using them.99 ^ ‘Interview j Chief of Air Staff Air Chief Marshal Rakesh Kumar Singh Bhadauria VSM, AVSM, VM, ADC’, FO R C E, October 2020. V/Shahid Raza, ‘Lessons from Balakot', F O R C E , December 2019. '“‘Those have inbuilt televisions to direct accurate fire.

•Tbid. lit.

Specific to Operation Swift Retort, Raza says that the PAF has acquired a lot of experience in aerial warfare and use of electronic warfare through the Shaheen series of exercises with China.100 The IAF either was unaware of the PAF’s capability or decided to overlook it. In either case, it points to lack of professional understanding of the adversary. Given that India has traditionally held Pakistan as its primary military threat, why was the IAF so ignorant about its capabilities? Iiow would it have fought had Pakistan raised the ante and caused damage to Indian military facilities instead of 'dead-dropping’ the ammunition? The IAF also underestimated Pakistan’s response. Hence, regular military flying was not restricted. When an IAF utility helicopter took off on a routine sortie on the outskirts of Srinagar, the panic-driven ground controllers mistook it for a Pakistani helicopter and shot it down. If a minor air attack could cause this level of confusion, imagine what would have happened if Pakistan had meant business? Whatever the IA F’s level of understanding of the PAF, it should have known its own strengths and limitations. Why did it then not tell the government that an air strike would expose its capability gaps to both the Indian neighbourhood and the world, undermining its credibility? At the Military Literary Festival held in Chandigarh in 2019, US military analyst Christine Fair questioned lA F ’s claims about the Balakot air strike. ‘No one is questioning that ordnance landed in Pakistan,’ she said. ‘But other things are highly subjective.’101 The reason for the IA F’s foolhardiness became clear from ACM Raha’s comments at his farewell press conference mentioned earlier. Like the army, the air force felt this would give it an opportunity to inveigle itself closer to the government. In this eagerness, it omitted to consider Pakistan’s response, believing that it would get away with the .strikes as the army had with Uri. Finally, three lessons came out of the Balakot air strikes/Op Swift

l0Tbid. I0;.1 12S

two IBGs ‘test bed’ exercises, one each against Pakistan and China.11 ‘Test bed’ refers to validation of Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (T T P ) by actual exercise. With this, the stage was set for him to be appointed India’s first chief of defence staff (CDS)—a position that had been proposed two decades ago by then deputy7 prime minister L. K. Ad van i who headed the Group of Ministers Report on Reforming the Nations? Security System in 2001.u Chief of Defence Staff The four-star general CDS Bipin Rawat wore three hats. One, he was made secretary of a new Department of Military Affairs (DMA)— the fifth department'1—under the Ministry of Defence (MoD). The Government of India (Allocation of Business) Rules, .1961, was amended to bring the DMA into the policymaking loop. The Second Schedule of these rules was also amended for distribution of work between the DoD and DMA. Two, as CDS, he was made the single point military advisor to the defence minister (really, to the PMO). He would also coordinate between the commander-in-chief of the Strategic Force Command and the NSA on nuclear issues. And three, as permanent chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee (PCCOSC), he came to head the conventional war with the three service chiefs as his principal staff officers once theatre commands came into being. Rawat’s main task during his three-year tenure (2020 to 2022) was to bring about jointness within the three services by raising theatre commands to better fight future wars (against China and Pakistan). Before his untimely death in December 2021, Rawat ‘prepared the full “Amrita Nayak Dutra, ‘Tndian Army’s new Integrated Battle Groups to be introduced in early 2020’, The P rin t , 26 November 2019. u‘Group of Ministers’ Report on “Reforming the National Security System'”, Press Information Bureau, Government of India, 22 May 2001, available at . 'T he other four departments are Department of Defence (DoD), Departrnen' of Defence Production (DDP), Department of Defence Research and Development, and Department of ex-servicemen welfare.

draft proposal for the military theatre commands [in November 2020] and gave it to the three service chiefs for comments’—they had till June 2022.14 By the end of his tenure in December 2022, Rawat had wanted the work on theatre commands to begin. What is the need for theatre commands? Rawat believed that since future wars would be at short notice and of short duration, it was necessary that all war domains (army, air force, and navy) should have jointness (where domains fight together and as one whole) and integration for synergy (where each domain has cross-domain capability, making the total more effective than the whole).15 According to him, a theatre commander would have operational advantage. He would be able to assemble a ‘joint force' to achieve a given mission quickly by integrating elements under his command that had trained in peacetime. He need not wait for accretions to be made available to him by the three services to devise their integration and temporary command and control structure for the ordered mission. Since time would be of the essence, without integral assets under a single theatre commander, the mission outcome would be sub-optimal. With theaterization, the command and control would change. Hitherto, the three chiefs retained operational control over their respective services and reported directly to the defence minister on service (force providers) and operational (force employers) matters, with no role for a CDS/PCCOSC. This has changed since the service chiefs are now staff officers to the CDS/PCCOSC. The army, air force, and naval chiefs report to the CDS in his capacity as the PCCOSC. In the interim, before theatre commands are formed, the CDS/PCCOSC would become the operational commander (force employers) while the service chiefs would be reduced to staff officers (force providers). The service chiefs subordinated to the CDS/PCCOSC would advise him on service matters, training, and issues related to human resources before MShishir Gupta, ‘CDS was a fighter and nationalist to the core', H industan Times, 9 December 2021. ‘Tndia Today, ‘CDS General Bipin Rawat On Integrated 'Jheatre Command System & Jammu Drone Attacks’, YouTube, 2 July 2021 available at < https://www.youtube.com/ watch ?v=wwhbsvN 9o_i >.

operational instructions for war are issued by the C D S/PC C O SC s secretariat. Finally, when the theatre commands are formed, the operational control would pass on from the C D S/PC C O SC to the theatre commanders. Eventually, the service chiefs would be staff officers or force providers, the theatre commanders would become operational commanders or force employers, and the C D S/PC C O SC would become an operational coordinator at the strategic level reporting to the defence minister/PMO. Som e Home Truths Some home truths were not known or were deliberately sidestepped by Rawat while formulating his theaterization blueprint to combat a single or two-front war. Rawat spoke about the dual-use formations strategy in a two-front war scenario. According to the army, there would be a primary (say China) and secondary (say Pakistan) front. Most of the army's (and military’s) conventional capabilities were to be earmarked for the primary front with the remaining capabilities to be used to fight a defensive war on the secondary front. Once the primary front was allayed, dual-use formations could be shifted from the primary tp secondary front to fight an offensive war there. This dual-use formations strategy is, to say the least, preposterous. As mentioned earlier, in December 2008, the army leadership in its presentation to Manmohan Singh had argued the opposite. It had then said that after 2018, it would not be possible to shift a dual formation from one front to another within the thirty-day window. Hence, the army would need integral capabilities to fight on both fronts. After April 2020, the situation on the LAC worsened. With the PLA having made TAR and Xinjiang its permanent habitat and operational base for war, the dual-use formations strategy became irrelevant. Moreover, the IRGs, which are at the heart of the Cold Start or pro­ active strategy against Pakistan, were test-bedded twice only in 2019. These would require extensive experimentation with realistic combat training, both within the army, and with the IAF on both fronts. It would then be realized that IBGs would be worthless against the PLA’s war

(discussed later in the book). And the Pakistan military, which always had near parity at the operational level with the Indian military, had managed to outmatch it. Vet, Lieutenant General V. G. Khandare made an audacious assumption. He said that the Indian military had superior conventional capabilities when compared to Pakistan. W hat’s more, it could take on the PL As conventional capabilities if India overcomes China’s asymmetric capabilities in cyber, space, and three-warfare (public war, psychological war, and legal war).16 Khandare was the military advisor to the National Security Council Secretariat for three years (until 2021) and worked closely with the NS A. Why did Rawat then go ahead with the raising of theatre commands knowing full well that: • Cold Start strategy with IBGs as its pivot was not validated. It was only once tested for TTPs which is the tactical level, but never at the operational (campaign or theatre) level for assured w7ar concepts, • the two-front war hypothesis was an after-thought, • the Indian military lacked the conventional edge over the Pakistan military, and • there was little understanding about PLA capabilities and war concepts? ihere are two reasons for this: for one, his boss, NSA Ajit Doval, did not believe that war was a serious possibility. Twenty months into the Ladakh stand-off, on 12 November 2021, Doval said: ‘Wars have ceased to become effective instruments for achieving political or military objectives. They are too expensive and unaffordable, and at the same time, there is uncertainty about the outcome.’17 And, for another, Rawat was keen to demonstrate to the nation the Modi government’s commitment to national security by bringing

'•'’"Ihe China Challenge: ‘Need Synergy In Border Infrastructure Development’, SlratN en 's Global, 5 January 2022.

7Abhinay Dexhpandc, 'Wars are too expensive and unaffordable, NSA Ajit 'Doval tells IPS oflicor trainees’, 7he H in d u . 12 November 2021.

in sweeping military reforms.18 His obituary in the Hindustan Times throws light on his tenure: The General from Pauri Garhwal [where Dovai also hails from] came to the notice of the Narendra Modi government, after he, as Dimapur corps commander, supervised a strike against NSCN (K) insurgents on and across the I ddo-Myanmar border by Special Forces in June 2015... General Rawat came into his own as a military commander when he took on the Chinese PLA at Dokiarn plateau on the Sikkim-Bhutan-Tibet tri-junction in June 2017. Despite all odds, Rawrat, with full support of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and National Security Advisor Ajit Dovai stopped the PLA from building a road to the Jampheri Ridge, which wrould have made India vulnerable in the Siliguri corridor.19

The Reign of Confusion After periodic and piecemeal revelations of his vision for a year and half since he assumed the office of CDS, Rawat unveiled his ambitious military reforms plan in a television interview on 2 July 2021.20 He said that the Cabinet Committee on Security had approved the creation of four operational (to fight war) integrated theatre commands as of now. The two which would be formed early would be the Integrated Air Defence Command (IADC) headed by a three-star air force officer, and Integrated Maritime Theatre Command (IM T C ) headed by three-star naval officer. The remaining two, that were expected to be raised by December 2022, when Rawat s three years tenure was to end, would be the land-based Integrated Western Theatre Command (IW T C ) against Pakistan, and Integrated Northern/Eastern Theatre Command (IN / ET C ) against China, both headed by three-star army officers. Rawat intended to leave the army’s current single service Northern

18Geri 11. S. Panag (retd), ‘Not media, CHS Rawat should he talking to military chiefs about India’s defence reform’, ‘the Print, 27 February 2020. ^Shishir Gupta, ‘CDS was a fighter’. ;oIndia Today, ‘CDS General Bipin Rawat On Integrated dheatre Command System’.

Command (for Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh union territories) alone, ostensibly because the two-front war threat may becom e a reality in its area o f responsibility which extends from Ladakh (China) in the east to Kargil (Pakistan) in the north and the Kashmir valley in the west. Also, Northern Command is critical to keeping Kashmir in check. And the Unified Headquarters in Kashmir gives it a handle over the police and paramilitary deployed in J& K . Given this, the IA F ’s single service Western Command (based in New Delhi) would retain an operational role to support the army’s Northern Command (based in Udhampur) in peacetime and war; its biggest peacetime role is sustenance of the Indian Army in the J& K and Ladakh theatre, and its war role is to fight coordinated operations with the army’s Northern Command. At present, the IA F and the army have seven single service commands each. O f the IA F ’s seven, five are operational commands, and two are functional commands (maintenance and training). The army’s seven commands are divided into six operational and one training command. The navy has three commands; two operational and one training command (southern command). Rawat’s plan was to have two integrated theatre commands for land ■ war, and one IM TC for naval war. It was not clear what the remaining single service commands would do, becom e ‘force providers’ or get merged. The IAF, however, would need to give some assets and advisors (with staff) permanently to the two integrated theatre commands. The assets could be the IA F ’s attack helicopters and fighter aircraft with ground attack role to support the land war. As mentioned earlier, the army’s Northern Command and the IA F ’s Western Command would remain untouched. Unlike the IAF, the Indian Navy seems satisfied with Rawat’s integrated theatre commands. The reason for this, according to a senior naval officer21 is that far from surrendering any o f its assets for the other commands, the navy would end lip getting permanent additional resources, manpower as well as platforms. For instance, the army and the IAF component of the present Andaman and Nicobar Command, and the IAF combat aircraft meant for maritime role would come under

nInterview with the author.

the navys single operational 1MTC. The IM TC, headquartered at Karwar, would cover areas of responsibility of the present operational Eastern and Western Naval Commands, the two island territories of Lakshadweep, and Andaman and Nicobar, the Extra Econom ic Zone (beyond 20 nautical miles) and coastal defence with myriad agencies including the Coast Guard reporting to it. The present Western and Eastern Naval Commands, along with the Southern Naval Command, which is a training command, would shed their operational role and become training and maintenance commands or centres meant to support the IM TC in war. The IAF was unhappy with both the creation of the IADC and integrated theatre commands since, in addition to the TMTC, it would be required to permanently hand over some of its limited assets to them. According to retired Air Marshal Ramesh Rai, ‘W hen K. Subramanian, chairman of the Kargil Review^ Committee, tvas asked his opinion on creation of theatre commands, he responded by saying, 60 squadrons would be required for a theatre command structure. Considering that we are at a 30-squadron force level and may at best get to 45 in the next 20 years, any division wrould create an asymmetry in favour of the enemy, much to our peril/22 The IAF does not approve of Rawat’s logic of creating IADC for air defence and management of India’s airspace, where with some dedicated assets of the IAF, the IADC wmuld control all air defence assets of the army and the navy, as well as coordinate with civil aviation. According to the IAF, while air defence (in war) and management of India’s air space (in peacetime and war) are two different issues, air defence is done best by offensive action. A cursory glance at the IA F ’s doctrine” shows that its tasks are executed through three strategies: counter-air campaign, counter-surface force campaign (earlier called combat air support), and strategic air campaign. Since counter-air campaign does both offensive air operations and air

-’A ir Marshal Ramesh Rai (retd), ‘Frozen in Time', F O R C E , January 2021. •'’Indian Air Force, ‘Basic Doctrine of Indian Air Force 2012’. available at < https://www. scrihd.com /doc/10 9 7 2 !067/Basic-Docirine-oMndian- Air-Force 2012-PD1'>.

defence operations, according to the IAF, singling out assets purely for air defence role which involves protection of high value targets amounts to their under-utilization. Today, the IAF has multirole aircraft; AWACS with the capability to look 200 km inside enemy territory down to ground level; in-flight refuellers which have increased the attack envelop; and long-range stand-off weapons and high-performance sensors. This has given the LAF the ability to destroy enemy aircraft close to their air bases. Since the first forty-eight hours would be crucial for the IAF to achieve ‘favourable air situation’ if not air dominance and air superiority against the PLA, it could hit PLAAF runways, fuel dumps, bridges, and forces concentration. Thus, an offensive role which it doctrinallv calls counter-air operations would provide better defence of its own airspace than purely air defence tasking. Ideally, the air battle should commence before the ground wax. Once favourable air situation is achieved, it would become easier to support the ground forces by counter surface force campaign. At the time of Rawat’s death on 8 December 2021, he had not accepted the IA F ’s stance against distribution of its assets. During the media interaction on 12 January 2022 to mark Army Day on 15 January 2022, the army chief, General Naravane, who had assumed the additional charge of chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee, confirmed that ‘deliberations on theatre commands were going on, and IBGs for western and northern borders would soon be in place’.24 Back to the Drawing Board25 Five months after General Rawat’s untimely death, the government indicated that the post of the four-star CDS would not be filled, and theaterization appeared unlikely. According to top sources, ‘the downside of appointing a CDS is more than that of not having one.’ Ill ere were two unresolvable issues with the CDS post. One, there was a problem of work distribution (read, ego clash) between the CDS :'Mwas part of the media interaction. "Dinakar Peri, ‘ Back to the drawing board on role of Chief of Deience Staff’, The H indu . 15 May 2022.

(who was also secretary of the DMA) and the defence secretary who heads the DoD since both had similar status in the MoD. Between the secretary DMA and the defence secretary, ‘coordination mechanisms are not standardized and accepted by both sides’. Since the answer was to downgrade the status of one of them, the government decided that the three -star Chief of Integrated Staff should head the DMA. Meanwhile, retired Lieutenant General V. G. Khandare was appointed as the single point military advisor to the DoD to advise both defence minister (CD S job) and defence secretary. Two, with the IAF unwilling to distribute its limited assets, the theaterization plan hit a wall. Had theaterization been a serious military reform, all three services would have been onboard before its announcement. W ith Rawat gone, the government decided to go back to the earlier system of the senior-most service chief doubling as the chairman, COSC. Notwithstanding end of the military reforms, the new army chief, General Manoj Pande, said that the army would continue with the raising o f more IB G s26 instead of building counter offensive capabilities. Two Issues Speaking at Vivekananda International Foundation in February 2021, Naravane had said that since militaries across the world were adopting Multi-Domain Operations (M D O ), India too is studying how to adopt MDO to our operational requirements.27 A US military war concept discussed later in the book, MDO is meant for combat in five waxdomains of air, land, sea, space, and cyber with operating centres for cross-domain jointness and synergy. According to Naravane, war had become complex and is ‘no longer confined to the traditional spaces (land, sea, air), but has expanded into cyber, space, electromagnetic

lf,Dinakar Peri, ‘Consultations on creation of Integrated Battle Groups being compiled: Army Chief Gen. Pande’, The H indu, 10 May 2022. 2/Vivekananda International Foundation, ‘Vimarsh on Hole of the Indian Army in dealing with the Contemporary National Security Challenges', YouTube, 24 February 2021, available at e.com/watch?v=PdEBQqYZYLA>.

spectrum, and digital space’.28 Unlike Rawat’s three physical domain theaterization plan where the army would be lead service, in MDO, all five domains being equal, the virtual domains would get prominence since they are likely to throw up operational surprises. Moreover, without winning the war in the virtual domains ot cyber and electromagnetic spectrum, war in the physical war domains would be lost. However, while the Indian military has tri-service defence cyber agency and defence space agency under the command and control of the CDS, elevating them to commands would be difficult since it would involve working with other government agencies through the national cyber security coordinator who works under the NSA. Similarly, given India’s limited space capabilities, it would involve working with foreign partners (i.e. the US) for help in situation awareness. This, though, will not be an unsurmountable challenge. Moreover, the U S’s MDO concept focuses not on co-location of domains’ assets, but on connectivity. To learn from the US military’s dilemma of the PLA’s anti-access/area denial (A 2/ AD) firewall, dispersal of critical assets would be better than their co-location as sought in Rawat’s theaterization plan. Moreover, connectivity does not require physical shifting of static headquarters and assets. What the Indian military needs is high bandwidth, robust, cyber and electronic warfare secure operational networks (called data link architecture in India) across air force, army, and naval domains to facilitate situational awareness, and smart sensors to shooters linked by cloud architecture. To accomplish this, the Defence Communication Network, which was set up in 2016 connecting some 111 service stations and formations for voice and data, needs upgradation, expansion to connect more command-and-control nodes, and technical audits for likely backdoors. Interestingly, the US is keen that the Indian military adopt its MDO concept with operating centres, which would require major investment in electronic warfare, cyber offence, and counter space systems. A US private entrepreneur had, by March 2021, set up one MDO operating

Uhid.

centre costing a few millions in Noida to demonstrate its functioning to KSA Ajit Doval and maybe the prime minister.29 Indian military accepting the MDO concept would help the US military in developing interoperability under the Indo-Pacific strategy. Ttvo things were responsible for the military’s somersault on reforms. One, instead of the military identifying the threats (reforms should be based on realistic threats), the political leadership was allowed, to do this. Two, instead of the three services deliberating on the reforms with outside support since the changing character of war is predicated on dual-use technologies, CDS Rawrat took it upon himself to determine what needed to be done. The answer lies in the chiefs of staff committee assessing the military threats to India, deliberating on what reforms are needed, and then approaching the political leadership with both the problem and the solution.

^'ihe MDO operating centre has been set up in Logix Techno Park, Sector 127, Noida. UP. I know this because 1 was invited to visit the centre on 4 March 2021 by the owner, who claimed to be a US citizen (of Indian origin), and recommend it to the NSA. 1 visited the swanky place but declined to participate in his venture.

n the 2017 book D ragon On O ur Doorstep, I had written that north Ladakh will be the scene o f a future conflict with China because '[i]f there is one place where foresight has converged with geography,

I

it is Ladakh, the only area where China and Pakistan have forged a physical link. It is also the only place where the threat o f a two-front war against India is in the realm o f possibility and not mere conjecture. And this is one confrontation that has been in the making for close to half a century.’1 In April 2020, as the PLA crossed the LAC and entered Indian territory in several places through the month, that prediction came true. And the possibility of a two-front war metam orphosed into a one-front reinforced war, with the battlespace extending seamlessly from Ladakh to Siachen to Kashmir and PO K via G ilgit-Baltistan. In the process, China pushed the LAC well inside Indian territory, by as much as 10 km to 18 km in some places. By the government’s own admission, by the end of August, China had occupied nearly 1,000 sq km o f Indian territory.2 It may seem that India’s predicament in Ladakh began in April 2020. Taking advantage o f the Covid-19 pandemic, China took the Modi government by surprise and captured parts o f Ladakh without any fighting. However, the truth is that the tenuous state of Indo-China relationship had started to unravel in August 2019. To appreciate this better, it is critical to understand the sequence of events. On 5 August, Horne Minister Am it Shah announced in Parliament that the government had revoked Articles 370 and 35A in the state of

“Suwlmey and Wahab, D ragon On O ur D oorstep, p. .189. ’Vijaita Singh, ‘China controls 1,000 sq. km of area in Ladakh say intelligence inputs', 7 he H ind u , .H] August 2.020.

Jammu and Kashmir and the latter was now an integral part o f the Union o f India. The next day, on 6 August, Shah announced the reorganization of the state into two union territories (U T s)—of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. He also asserted that POK and Aksai Chin were part of the reorganized UTs; POK of J& K and Aksai Chin of Ladakh. The constitutional requirement was sealed on 9 August, when the president gave his assent to the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act 2019. India printed new maps that showed ‘Pakistan occupied Jammu and Kashmir in the UT o f J& K , besides Gilgit-Baltistan, Gilgit Wazaratbad and Aksai Chin within the newly carved U T o f Ladakh'.3 Having done this, the government got anxious since China, within hours of the announcement of 5 August, rejected this new reality.4 Consequently, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar travelled to Beijing on 11 August 2019 to explain to the Chinese state councillor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi that notwithstanding the new realities of J& K and Ladakh, India will not make new sovereignty claims, and its position on the LAC and the LoC would not change. China refused to accept India’s explanation. It maintained that British India did not have a border between Tibet and Ladakh.5 Moreover, India had formally accepted TAR as part of China during Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s visit in 2003.6 From Beijing’s perspective, India under Prime Minister Modi had created a border where none existed before. Recall that in December 2010 China had announced that its border with India was merely 2,000 km.7 This excluded Ladakh. According to Beijingbased Chinese analyst Qian Feng, ‘The Ladakh district, encompassing parts of Aksai Chin in the new map, which is under China’s actual control, is a clear departure from the political consensus between the

’Satin Shakil, ‘Centre releases map of new UTs, marking Aksai Chin and Gilgit’., New Indian Express, 3 November 2019. “PTI, ‘Article 370: China says opposed to Ladakh ns Union Territory’, India Today , 6 August 2019. LSmvhney and Wahab, D ragon On O ur Doorstep, p. 43. T T I , ‘India recognises Tibet as part of China’. Times o f India, 24 June 2003. 'Ananth Krishnan, ‘Oflicinis dismiss Chinns Kashmir border claims', Ih c H in d u , 20 December 2010.

two countries.’8 Meanwhile, a former Chinese military attache, Cheng Xizhong, said, ‘The serious military confrontation and conflicts [of 15 June 2020 in Galwan valley] between the two countries was completely caused by the Narendra Modi regime’s amendment o f Article 370 of the constitution in August 2019 and its announcement of the establishment of Union Teiritory of Ladakh on Chinese Territory.’9 The die was cast. At an opportune time in April 2020, the PLAmade deep multipronged incursions and occupied territory up to its 1959 claim line at most places without firing a single shot. The PLA intrusions were China’s answer to India’s cartographic aggression which created the union territory of Ladakh. In one fell swoop, China rubbished all peace agreements and protocols mutually agreed by both sides since the signing o f the 1993 LAC. It asserted that its unilateral 1959 claim line was the ‘actual’ LAC. According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry: ‘China-India border LAC is very clear, that is the LAC on November 7, 1959. China announced it in the 1950s, and the international community including India are also clear about it.’10* The PLA’s action compelled India to induct large forces into the western Ladakh theatre as well as the Middle and Eastern sectors on the LAC to check further PLA ingress. China too moved more forces into the TAR. By August 2021, ‘close to 200,000 soldiers [were] deployed along both sides of the LAC.’11 According to former Northern Army commander, Lieutenant General Y. K. Joshi (February 2020 to January 2022), in January 2021, ‘there were over 90,00Q troops in Ladakh.’12

sQian Feng, ‘From Line to Zone: The China-India border issue needs a new political solution’, F O R C E , August 2020. ''‘Modi regime behind China-India military confrontation’, G lobal Village S pace, 12 April 2021. ‘“Sutirho Patranobis, ‘China takes 1959 line on perception of LA C’, H industan Tim es, 29 September 2020. TSandecp Unnithan, ‘Line of No Control’, India Today, 9 August 2021, p. 27. 12SrratNews Global, ‘China Realised We’re Not Budging, Had To Relent: Northern Army Commander Lt Gen YK Joshi’, YouTube, 17 February 2021, available at .

For convenience’s sake, the India-China border is divided into three sectors; In the Western Sector, Ladakh faces China’s Xinjiang (also called East Turkestan) in the north and Tibet in the east and south. In the Middle Sector, the states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand face Tibet; and in the Eastern Sector, Arunachai Pradesh faces Tibet. Though Sikkim is also in the Eastern Sector and faces Tibet on the north (Bhutan in the east), it is not part of the border dispute. China earlier regarded Sikkim to be an independent nation that was forcibly integrated into India in 1975 by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, but in 2003, it modified this position by showing Sikkim as an Indian state on select maps. But it has not accepted this stance formally. The Case o f Two LACs Until May 2020, when the stand-off between the two armies began in Ladakh, the existence of two LACs (1993 and 1959) was not public knowledge in India. The 1959 line is the one that the Chinese referred to during official talks in 1960 and for which they provided a map. India did not accept the 1959 line and, ironically, it was not shared with the Indian Army, who continued to police the 1993 LAC. Telling insights into this issue are provided by former foreign secretary and NSA Shivshankar Menon in his book Choices .13 Menon was the man behind the 1993 Agreement on the Maintenance o f Peace and Tranquillity along the LAC in the India-China Border Areas. Menon writes, 'W ith China, the LAC is a concept; neither the LAC nor the boundary is agreed upon by the two countries, let alone on a map or demarcated on the ground.’14 Since the 1993 LAC was a military line held by the Indian army, they could not have been policing ‘a concept’. Did the Chinese outwit Indian diplomats in 1993 by making them agree to its 1959 claim line, also called the LAC? No. In their over-enthusiasm to make Prime Minister Narasimha Rao’s maiden visit to China a success, Indian diplomats accepted Chinese ’• ’Shivshankar Menon, Choices: Inside the M a k in g o f India s F o reign Policy, New Delhi: Penguin Random {louse, 2016, p. 2 18. 1Tbitl., p. 29.

{ ‘to

conditions for signing the treaty. The Chinese told Indian diplomats that the term LAC should be used in the 1993 agreement to validate the positions held by the troops on both sides. Menon writes, Tt seemed very important to China that Indian negotiators accept the term Line of Active Control at the beginning of the negotiations/15 The term ‘Line of Act«ve Control’ was finally changed to ‘Line of Actual Control’ in the 1993 agreement. The change in the term was done at China’s behest to align it with the term ‘Line of Actual Control’ mentioned in Zhou Enlai’s letter to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on 7 November 1959. Menon writes that Chinese diplomats ‘insisted they would respect the LAC o f November 7, 1959, and that if there were any doubts, they would tell the Indians where the LAC lay/16 Chinese diplomats said since the PLA did not accept the 1993 LAC as it was on the ground at the time, the agreement could not be signed during Rao’s visit. Keen to make the prime ministerial visit a grander success than his predecessor Rajiv Gandhi’s December 1988 visit, India agreed that, ‘The final solution was to accept the need for clarification in the 1993 agreement and much more explicitly in its follow-up, the November 19, 1996, Agreement on Military Confidence Building Measures/17 W hile aware that China had rejected the 1993 LAC in favour of its 1959 LAC, Indian diplomats kept silent. Meanwhile, in the 1993 agreement, ‘At New Delhi’s insistence the expression wasn’t qualified in terms of whether it was the 1959 o n e/18 Once the agreement was signed, the PLA’s transgressions and intrusions across the 1993 LAC held by Indian Army increased. With improvements in its border management, the PLA could bring large numbers o f troops in vehicles till the LAC, something that India, with poor infrastructure, could not do. Transgressing for tactical gains or as part of grey zone operations meant for military coercion is easier on a military line than on a disputed border. The latter is usually defined along mountain ranges or other prominent features which when trespassed

p. 40. JTbid., p. 25. :Tattanobis, 'China takes 1959 line on perception of LAC’.

leads to a crisis. A case in point is the 1986-87 Sumdorong Chu crisis or what the Chinese call Wangdung crisis between India and China. During my August 2012 visit to China’s Ministry of National Defence, I was surprised to hear Major General Yao Yunzhu say, ‘India has done more ingressions into China than China has done into India.’19 I was surprised because site was referring 10 the 1059 L / C about which I was not aware. After all, Indians had consistently been told by the political and military leaders that both sides committed transgressions as the 1993 LAC was neither delimited nor demarcated. The reality was that all transgressions were one sided—the Indian Army never transgressed the 1993 LAC. dhis was accepted by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs when, after the 15 June 2020 Galwan clash,20 it issued a statement: ‘Indian troops are fully familiar with the alignment o f the [19931 LAC in all sectors of the India-China border areas, including in the Galwan Valley. They abide by it scrupulously here, as they do elsewhere. The Indian side has never undertaken any actions across the LAC.’21 Post-Galwan, Indian diplomats said that India had never accepted the 1959 LAC. If this was indeed so, why was China not asked to specify the LAC —1959 or 1993—in the peace and tranquillity agreement signed' during Rao’s 1993 visit? Indeed, why was the 1993 treaty which placed; India at strategic and tactical disadvantage, signed? Menon says that signing the 1993 agreement made the LAC ‘India’s most peaceful border in the last thirty years [until Ladakh], with no

J9Pravin Sawhney, ‘China has shrunk the border’, F O R C E , August 2012, p. 24. 20On the night of 15 June, Indian and PLA troops clashed brutally in the Galwan valley of Ladakh. Indian troops, led by Colonel Santosh Babu had gone to remove the tents that the PLA soldiers had pitched on what the Indians believed was their territory. Anticipating this, the PLA soldiers had armed themselves with dubs, spiked batons, and stones, as use of firearms was not allowed on the LAC as part of agreed protocol between the two sides. Tn the ensuing dash, 20 Indian soldiers, including Babu, were killed. See Shiv Amor, 'Violent India-China dash at LAC: What really happened that night’, India Today , 17 June 2020. “ Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, 'Official Spokesperson’s response to media queries seeking comments on the statement issued on 19 lum: by the Chinese Spokesperson on the events in the Galwan vailev area’, 20 June 2020. 1 2. A

terrorists or cross border firings.’22 Each military line has its own peculiarity: while the LoC was about a proxy war, the LAC was about appeasement by India underplaying the PLA’s regular transgressions which required Indian soldiers and paramilitary (Indo-Tibetan Border Police) forces to permanently hold heights from 15,000 to 18,000 feet. The LAC bar beer, harder than the LoC for the Indian soldiers. W hile or- the LoC . they could see Pakistani soldiers facing similar hardships, on the LA C, the Chinese border guards, certain that Indian troops would not violate the 1993 LAC, were nowhere to be seen. This put Indian troops under psychological pressure, policing the LAC against a non-existent adversary wTho would suddenly show up in jeeps for patrolling. The truth remains that the 1993 LAC is the only example in military history where a military line was created not as consequence o f war, but out of a desperate desire for peace and tranquillity. With the chasm in military power widening between the PLA and the Indian military, the LAC was clearly not sustainable for India. Meanwhile, aware of India’s balancing (appeasement) policy with China, and to bolster his nationalistic credentials as a tough leader, Modi in his 2014 pre-election speeches warned China: ‘No powder on earth can take away even an inch from India, China should give up its expansionist attitude and adopt a development mindset.’23 China had never been invoked by any political leader in India’s general election rallies before. China of course was in no mood to take Modi’s belligerent rhetoric. Consequently, the Chinese general secretary Xi Jinping’s maiden visit to India in September 2014 was accompanied by intrusions in east Ladakh. It was a minor incident in Demchok located in the Chumar area where the Indian Army was tactically well poised. Just as Xi was confabulating with Modi, the PLA forced civilians to stop work on an irrigation canal inside Indian territory. According to Lieutenant General Hooda, The total (PL A ) strength that came into the area was 3,000\2'w American Security. November 2017. p- 28.

2020 Ladakh face-off. Unlike Doklam, Ladakh was not planned with the purpose of obtaining datasets on the enemy. It happened as a consequence of geopolitical and bilateral political factors. However, not one to waste an opportunity, the P L A got busy collecting training datasets on the Indian military's (army and the air force) habitat, ecosystem, operational logistics, enhanced winter stocking, operational and tactical vulnerabilities, deployment patterns, command and control, recalibration of weapons, training, and everything on how the enemy proposed to right its war. In d ia 's

AI Goals

Once the government released its 2018 draft defence policy projecting India as a major power in AI by 2025 (an assertion repeated in 2019 and 2020), I visited India’s premier defence public sector undertaking, Bharat Electronics Limited (B E L ), in June 2019. In a meeting with Manoj Jain, its chief scientist responsible for AI, I asked whether India would be able to have a robotic army that replaced human soldiers. Jain said that robots would never replace human soldiers, because ‘war would be fought and won by human soldiers’. According to him, robots would complement soldiers in surveillance and patrolling. And these would be ready for induction in a decade.36 As far as getting labelled data for making AI models using neural networks from the armed forces was concerned, Jain said, ‘We have limited raw data. But we are working on procedures to get more data from the defence services. We hope to work with them in their habitat.’ He did not make a distinction between labelled and unlabelled data. Given that BEL is working on limited data provided by the military, there is no question of data management. The situation with hardware development is equally dismal. After the Defence Ministry’s AI Task Force was set up by secretary defence production Ajay Kumar in February 2018, the services were asked to present their requirements. According to Jain, all the services were keen on Al-based C4ISR systems for good situational awareness. Travin Sawhney, "Ihe Rise of Robots’, F O R C E , June 2019.

Jain said that work on Al-based solutions started in 2016 once BEL got high performance computing general purpose GPUs. GPGPU, with the speed of 1.000 terafiops (equal to one petaflop) is used for core processing. Since India does not design and manufacture chips for computers, the hardware is procured as commercial off the shelf (C O T S) or military off the sheii (MC i S ' purchase.'" Jain told me that BEL was in the process of installing supercomputers which would be able to process in terafiops. One teraflop means one trillion floating point operations per second. According to him, the supercomputer would have about 250 terafiops, which could be upgraded to one petaflop. By way of comparison, China claimed in 2018 that it would produce the world’s first supercomputer with one exaflop (1,000 petaflop) power by 20200s While the present defence networks were largely based on 3G, Jain said that customized 4G wireless networks were in the final stages. ‘Moreover, we are working on seed projects for 5G,’ he said. However, the biggest limitation is that both the user and the provider work in silos. The military shares limited information with BEL, deeming it classified. Out of overcautiousness, BEL further restricts dissemination of this limited information to its scientists who are meant to write the algorithms, in case the information is leaked. Consequently, 'We ask them to write intended algorithms only since we cannot share end applications [which are classified] with them,’ he said.39 Tire problem, however, is much deeper. W hile the government established a task force on AI in 2018 as part of its initiative Innovation for Defence Excellence (iD EX ), financial allocation was kept meagre. According to Jain, B E L ’s Al-specific allocation was ?40 crore in 2018-19, with a provision to double it each year, so that after five years it would be ^200 crores. While being a pittance, it demonstrated the priority accorded to AI by the Indian Ministry of Defence. However, the ministry

'"Ibid. "Dennis Normile, ‘Three Chinese ten ms join race to build die world’s fastest supercomputer', S c ien ce M a g , 24 Oct 2018. OSawh new ' Rise o! Robots’.

can’t be blamed since the defence services themselves are fixated on enhancing their existing inventories. They want more of the same: more aircraft, more ships, more tanks, more guns. The concept of seeking capabilities rather than weapons platforms remains alien to the defence services leadership. Notwithstanding limited computing power, 3G networking connectivity, oon-exisknt data strategy, and frugal allocations, Jain’s boss, in a written interview to FORCE presented a rosy picture of the road ahead. The chairman and managing director of BEL, M. V. Gowtama, said, ‘Some of the long-term Al-enabled products are decision support systems for C4I, Network Centric Warfare and Communication Systems, Fault Detection and Decision Analytics for Underwater/ Naval Systems, Radar Fingerprinting and EW Systems, Predictive Maintenance for Mission Critical Systems, Homeland Security and Smart Cities, Virtual Reality enabled war gaming emulators, etc. Most of the systems are targeted to be developed in-house, collaborating with academia, industries, and start-ups. Collaboration with foreign academic institutions is also planned in this segment. BEL has plans and roadmaps for robots for all the three services. From nano drones to combat UAVs, the unmanned aerial vehicles can act as a first responder robot for different applications. The autonomous amphibious and underwater robots are planned for future endeavours.’40 If Gowtama was living in denial, the DRDO chief, G. Satheesh Reddy, was evasive when asked about infusion of AI. In an interview to FORCE, he said, ‘DRDO, being the only agency involved with design and development of defence systems, is pursuing a lot of research in this area. DRDO has been encouraging and providing technological and other support to academic institutions like IITs and industries, both public and private sectors, through various platforms and will continue to support them. We have been working with several countries including the United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, and Israel through joint working groups on technology. We have identified several

^'Interview—Chairman and managing director, Bharat Electronics Ltd, M. V. Gowtama’, FO R CE, June 2019.

futuristic technologies for joint research in areas like nano technologies, nano sensors, deep learning, etc. However, we are still to have any specific collaboration or agreement He added, ‘We are conscious of the fact that technologies of the future need to be developed within the country to avoid perpetual dependence on other countries. DRDO has set up [the] Young Scientist Labs for concerted research efforts in these advanced technology domains. In addition to continued efforts at our own labs, we are supporting start-ups in a big way. The role and importance of our academic institutes cannot be understated in providing blue slues research for such crucial technologies.’12 Has the government budgeted additional funds for AI? ‘The fund allocated to us is for all technology domains and as such we do not need to create a separate corpus for this/ he replied. The Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR) is the DRDO’s main laboratory working on AI. According to its director, Sanjay Burman, ‘CAIR has worked in several enabling technologies for realisation of intelligent mobile robots. These include design of robotic manipulator arms and mobile robotic platforms, perception technologies using multi-modal sensors and Artificial Intelligence algorithms. Using these technologies, CAIR has developed various systems which include manipulator arms for the non-destructive testing of LCA components and steam generator of nuclear power plants, a variety of mobile robotic platforms with different locomotion methodologies and autonomous Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs).M* He did not mention if CAIR was using expert systems AI meant to deduce behavioural patterns. Not much work was being done in the computational machine learning domain. If computational machine learning with deep neural networks using large datasets has not found much traction in the scientific community, much of the fault lies with the defence services. For example, Indian military officers with good knowledge of Mandarin have written41

41‘Interview ! Secretary, department of defence R&D and chairman. Defence Research and Development Organisation, Dr G Sathecsh Reddy', l-O R C E , August 2019. “Ibid. “ Interview to ‘Technology newsletter' November-December 2016.

extensively on the PLA’s 2015 military reforms. However, all books and articles on the PLA have concentrated on its present order of battle or its military dispositions dealing with mechanized and informatized warfare. Few are looking into the near future when the PLA would have transitioned from informatized to intelligentized warfare. Fewer still are aware that data is at the heart of every AI project- Unaware that the PLA had gained a goldmine of valuable operational data through Doklam and Ladakh, the service chiefs are happy mouthing the same inanities which successive chiefs have been saying for decades.44 On AI, COAS Naravane said, ‘We have identified numerous low hanging technologies which we wish to induct quickly into our units and formations. These are counter drones, augmented and virtual reality, bullet proofing, loiter munitions, directed energy platforms etc. In these domains, we are hand holding and even funding research, through projects like Army Technology Board and the Technology Demonstration Fund. We have also, in concert with the DRDO, identified technologies that we need to leapfrog into; niche technologies of the future—AI, block chain, quantum computing, military applications of 5G etc.— those that will enable us to lead disruptions in the strategic military domain and thereby shape and restructure the very battle space. We are developing centres of excellence as also identifying use cases to be progressed further in these technologies/45 In December 2021, it was reported that ‘the Indian military is looking for new unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) for missions in high-altitude areas [against China]’.46 In a hands-off approach, this task was given to ‘companies and start-ups’. Without clear understanding of the capabilities needed for remote-controlled UGVs in an adversarial environment (cyber and EW ) and autonomous UGVs, this will not be*8 “ See ‘Force operationally prepared to meet any contingency: Army Chief’, Indian E xp ress , 8 May 2012 and Rajat Pandit, ‘LAC stand-off: Army chief says troops prepared

for contingencies’, Times o f India, 5 Sept ember 2020. “ ‘Interview—Chief of Army Staff General M. M. Naravane PVSM, AVSM, SM, VSM, ADC, F O R C E , February 2020. “Joe Saballa, ‘India Eyes High-Altitude Unmanned Ground Vehicles’, D efense Post, 8 December 2021.

possible. Moreover, iD E X will not work. Total reliance on private sector for talent is not the way forward; the need is for the government to take ownership of projects and develop a government technical workforce which works with the private sector and academia. The then CNS Admiral Karambir Singhs response wasn't much different. He add. T'.e na\y had 'onstituted a team to study AT enabled naval technologies. 1VK an while, tlw Defence Ministry A I task force charts the roadmap for integration of A I into the IN through expertise build-up and implementation of specific AT projects in the field of operations, maintenance, and logistics. Also, big data laboratory is being set up for training our personnel to harness this niche technology. Further, A I projects in the field of predictive maintenance, data mining, video analytics, facial recognition are also underway.’1’ No surprise that the then CAS Air Chief Marshal R. K. S. Bhadauria also spoke in a similar vein. 'We are developing indigenous combat systems with sixth generation technologies including directed energy weapons, smart wingman concept, optionally manned combat platforms, swarm drones, hypersonic weapons and so on.’-18 Interestingly, India and the US 'agreed to launch an inaugural defence Artificial Intelligence dialogue’1'’ only in April 2022. Seeking AI applications without in-house understanding of AI stacks will not help much. For example, there is need to emulate Pakistan’s Centre of Artificial Intelligence and Computing (CENTAIC) model with various verticals responsible for AI stacks working under the Defence Ministry. What India might accomplish remains unclear. What was clear was that the PLA, armed with good operational data, will operationalize its Al-enabled informatized and intelligentized war to use drones, robots, and unmanned systems. The main reason why the transition of technologies from weapons ■‘‘‘Interview —Chief of naval staff Admiral Karambir Singh PVSM, AVSM’, F O R C E , December 2019. l!iA|ui Shukla, ‘China cannot get the better of us: Air Marshal RKS Bhadauria*, Business S ta n d a r d , 6 October 2020.

‘“Colin Demurest. ‘US and India launch talks about military A!*, ('-U SEN ET , IS April 2022 . 1 9K

platforms to capabilities is not understood by the top brass of the Indian military is that they continue to grapple with their 1986 war concepts that are nearly forty years old, which, as we shall see in the next chapter, are incompatible with present-day warfare.

HUMAN COMMAND AND R O B O T C O N TR O L

R

ecalling the lesson he learnt in the staff college over thirty years

ago, Air Chief Marshal B. S. Dhanoa, who retired on 30 September 2019, told his audience at the virtual session of the Military Literature Festival in Chandigarh in December 2020 that, ‘In the mountains, 3:1 ratio of PLA soldiers would be needed to dislodge Indian soldiers from heights.’1 He was answering a question on why despite the advancement in technology, it was necessary to hold the heights on Siachen glacier, a site where India and Pakistan have been facing-off since 1984. As chair for the session on the PLAAF in the wake of the Ladakh crisis Dhanoa said that a possible war with the PLA, while being intense, would be limited in time and space. W hat’s more, India will be able to hold its own against China. Since the crisis in Ladakh started in May 2020, Dhanoa was the first service chief (albeit retired) to make this claim. The reason for Dhanoa’s assertion was the belief that in the mountains there can be no real victory, only a perception of victory. According to him, ‘China cannot take Leh and we cannot take Lhasa, hence each side could interpret a win for itself.’ In this interpretation of victory, holding of heights and the IAF would both play a critical role, he said. ‘We were taught at staff college that an obstacle had to be covered by fire and held by troops; otherwise, it does not remain an obstacle since the enemy could negotiate around it. To overcome the obstacle, the enemy needs to concentrate to attack it en masse. This is when you do heavy attrition on them, and the air force does this best,’ he told the audience.

*'Ihe Tribune, ‘LIVE: Military Literature Festival 2020; Panel discussion on Chinese air power capabilities’,

YouTube, 18 December 2020, available at < https://www.youtube.

com / watch ?v~xww9g2o 1rpg> .

According to him, the IAF will have to operate in conjunction with the ground forces and cause attrition which the PLA, given its risen geopolitical profile, will not be able to take. Thereafter, £It’s perception of victory.5 Taking a cue from him, a two-star retired air force officer on the panel expostulated that the Indian military was prepared for contingencies involving two limited fronts, and not extended fronts, against Pakistan and China. But this thinking arising from a thirty-year-old education cannot hold good for all time to come. In military sciences, even one year ago is old. In addition, the scope of the war—whether it would be limited or full scale—will be determined by the military objectives of the stronger side. In this case, the PLA. Curiously, most Indian military officers, both serving and retired, seem to be referring to the same playbook. In an interview with me in December 2020, the then COAS, General Naravane had said roughly the same thing. According to him, given the standard attack ratio of 3:1 with 10 per cent accepted casualties in the mountains, it would take the PLA up to 3,000 casualties to dislodge an Indian brigade (3,500 men) holding a height. Even with state-of-the-art-technology, the PLA will have to deploy boots on the ground to capture any ground. Air-Land Battle Naravane and Dhanoa are not the only military experts to think like this. The Indian military continues to follow the warfighting concept that the US propounded in the 1980s. Called Air-Land doctrine,2 it was unveiled in 1986. It laid emphasis on gaining initial success by the clarion call of ‘win the first battle5. Placing excessive importance on tactics, the Air-Land doctrine divided the enemy area into tactical—for fighting battles and engagements—and operational—for dealing with major operations and campaigns. ‘There was an inflexible relationship between the commander s mission and military art: Tactics were meant to win battles; operations to win campaigns; and strategy was designed to win wars. From a critic’s perspective, the doctrine was designed for a T o r maritime warfare, this doctrine is called Sea-Air battle concept.

show of force at the beginning of the campaign since it lacked rationality for three-tier spatial division of the battlefield/3 In this two-domain engagement, the army's core competency lies in combined arms operations where the infantry, artillery, and armour fight together as one single unit with greater effect. The IA F’s core competencies arc iange, speed, flexibility, and lethality with precision wear* ms. Since the army and the air force fight with their core competencies in their domains of land and air, they have their own war concepts based on terrain, climatic conditions, and response time. Fighting their separate campaigns, the army and the air force don’t need jointness. Only coordination is needed. Unfortunately, even this has not happened so far. According to a senior IAF officer, ‘Twentytwo years after Kargil (the 1999 Kargil conflict), the army and the air force still do not have the same radio frequencies or map grids critical for coordinating joint strike missions/4 As an aside, Chinese leader Mao Zedong had enunciated the combined arms operations in the 1956 military strategy called ‘Defending the Motherland’. This landmark strategy said that mobile forces (guerrilla forces) would be replaced by regular forces capable of adopting ‘positional defence’ for fighting on a fixed front. This would disallow deep penetration of the enemy forces. An excessive focus on tactics had three fallouts: commanders at all levels became risk averse and unimaginative; they paid little attention to optimizing military art, that is, how to exploit technologies with new war concepts; and the operational level became all elements at the tactical level with quantitative rather than qualitative difference. Moreover, in the Air-Land battle concept—which the Indian Army and the IAF follow even today—the sensor to shooter loop was simple. It was included within a weapons platform. For instance, a tank commander or a fighter pilot would identify and understand emerging threats, decide what action to take, and then engage it by firing a missile,

3Maj Gen E. B. Atkson, USA (retd.), 7 he F in a l A rgu m en t o f Kings, Fairfax: Hero Books, 1988, p. 203. TJnnithan, ‘Line of No Control’, p. 32.

bomb, or gun. Such operating system followed line-of-sight principle where the human eye can see the threat. Since tactics was the focus, networking or operational systems were never considered seriously. For all professional militaries, the US-led 1991 Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm) was a Military-Technical revolution (or revolution in military affairs) which led them to reassess their military strategies based on four questions: existing threats; who to fight if there is more than one threat; what kind of war to fight; and how to fight, or the war concepts. The Indian military leadership continued with its Air-Land battle doctrine with the focus on attrition. The PLA announced three military strategies in 1993, 2004, and 2014. It also released a White Paper called ‘China's National Defense in the New Era' in July 2019 highlighting the importance of AI backed war. The Soviet Union, the adversary of the US in the Cold War, always treated tactics as almost a side issue. Their OMGs were designed to achieve significant and decisive deep penetration into the enemy's operational defences. They paid special attention to deep air offensives with use of airborne, airmobile, and air assault troops. Penetrating the enemy’s depth had the potential to unravel his entire defences. Fighting at the operational level made commanders bold, imaginative, and risktakers. The Soviet military believed in vertical troop strikes, integrated fire assaults, and far-reaching raids by OMGs which created rough equivalent effects of nuclear weapons with non-nuclear capabilities. It would not be misplaced to say that the US military came to appreciate the importance of fighting at the operational level from the Soviet military. The Indian military did not learn this war lesson. Air-Land Battle on Steroids The US-led Desert Storm against Iraq was America’s moment of glory. Armed with new technologies, an exceptional war concept called Network Centric Operations (NCOs) and supported by an embedded media, the Gulf War generated ‘shock and awe’ across the world. However, the NCOs, which were Air-Land battle on steroids, were imperfect. Based on US battle networks—what the PLA calls

operational systems, and the Russian military calls reconnaissance-strike complexes—the NCOs, which were at the heart of the US’s stunning air campaign were untested, and stand-off precision guided munitions that won the wrar were a small percentage of the total ordnance. The majority were dumb bombs dropped by the US Air Force on Iraq. Operational systems are software networks that .rove information across the sensors to shooters or to the Observe, Orient, Decide, Act (OODA) loop. They consist of sensors, shooters, and software medium for automated information flow between the two. An ideal operational system should have all sensor information move across the systems’ networks to all shooters. This helps the kill chain, a three-part process comprising understanding of situation, deciding on what to engage, and acting to destroy it. By aiding humans with 'a more effective kill chain—achieving better understanding, making better decision, and taking better actions’5—an operational system is at the heart of the war outcome. Sensors that are not directly networked with shooters slow down the kill chain since more people (sitting in operating centres) and time would be needed to pass information to the desired shooter. Or, if one sensor is networked with a specific shooter using a rigid and inflexible network, it would become one loop within the operational system. Many such loops would comprise the operational system. Such an operational system with many rigid networks if attacked could render the whole operational system inoperative. This, in essence, is what the PLA’s systems destruction warfare is all about. The networking in Desert Storm involved three physical war domains of land, air, and sea, while satellites in outer space provided situational awareness and navigation of guided weapons. Outer space had a support role; it was yet not a war domain. A war domain gets created when opposing sides build capabilities to contest, confront, and combat in new physical or virtual space. For instance, in 2022, cyber, outer space, EMS, and near space are

TJrose, K ill Chain, p. XXVII. This; hook is an essential read to understand how US battie networks work.

war domains for the PLA, but not for the Indian military since the latter lacks combat capabilities in them. The PLA added "near space’ as a war domain in December 20216 after it successfully demonstrated its Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) test in August 2021. The PLA had in 2020 added hypersonic glide vehicles7 and hypersonic cruise missiles to its inventory to strengthen capabilities in ‘near space’. Having fewer war domains than the PI A is the Indian military’s major operational shortcoming. Thus, as of 2022, all operational systems or battle networks with a digital backbone had four common interconnected grids: 1.

2.

A multi-phenomenology sensor grid that "looks deep’ and continuously surveys the battlespace in every operating domain—space,8 air, sea, undersea, ground, cyberspace, and electromagnetic spectrum. C4I grid makes sense of the sensors grid, determines the course of action from available options, and assigns target destruction task to the third grid.

3.

An effects grid that applies the kinetic and non-kinetic effects ordered by the C4I grid.

4.

A sustenance and regeneration grid designed to sustain operational systems network in combat and regenerate losses or damages.9

Going back to the Gulf War, major powers, including China, learnt the correct lessons. The PLA announced its new military strategy for ‘local wars under high technology conditions’ in 1993. Since China had ruled out the possibility of total war after the end of the Cold War, its focus

‘Tucker, ‘China Wants to Own the Hypersonic ‘Domain’. ’‘Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2021’, Annual Report to Congress, Department of Defense, United States of America, 2021, p. 60. 8The US military, unlike the PLA, does not consider near space as a war domain at the time of writing. ’ Robert O. Work, ‘A1 at War’, AI, A utonom y a n d the Third Offset Strategy, ed. Sam J. Tangredi and George Galdorisi, Annapolis: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 2021, p. 50.

shifted to local wars centred around sovereignty issues with neighbours, notably, Taiwan, South China Sea, and to a lesser extend the disputed border with India. Emulating the 1991 Gulf War, the PLA’s 1993 military strategy moved from coordinated operations to joint operations with a focus on precision firepower. The concept of attrition, which was the hallmark of its hitherto coordinated operations, was abandoned. Jointness, however, if. two physical war domains remains limited to real-time situational awareness provided by networking between the army and the air force. For example, the 1991 Gulf War was not a joint operation, but a coordinated one, with the US air force in the lead. The US ground forces waited for the US air force to accomplish its war aims before moving into Iraq. Meanwhile, since the US’s battle networks were its strength, China started developing capabilities to demolish or disrupt the US’s battle networks and strengthen its own operational systems. The first resulted in systems destruction warfare or ‘systems confrontation’ where each side sought to blind the other by denying information. As information assumed importance, the PLA enunciated the 2004 military strategy for ‘local wars under informatized conditions’. Since information is passed through networks, the PLA concluded that networking software, which drove hardware like aircraft, tanks, and ships needed to be strengthened to win the war. This special attention on software for two decades by the PLA would give it the leg-up in its intelligentized war against the US military. However, the Indian military, obsessed with Pakistan military and content with A ir-Land tactics in war, did not grasp the importance of software in the emerging warfare. This operational shortcoming plagues it even today. It also failed to realize that without an indigenous militaryindustrial complex, a war could never be won against an adversary like the PLA with automated production lines. Unlike the PLA, which kept its sights on competing with the US military by asymmetrical war concepts, the Indian military was content attempting to outmatch the Pakistan military. The Chinese front did not get any attention. Meanwhile, by 2010, the US was aware that China had operational systems and guided munitions that were as capable as its own. Hie PLA

could close the kill chain as quickly as the US military. The PLA could do stand-off precision attacks at long ranges as good as the US military with its indigenous mortars, rockets, missiles, and artillery projectiles most of which were guided. Coupled with increasing miniaturization, guided weapons brought unprecedented lethality at long ranges. Another development that started shaping the PLA battlefield was increased weapon systems automation; fewer soldiers were required to operate gun systems, air defence systems, and other weapons platforms. The PLA cut its manpower by 500,000 in 1997, by 200,000 in 2003, and 300,000 under Xi's 2015 military reforms;10*there will be more cuts when autonomous weapons replace automated ones. This trend was suggestive of the PLA’s transformative modernization—from weapon platforms to capabilities—to meet the US military challenge. It was the opposite with the Indian military. The public sector Ordnance Factory Board, heading forty-one ordnance factories since the time of British India, meant to produce arms, ammunition, and equipment for the military, has ‘notoriously low productivity and quality',11 is manpower heavy, with some 70,000 employees, lacks modernization, and has outdated labour-intensive facilities. Reforms were undertaken in June 2021 by restructuring the Ordnance Factory Board into seven defence public sector units under the Defence Ministry.12 The jury is still out on whether this has resulted in increased productivity and modernization. Moreover, the unsaid political imperative of not losing an inch of land on the LoC against Pakistan and (after April 2020) on the LAC against China forced the Indian Army to increase rather than reduce manpower. With finite defence allocations, the finances available for the other two services—air force and navy—diminished. Two trends were clearly discernible between the Indian military ,0Shannon Tiezzi, ‘The Real Reason China Is Cutting 300,000 Troops’, The Diplomat, 8 September 2015. nAjai Shukia, ‘Military should fund its own modernization’, Business S ta n d a rd , 2 July 2021, p. 11. 12‘Coi'poratization of Ordnance Factories’, Ministry of Defence, 26 July 2021, available: https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID= 1739060

and the PLA by 2010. With limited resources, the Indian military was investing in procurements (mostly imports) of weapons platforms against Pakistan. The PLA was spending substantive amounts on acquiring indigenous capabilities to meet the US military challenge. The PLA’s 2014 Military Strategy Of the nine military strategies enunciated since 1949, the 2014 ‘informatized local war’ strategy was transformational like Mao’s 1956 military strategy. It had three peculiarities: one, maritime (naval) domain was mentioned for the first time; two, the PLA had added three new war domains of outer space, cyber, and electromagnetic spectrum to its physical ones of land, air, and sea; and three, a new war concept of integrated joint operations (discussed later). Confirming the addition of the three new domains at the 8th Beijing Xiangshan Forum on 24 October 2018,13 deputy director of the general office of the CMC, Major General Ding Xiangong said the war would be based on threats from ‘outer space, electronic (electromagnetic spectrum), cyber, land, air, sea, and undersea’. A PLA officer at the meeting said while sea and undersea (depth of 300 m and below) were a single war domain, the distinction was meant to underscore the importance of depth warfare: future naval operations would mostly play out undersea. This favoured the PLAN which was constructing quieter diesel submarines, developing stand-off sensors to determine submarine location, and concentrating on autonomous undersea drones. With the creation of virtual domains, the PLA’s focus shifted from weapons platforms (in physical domains) to capabilities (available in both physical and virtual domains). However, the change was not limited to capabilities alone. There was a change in the mindset too: which platforms fired the capability mattered less so long as the capability achieved the desired outcome on the target. So the urge to buy more of the same—more tanks, more guns, and so on with the same capabilities— was curbed. The new war concept of integrated joint operations was different !3I participated in the forum as a speaker.

:o8

from the joint operations concept of the 1993 strategy which referred to jointness in the physical war domains of land, air, and sea only, with support from outer space capabilities. The integrated joint operations meant integration or incorporation of capabilities of the six war domains, and combination of capabilities from various domains into one strike package for greater frect on the target. The constitution of the strike package called mission set was dependant on the target pro die and the effect desired on it. The integrated joint operations which are at the heart of the ‘informatized war’ seek information dominance by attacking enemy kill chains through precision strikes at strategic points like his software networks and command and control hubs which carry and process data/ information, and take decisions based on it. Besides kinetic attacks, data/information can be denied to the enemy by two non-kinetic means: cyberattacks which target data, and electronic warfare which targets waveforms which carry data (discussed in the next chapter). To optimize use of integrated joint operations in warfare, the PL A did massive structural reforms in 2015, which led to the formation of WTC. The Pentagon’s Pace In 2009, the US ordered the raising of the US cyber command under the National Security Agency. Under General Keith B. Alexander, ‘The US cyber command reached full operational capability, by drawing personnel from each branch of the services, in October 2 0 1 0 /14 Keeping pace with the PLA, the US Army, in 2014, came out with its first doctrinal manual on Cyber Electro-Magnetic Activities (CEM A). In a new concept of domains convergence, CEMA consisted of cyber space operations, electronic warfare, and EMS (electromagnetic spectrum management). Unlike the PLA, which had recognized six war domains, the US military recognized five—land, air, sea, cyber, and space. EMS was not recognized as a war domain by the US military. By 2022, the PLA had one more war domain—near space—than the US military. The US military situation vis-a-vis the PLA in 2014 was reminiscent MDd Monte, G enius Weapons , p. 76.

of World War II. Britain had developed the world's first tank, called Mark I, which entered service in 1916. Between the two wars, major powers had made advances in aviation, radio communication, and mechanization. Yet, it was Germany that first put these technologies together into a spectacular war concept called blitzkrieg. This gave operational advantage tc the German forces for a few years until the allies caught up with matching operational constructs. The lesson here was that the first mover advantage in new warfare scores over those waiting for perfection of technology and war concepts. Just like the imperfect US’s NCOs in the 1991 Gulf War, the nuclear bombs used by the US to end World War II were heavy and lacked sophistication. To take this argument further, the Indian military’s belief that the PLA’s new disruptive technologies are immature and not war ready misses the point of first user advantage, and is therefore incorrect. By an aggressive use of AI in all its capabilities, namely AI cyber to enhance cyberattacks and digital disinformation campaigns; AI EW called cognitive EW ; AI missiles and munitions called killer robots; AI drones and swarm drones in specialized roles; intelligent unmanned systems and robots, and intelligent software networks in the IoMT against the Indian military—medium power with low level technology, outdated war concepts, and old ways of doing business—in real combat, the PLA will get a major boost in building new war concepts, which will give it advantage over its peer competitor and main adversary, the US military, for many years. Used in war, the AI will restructure many attributes of war such as tempo, scale, speed, accuracy, lethality, and even the traditional principles of war. As an aside, building and validating war concepts (done at operational level) in actual combat with Indian military before developing Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs, done at tactical level) will be an unprecedented gain for the PLA. The usual practice is to first develop TTPs by giving new technologies to field formations that test, refine, and validate them in actual exercises over an extended period. Once the TTPs are validated, higher formations develop war concepts based upon them. Since neither the US military nor the PLA would be able to exercise

war control, both will concentrate on building credible deterrence. To test the other’s resolve and identify red lines, both will indulge in grey zone operations. In the worst case scenario, they will escalate in phases like crisis, pre-war, and tactical engagements. In all of the above, the PLA’s war experience with Al-backed war concepts will be a big advantage. In reality, except for futuristic technologies (which are not likely to \ reach operational status soon) like quantum computing; brain-computer interface; and artificial general intelligence (AGI) where the US military and the PLA are competing, the other disruptive technologies—not always perfect—will be in the PLA’s inventory by 2024. Human braincomputer interface, which is referred to as domain of cognition or consciousness, will make machines extensions of humans, thereby enabling quicker decision-making, leading to closing the kill chain faster than the enemy. This scenario is not a figment of the imagination. For example, Brose writes in his seminal book The Kill Chain, ‘US DARPA demonstrated in 2018 that it was possible for one person to control three drones using surgical implants that communicated the person’s brain signals directly to the aircraft.’ls Given the PLA’s impressive strides in AI and disruptive technologies, the US, in 2014, was impelled to announce its third offset strategy to neutralize supposed advantages gained by China. The assumption was that improved autonomy with artificial intelligence—in software systems, weapons platforms, decision-making, war domains, missiles, and everything from back office to front end combat—will enhance operational systems performance and warfighting. The tipping points were autonomous software and autonomous machines. Given this, the Pentagon’s offset strategy was framed to focus on AI, robotics, autonomy, and human-machine teaming. Unlike the first two—which were meant to maintain the lead over the Soviet Union—this one was trying to catch up to the PLA making up for the time the US had been busy, post 9/11, in Afghanistan and Iraq. The realization that the US’s NCOs had perhaps been outdone by the PLA’s informatized war and the worry

“ Brose, Kill C hain, p. 179.

that the PLA might leapfrog in key areas of intelligentized war was pervasive in the Pentagon. When the US announced its third offset strategy against China, in India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the military at his first joint commanders' conference in October 2014 that terrorism (emanating from Pakistan) w the mam threat confronting India. Threats am always analysed ami war-gamed by professional militaries before being communicated to the political leadership, never the other way round. By formalizing terrorism as the main threat, even the 1980s Air-Land war concept, which involved combined arms operations and war coordination within the services, was downgraded. The services, especially the army, started believing that CT ops were all that were needed to defend India’s territorial integrity. Getting back to the Pentagon, in addition to announcing the third offset strategy and review of its network-centric operations to ensure information dominance, another task underway by 2015 was to find ways to defeat the PLA’s A2/AD systems complex to break into the enemy theatre. The Pentagon had Taiwan in mind where the PLA had laid out daunting A2/AD capabilities covering the distance of 177 km between Taiwan and the mainland. The PLA had built the A2/AD under its 2015 military reforms which were meant to accomplish the strategic goal of safeguarding sovereignty and security of Chinese land, air, and sea. The A2/AD is the US military term for what the PLA calls its ‘counter intervention forces’ comprising its long and medium range ballistic missiles, hypersonic and supersonic cruise missiles, early warning and long-range radars, Integrated Air and , Missile Defence System (IAMDS), long range reconnaissance satellites and aircraft, cyber, electronic, and counter space capabilities. In addition to IAMDS, another defence layer could be provided by the PLA’s terrestrial and airborne EW systems capable of jamming hostile aircraft and drone communication. Directed energy weapons with 100-150kW solid state laser will be used to shoot down drones, mortars, and missiles. With a massive iandmass to defend, the PLA had traditionally been obsessed with good IAMDS. In possession of one of the largest forces of advanced long-range surface to air missiles, the PLA purchased Russian

S-300 and S-400 (anti-missile and air defence systems) and hopes to buy the S-500 systems capable of hitting satellites in low earth orbit. It has also deployed indigenous HQ-9 and HQ-9B (medium to long range surface to air missile) and is developing HQ-19 with ballistic missile defence capability. The IAMDS if supported by advanced airborne early warning arid control aircraft which help to extend its range. These include Chinas most advanced AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System), KJ500, with aerial refuelling capability to improve the aircraft’s persistent air coverage. The KJ-500 joins the earlier KJ-2000 aircraft. The PLA’s AEW&C (airborne early warning and communication) aircraft are supported by special mission aircraft like the Y-9 for communication jamming and electronic countermeasures designed to disrupt the enemy’s battlespace awareness at long ranges. Y-9 made its operational debut in 2019. The counter intervention force or A2/AD weapons are meant to disallow the US military access to its bases, and to deny the force operational freedom of action once there. Against India, where the PLA replicated a similar though smaller version of A2/AD on the LAC16 since the April 2020 Ladakh crisis, it would be near impossible for the IAF fighters to break into Chinese airspace. At the heart of this strategy is China’s systems destruction warfare exemplified by its impressive projective-centric (missiles) warfare and ability to destroy US operational systems with non-kinetic and kinetic capabilities comprising missiles, guns, laser guided bombs, laser weapons, cyber weapons, jamming, and counter-space weapons. Instead of fighting directly with the US military, the PLA, adopting asymmetrical warfare would destroy its operational systems rendering its approaching air and maritime forces blind. By building longer ranges and more capable ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missiles, better sensors in outer space, air, and ground, high-powered longer-range jammers, and cyber offensive weapons, the PLA kept increasing the envelope of its A 2/ AD weapons’ attack profile. Moreover, the PLA brought the spectrum

“Snehesh Alex Philip, ‘A year since Gahvan, IA F remains battle-ready in Ladakh with missiles, radars & fighter jets’, V i e P rin t, 15 June 2021.

of its air and missile defence system lower within the atmosphere to include drones, swarm drones, UAVs, and cruise missiles. According to the US military, the A2/AD challenge was huge and required three actions to meet it. First, the US needed to increase its surface-to-surface missiles production rapidly. The Trump administration bid withdrawn from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (IN F) treaty 2019 since it prevented the US from building conventional land-based missiles with a range of over 500 to 5,500 km. Since China was not part of this treaty, it could unabashedly test and operationalize ballistic missiles in numbers unmatched by any nation. Incidentally, India and the LAF remained blase about the PLA’s missile challenge encapsulated in the PLA Rocket Force (PLA RF). The second action pertained to the challenge of the PLA’s long range and accurate missiles, enabled by AI. These ‘intelligent’ missiles, called lethal autonomous weapons (LAW s)—would operate autonomously. Having the ability to accomplish given tasks independently, LAWs will not require software networking communication with the human controller. This network which connects the missile to the control station is its most vulnerable part. It can be destroyed by the adversary—in China’s case, by the US—thereby blinding the missile. The answer to this problem, the US military said, was to abandon its limited and permanent Asian bases with a high density of troops in places like Japan, South Korea, and Guam. Established after the World War II, these would be easy targets for PLA missiles. Instead, the US should seek diffused bases at various places, where troops could be placed on a rotational basis. It was argued that dispersed and expeditionary US troops across INDOPACOM would be less vulnerable targets and provide better conventional deterrence. Consequently, the Biden administration started searching for fresh rotational bases, including in India, a strategic partner. The third proposed action was to create a US Army led MultiDomain Task Force (M DTF) that was physically closer to the Chinese A2/AD firewall to potentially penetrate it before a major attack was mounted by the US forces arriving from rotational bases. The MDTF would have land, sea, air, outer space, and cyber capabilities. The idea of

MDTF led the US Army to mull over a new war concept called MultiDomain Operations (MDO). Keeping their domain peculiarities in mind, the US Air Force and Navy too created their own versions of MDO. The essence of the army MDO was networking of long-range fires, electronic, space, and cyber domain as part of the joint force comprising army, air force, navy, and marines. ‘Multi domain opera ions as a concept proposes that the joint force can achieve competitive advantage over a near-peer adversary by presenting multiple complementary threats that each require a response, thereby exposing adversary vulnerabilities to other threats. It is the artful combination of these multiple dilemmas, rather than a clear overmatch in terms of any particular capability that produces the desired advantage/17 While speed was an operational imperative in MDO, the existing communication system was unable to deliver it optimally. Since each service had developed its own tactical networks which were incompatible with those of the other services, MDO command-and-control or operating centres remained essential. Here information from all listed entities/weapon systems from ail domains would come at a central place for decision-making and for choosing the appropriate shooters to close the kill chain. The Future Is Here The MDO operating centres, depending on the level of the headquarters, would be huge halls with umpteen computers manned by service personnel from all arms and services sitting together to make sense of the data pouring in at the speed of light in nanoseconds. According to the US writer Christian Brose, ‘In higher headquarters, operating centres can be the size of a basket-ball court, with more screens and nicer desks than the smaller, more spartan, tactical operations centres in war zones, which might have plywood desks and fewer flat screens. Operation centres, regardless of their size, are like the brains into which much of the information from military systems and sensors flow/18 ^Congressional Research Service, ‘Defense Primer: Army Multi-Domain Operations (M D O )’, 22 October 2021, available at . '•Brose,

K ill C h a in ,

p. 148.

There is a difference between data and information which needs to be understood. Raw data procured by thousands of miniaturized sensors (electro-optical, radars, infrared, acoustic sensors, and light detection & ranging (LiD AR)) placed in physical war domains will be processed instantly by edge computing. Making sense of the raw data, c computing will turn. it into actionable information. which would the? be passed to the MDO operation centres. The latter, which will include senior officers from all services, will then take decisions on the action to be taken on the information coming to them. Since the US’s individual services had their own versions of MDO, two problems surfaced: first, the services (army, airforce, navy, marines, and space force) needed to interact with one another quickly, which was not possible since they had different communication systems using different frequencies, standards, and networks. They communicated by voice calls, an archaic method of communication. And secondly, software networks that linked various systems or nodes were inflexible and needed to be replaced. Manually engineered with industrial age architecture, the US’s existing networks used for individual services’ communications were rigid and stove-piped; for example, the US Army networks have difficulty communicating with air force and other services’ networks. According to US Army Brigadier General John Rafferty, ‘The current reality is that each service has its own networks—-often, multiple networks—that often connect only via one-off technical kludges or cumbersome manual work arounds. All services are unified by the idea that we have to improve our sensor to shooter timelines in order to fight and win in the future.’19 By 2014, China was gathering pace in disruptive technologies, matching the US military in many technologies, getting ahead in some like ‘shipbuilding, missile defence and offensive missiles’;20 and

lvSydney J. Freedberg Jr, 'Array Says Long Range Missiles Will Help Air Force, Not C o m p e te B r e a k in g D e fe n s e , id July 2020. ^Sydney J. Freedberg Jr, ‘"We May Be Losing The Race” For A I With China: Bob Work’. B re a k in g D e fe n s e , 2 September 2020.

hoping to leapfrog in a few critical ones like artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, hypersonic missiles, network communications, 5G wireless communications, and biotechnology. China had pumped billions of dollars into creating a world-class technology ecosystem. The US was aware that China had developed software systems with artificial intelligence embedded in them to replace traditional software networks. The PLA ’s Software Strength Aware of Chinas progress in software systems, the former US deputy defense secretary, Robert O. Work, said in September 2020, ‘Between Russia and China, China is the most dangerous competitor, although Russia is remarkably advanced in military robotics. But robotic vehicles and drones are just one aspect of AI and automation, equally important— and a major strength for China is the intangible autonomy of software systems and communications networks that comb through vast amounts of sensor data to spot targets, route supplies, schedule maintenance, and offer options to commanders.’21 Work could not have been clearer that PLA’s exceptional strengths were its operational systems’ thinking networks with AI or, more appropriately, the deep learning algorithms embedded in them. Such autonomous networks help in closing kill chains faster, with precise effects on battlefield because of unimpeded information flow to gain operational advantage over peer competitor. Meanwhile, as all disruptive technologies converge into these thinking autonomous networks for war effectiveness, operational surprises become inevitable. Thus, autonomous networks that increase the tempo or intensity of combat operations with increased data flow should be considered a battlespace by itself. The real war game, therefore, between peer competitors, would be how to destroy each other’s thinking networks (systems confrontation) which, unlike earlier rigid and industrial age networks, would be endowed with software defined communications capable of skipping frequencies to elude attackers who would assault to shut them down. *‘Ibid.

So, while the US was busy for years in Afghanistan and Iraq fighting tactical battles, the PLA had made major operational gains: it replaced traditional networks with autonomous ones capable of running operational systems on steroids. This would give multiple advantages like intelligence gathering by making rapid sense of huge volumes of data; situation awareness by developing common ail-domains operational picture; framing options and action plan; disseminating commander’s intent to stakeholders in physical domains; and assisting in manned* unmanned, and human-machine collaboration and teaming. All this would eventually lead to IoMT, which is the manifestation of ultimate integration of disruptive technologies. According to the US’s Defense Science Board (D SB), the PLA had focused on Al-driven physical autonomy and virtual autonomy that complement one another. The virtual autonomy, according to the DSB, called ‘autonomy at rest’, refers to systems tha* operate virtually in a software driven environment.’22 As a result, machine learning algorithms are inserted in internet, operational systems, and software networks which exist within the cyberspace and help in sensor fusion, data analytics, campaign and battle planning, forecasting, image classification and decision-making process. Meanwhile, ‘autonomy in motion’ refers to systems in the physical world, such as robots and autonomous vehicles. Here, machine learning algorithms are rooted in physical world things. The autonomy referred to by Work and the DSB is artificial narrow intelligence (AN I) where humans, by writing algorithms, would assign, tasks to robot/machine/network/operational system/internet, and then allow it to decide how to accomplish it within defined parameters by picking the best option from a range of options composed by it. While the human being delegates authority to the machine, he can abruptly end the mission if it appears headed towards disaster. This could be for a number of reasons: training or military data was poisoned ot corrupted; human biases in data were not removed; there was data drift (the statistical properties of the target had changed); enemy had injected

“Amanda Andrei, ‘Rest, Motion, And Morality: Introduction To Autonomy’, Mitre Partnership Network, 1 May 2018.

adversarial learning techniques; enough evaluation by test models had not been done; data was not used from the real-world environment; enemy forces had shown the white flag for surrender which unmanned machines, lacking cognition, do not understand and so on. At present, the PLA and the US military are competing in ANI. Inteiligentized or Algorithmic Warhire Before proceeding further, it is necessary to understand the transformational difference between the PLA’s inteiligentized warfare from its informatized warfare, and the US military’s mosaic or algorithmic warfare from its MDO. Unlike informatized war, wThich is a technical issue involving networking of people across domains, inteiligentized war involves humans and machines working in partnership. This creates conceptual, technological, technical, interactive, and organizational issues. Also, unlike informatized war and all kinds of warfare before it, in inteiligentized or algorithmic warfare with IoMT as its ultimate manifestation, it is no longer about how many men are needed to operate or control a platform (tank, gun, etc.), but how many (unmanned) platforms can one person control. The platforms like tank, gun, sensors are referred to as ‘things’ or nodes suggesting capabilities independent of weapon platforms. At its most basic, the IoMT concept has two aspects: one, it is a network of intelligent machines (or robots) that can communicate with one another. And two, it is built on the principle of human command and robot control. The human sets the task or mission, while the machine does the execution of the mission. It is distribution of work between the two with the human doing the superior cognitive tasks. It is hoped that as the AI matures, the machine will be able to do more and more tasks leaving the human to do the higher tasks of setting goals and contextualizing them. Once these conceptual basics are understood by everyone, the complexity of technology and warfare sets in. Starting with technology, six requirements are essential for IoMT. The first is human resource or talent without which nothing moves forward. The second is lots of

good quality datasets which are required for machine learning (by deep learning neural networks) to evolve and make the machine or robot intelligent. The third is hardware (chips) on which everything runs. The fourth are algorithms (mathematical) equations that drive machine learning. The fifth are applications where machine learning trained algorithms are applied to specific tasks like simulation, sensor fusion, administration, logistics planning , image recognition, natural languages processing, battlefield damage assessment, data analytics, decision­ making, and so on. And, finally, the integration of specific applications into IoMT architecture according to the mission requirement. The four essential disruptive technologies needed for IoMT are 5G wireless communication, AI, cloud, and big data. On the technical side, IoMT involves integration of Al-enabled weapons, AI enabled ‘things’, AI enabled war concepts with AI enabled software. Software networks will be at the heart of IoMT since collection, processing, and transmission of information with high degree of coordination and confidence is done through them. The importance of intelligent and flexible networks was confirmed by US defense secretary Lloyd Austin when he said, ‘What we need is the right mix of technology, operational concepts and capabilities—all woven together in a networked way that is so credible, flexible and formidable that it will give any adversary pause.’23 Thus, the technical aspect of IoMT would be enabled by three factors: robotics, intelligent machines, and intelligent software. Robotics, which combines computer sciences and engineering to design, construct, and operate robots to collaborate with and assist humans has advanced rapidly. From earlier robots which were programmed by an autonomous unit, present advanced AI robots can access information from the cloud and thus connect with a network of robots. These ‘improving robotics can enable machines to perform more and more complex physical tasks without direct human control’.24 What distinguishes an intelligent or AI enabled machine (or robot) from an advanced robot is its ability

^Austin III, ‘The Pentagon must prepare for a much bigger theater of war’. J4Brose, K ill C h a m , p. 145.

to collect data, process it, pull out desired information, and send the remaining information to a central cloud, interpret the extracted information for framing options, and while offering options to other military systems, act upon it itself. All activities by intelligent machines are done within overall instructions given by humans. For intelligent robots to do the above mentioned actions and pass information quickly to other imdiigent robots, the software doing this too should have AI embedded in it. Without an intelligent network, intelligent robots cannot deliver, just as an intelligent network without intelligent robots cannot exist. The next—interactive-factor is about building trust in the unusual partnership between humans and machines. Instead of humans controlling unmanned machines in combat, both would work together: superior reasoning and decision-making skills by humans, along with faster and precise execution of tasks by the unmanned machines within the parameters framed by human. Building trust will depend on three issues: how to operate securely in a highly adversarial environment, how to overcome the black box problem of not knowing how and why the AI took a certain decision until too late, and problems associated with unmanned systems for ground warfare. Consider the first issue. Between peer competitors, the EMS will be highly contested as both sides will use powerful jammers. Since intelligent network with software defined communications will be difficult to destroy, networks will not be owned by either side, instead they will be owned and contested by both. There will be an adversarial learning environment where the enemy would attempt to mislead the opponent’s machines with AI embedded malware. Across cyberspace, opposing malware will fight it out in the virtual networks; there could be good cyber agents fighting with bad cyber agents (malware). Owing to pervasive cyber threats and other operational imperatives to attend to, outer space capabilities might not be available to land war which in the case of the US military and PLA would not be a high priority. Thus, sensors, munitions, weapons, vehicles, various devices, and intelligent robots that comprise the loMT will not be connected by satellite-based internet since they will be cyber vulnerable.

The land war between the PLA and the US military will depend on the cloud. Even this will be a problem in IoMT where there will be too many intelligent machines or robots and too few humans. Given this, the bigger the cloud, the more vulnerable it would be to cyberattacks and jamming. Big clouds with adversarial learning and deceptive cyber and electronic warfare might eiM up with disastrous outcomes. The problem would be acute since robe c lacking cognitive and commonsense capabilities like humans, would follow the instruction of the inserted malware. Therefore, small clouds are the solution since they will have a better chance of surviving malware. Moreover, since communications are critical for operations, both would use fog (done at the edge of cloud) computing and ubiquitous sensors on physical battlefields which would push AI and decision­ making to the edge. In ideal circumstances, data will be collected by sensors and sent to a central cloud for processing to extract meaningful and useable information from it. Central clouds have an unrivalled ability to store data and compute relevant data into meaningful information that is used by the commandand-control centre to decide on an appropriate shooter for target destruction. The problem is that the time taken from the detection of a target to action taken is slow, which increases the kill chain time. After all, data moving back and forth to a central cloud is limited by the speed of light (at which data travels in network pipes), and the size of the network pipes itself. With edge computing, as mentioned earlier, which is done in the fog cloud, relevant data is not sent to the cloud, but is acted upon at the source (sensor) itself creating real-time insights on target profile. Data that is not immediately used is sent back to the central cloud. This decreases the kill chain time. According to the PLA: ‘For future unmanned systems, AI could enable intelligence analysis on the front-end, such that the processing of data occurs without having to transmit it back, with autonomous learning.’25 US defense secretary Lloyd J. Austin too confirmed heavy investment in edge computing: ‘We are already investing in the huge opportunities

J'\Kania, ‘ Battlefield Singularity*, p. 2?..

of edge computing, the framework that lets us process data as it is being collected, absorb it and share it instantaneously—enabling us to find not just one needle in one haystack but 10 needles in 10 haystacks and share those locations with various forces and partners. This gives us real-world, real-time advantages—and can let us fully grasp situations moving at the speed of war.*3-6 The problem of limited size of network pipes would be solved bv 5G wireless communications. However, vulnerability of networks will increase with the use of 5G networks and ubiquitous sensors (smaller, smarter, and cheaper), which will generate vast amounts of data to be passed through loMT. On the flip side, the 5G network, with major advantages over legacy capabilities like 3G and 4G networks, will be indispensable. It will provide higher bandwidth allowing more data at ten times higher speeds and low latency for information transfer between platforms. 5G with better algorithmic orientation and alignment will be ideal for IoMT operations. The combination of AI and 5G will also help with EMS management by ensuring that electronic warfare, cyber warfare, signals and communication intelligence, and all intelligent robots get adequate spectrum and data. Second, another ‘black box’ concern with IoMT will be about uncertainty of output. This could be mitigated by the quality of data-sets. Since IoMT is not some fixed package, but a combination of multiple pieces or ‘things’ which are put together for a desired mission, data analytics is critical. Given the indispensability of data and to save time, a PLA officer (who preferred anonymity) suggested that the mission models be prepared beforehand.27 These models taught by real-world examples (training data) could also be put through reinforcement learning for further validation. Besides, to cater to the ‘fog or din’ of war, which would be inevitable against peer competitor and in an unknown operational theatre, IoMT mission models could be modified on the battlefield. The changes would be done by coders and cyber warriors who will be part of all field formations.6*

i6Austm III, 'Pentagon must prepare for a much bigger theater of war’. •7In conversation with the author in October 2019.

The third concern relates to unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) in areas of mobility, coordination and teaming, endurance, and exchange of information. Mobility requires UGVs (ground robots) to self-drive on broken (uneven) ground, and manoeuvre in operational area. Coordination needs manned and unmanned systems to synchronize actions with one 'mother in given space and time. Coordination is about swarming where each robot (drone) understands its own ability and can sense the environment to do the assigned task in coordination with other robots. Teaming is difficult since, in addition to coordination, it needs robots to collect and process information, sense its environment, attack, sense, defend, sustain, and communicate to accomplish given tasks. Moreover, while keeping other teammates in the loop, a team ordered to end mission abruptly should have the ability to return to designated base. Endurance is complicated since the UGV should be able to come back to the source of energy for refuelling itself. With this basis understanding of IoMT, let’s consider the US military’s changes from MDO to mosaic warfare. DARPA’s Mosaic Warfare Under direction from the Pentagon, Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency (DARPA) in 2017 started thinking about the mosaic warfare concept to replace the US’s traditional battle networks in system of systems warfare. In an engagement with DARPA, the dean of the Mitchell Institute for Warfare, Lieutenant General David Deptula said, ‘The United States must address the burgeoning threat that China poses and the way it has carefully designed its system warfare strategy to counter America’s traditional way of war. By targeting US data links, denying command and control, and kinetically targeting physical nodes of the US information flows, China is planning systematically to blind the US commanders and paralyse their operations.’28 Mosaic or algorithmic war which is joint and distributed combat would not be anything like the MDO. Driven by intelligence and ^ T h e r e s a H i t c h e n s , ‘ D A R P A ’s M o s a i c W a r f a r e — M u i t i D o m a i n O p s , B u t F a s t e r ’ ,

Defense,

10 S e p te m b e r 20 19.

Breaking

autonomy, ‘it would be determined by the amount and quality of a military’s data, the algorithm it develops, the Al-enabled networks it connects, the Al-enabled weapons it fields, and the Al-enabled operating concepts it embraces to create new ways of war’.29 The disruptive technologies would assist Al-enabled networks to allow automatic cross pollination of sensors and shooters across all domains to create manned and unmanned systems combat pivoted on speed, range, lethality, and surprise according to commander’s intent. Since it would pit algorithm against algorithm, it is called algorithmic warfare. The MDO, based on old technologies, was about massed human forces, legacy and monolith weapon systems and platforms, and numerous operation centres. These centres coordinate among themselves inputs from various networks to ensure early closure of the kill chain so that the right aircraft, tank, ship, missile, and so on gets going on the mission. In sharp contrast, mission specific mosaic or algorithmic war with flexible architecture would concentrate on capability ‘nodes’ rather than weapon platforms like F-35 or F-22 aircraft or battle tanks. Instead of a rigid kill chain, it will be a flexible ‘kill web’ where capability ‘nodes’ like advanced infrared sensors in one domain would connect with shooter of any other domain like missiles or laser weapons, and command and control operating centre. The operational architecture will not exist until a commander builds it like a LEGO set from his mission blueprint. The system of systems mosaic architecture would be designed around capabilities facilitated by machine intelligent cognitive networks. By adopting kill web flexibility, destruction of one domain’s sensors would not affect situational awareness, since, like a mosaic pattern, supple and intelligent networks would self-adopt and self-adjust with available domains’ assets. Writing in Breaking Defense, defence technology blog, analysts Bryan Clark and Dan Patt, who work closely with the US’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) say, ‘Mosaic warfare would seek to impose multiple overlapping dilemmas on enemy forces that disrupt their operations and thus prevent them from reaching

J9National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, ‘Final report’, March 2021, p. 77.

their objectives in time.’30 Mosaic warfare will be facilitated by cloud architecture. In general, clouds dispense with the need to own large numbers of computers which are instead owned and hosted by major technology giants. W hat the client gets is access to virtual computers or servers that provide com pute: : power, storage of data and networking in a scaVole manner. While networking refers to access to relevant data and desired computing power after authentication, the two—cloud computing and data—are critical for machine intelligent warfare. There are three types of clouds: public (where clients can ask for computing and data through networks from public technology companies); private (servers owned by and meant for a single big client would be hosted, maintained, and provided for by a technology company), and hybrid (a mix of the two). Al-driven militaries, for reasons of security, will opt for private cloud or clouds. Perhaps the biggest war cloud that made news in 2019 was the US’s Joint Enterprise Defence infrastructure (JD E i). The contract for this programme worth US$ 10 billion, to be completed in ten years, was won by Microsoft. JED i was cancelled by the Biden administration since it was felt that the earlier Trump administration had favoured Microsoft over its rival: Amazon. The war cloud, according to the Pentagon, ‘[i]s a fundamental component of the global infrastructure that will empower the warfighter with data and is critical to maintaining our military’s technological advantage. It emphasises mission and tactical edge needs along with the requirement to prepare for artificial intelligence while accounting for protection and efficiencies.’31 Combat cloud, which will enable mosaic warfare, could be defined as can overarching meshed network for data distribution and information sharing within a battlespace, where each authorized user, platform or node transparently contributes and receives essential information and is

^ B ry a n

D efen se ,

C la rk M

•’ ’ A n t h o n y an d

h o w

an d

D a n

Ja n u a ry

P a t t , ‘J A D C 2

B e

B u ilt T o

F ig h t T h e

W ro n g

W a r ’,

Breaking

2021.

C u th b e rts o n , w ill

M a y

it c h a n g e

‘W a r c lo u d : th e

b a ttle fie ld

W h y

is t h e

o f th e

U S

m ilita ry

f u t u r e ? ’,

b u ild in g

In d e p e n d e n t ,

a vast A I

10 J u ly

2019.

s y s te m

able to utilise it across the full range of military operations’.32 Combat clouds serve two key purposes: to improve operations from the highest level to the soldier on the ground; and make the classified information available to all levels in a highly encrypted format through a series of firewalls. This reduces but does not eliminate cyber threats to data and retvvorks which operate in cyber space. Lw US military and the PL A are expected to use both big and small clouds depending on the missions. Perhaps the most valuable cloud in combat will be fog cloud. Fog or edge computing, as discussed earlier, has been assessed as a revolution in algorithmic warfare which, combined with cellular 5G wireless communication, will support situational awareness and IoMT. As discussed, the IoMT comprises all domain capabilities converging into the 5G iACD (internet, AI, fog cloud, and big data) architecture held together by flexible and intelligent networks. Mosaic warfare has been assessed to have both technical and operational problems. While creating a secure and resilient technical architecture will be an uphill task, the operational question is: what should its command and control be based upon? Participating in a DARPA discussion on its YouTube channel, General Herbert Carlisle, a retired four-star US Air Force officer, gave an interesting perspective in September 2018, which can be summarized as below: Decades ago, the US air force thought about warfighting in terms of number of sorties to be delivered on a target. This became irrelevant a long time ago with the changing character of war, infusion of technologies, huge amounts of available information, and more war domains. Unfortunately, multi-domain command and control infrastructure and capabilities continued to be built around domains and geography. Each service—air force, land force, naval force, cyber force, and space force—had its own geographic and operational peculiarities, and core competencies,33

• ’‘Philippe Gros, ‘The “tactical cloud" a key element of the future combat air system’, Fondation pour la Recherche Strategique, 2 October 2019, p. 3. ?:tDARPAiv\ 'Mosaic Warfare and Multi-Domain Battle’, YouTube, 24 September 2018,

This is what technology writer Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. referred to as ‘cumbersome manual work arounds’. According to Freedberg, ‘Each service has its own network—often, multiple networks—that often connect only via one-off technical kludges or cumbersome manual work arounds.’ 34 Though these stove piped networks coaid fight multi -domain b a o j^ they could not fight mosaic warfare, admitted General Carlisle. Hener for mosaic warfare, stove-piped networks needed to be replaced by a high-speed network. ‘Once a sensor from any domain gets connected with a shooter from any domain, the existing command and control infrastructure and capabilities built around domains and geography would not work. It should instead be built around mission sets and tim e/ he argued.35 This was a profound operational thought: build war concepts not on domains and geography, but mission sets and time. Time here refers to accelerated tempo of war. Since each war domain works around its own timelines—reaction time of jet pilot, foot soldier, cyber action, and orbit satellite are different—it will be impossible to exercise command and control in mosaic war with the individual domain’s peculiarities and geography. It should be based on capabilities which would constitute mission sets. Working on mission sets will mean focusing on outcome and not input—which shooter from which domain gets used for mission success will become irrelevant so long as it produces the desirable outcome. The focus will shift from weapons platforms to capabilities that provide speed, accuracy, lethality, and long range. This will revolutionize warfighting since predictability will be replaced by surprise and uncertainty impacting the enemy’s psyche. Operational surprises and uncertainty will influence the enemy’s cognitive capabilities, or his domain of consciousness. For example, professional air forces, the IAF being one of them, are expected to expend their bulk capabilities to achieve dominance or

available at < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33VAnTE_jDgk>. ^Freedberg Jr, ‘Array Says Long Range Missiles Will Help Air Force, Not Compete’. •“DARPAtv, ‘Mosaic Warfare and Muiti-Domain Battle'. A ? C,

superiority in air. Instead, if the PLA were to achieve air dominance with its Rocket Force (PLA R F) and A2/AD firewall, the PLAAF could employ all its capabilities on offensive action. Interestingly, the PLA had been doing combat training based on mission sets since 2012, the year Xi Jinping came to power and three years ahead of the 2015 military reforms. China’s .2019 Defence W hite Paper says, ‘Since 2012, China’s armed forces have cat-icG out extensive mission-oriented training tailored to the specific needs of different strategic directions and exercises of all the services and arms, including eighty joint exercises at and above brigade/division level.’36 Strangely enough, this development was missed by the Indian military. This could turn out to be a critical miss. Let us now examine the ‘time’ factor for accelerating the speed of war. This primarily depends on two factors: swiff actionable information from large datasets and quick decision-making. The US military discovered the importance of data in Afghanistan in 2001, and this was reinforced in 2003 in Iraq when it collected large quantities of data from heterogeneous sensors comprising drones, satellites, airborne and ground assets, and human sources in Afghanistan and Iraq operations. Making sense of colossal amounts of mixed raw data from drones alone required classifying objects, tracking movements, and detecting video feeds. This was not a task that humans could undertake for real time meaningful and actionable information. Thus, in August 2017, the US DOD constituted the ‘Algorithm Warfare Cross-Functional Team’ for data fusion with help from Google AI run ‘computer vision’ programme meant to analyse visual data. This programme called Project Maven ran into trouble when Google’s civilian employees protested about working on a programme meant to kill people. It was argued that real-time information distilled from raw datasets by Project Maven would be used in missiles to kill people. While Project Maven did not go far, the DOD went steps further in developing what came to be known as fusion warfare whose objective was to produce a comprehensive picture of the battle space in real time

^ K ta te

C o u n c il

In fo rm a tio n

O ffic e ,

‘ C h i n a ’s N a t i o n a l D e f e n s e

in

th e

N e w

E r a ’, p .

17.

to stay ahead in the kill chain. The concept was Tor turning big data into a big picture by creating the combat cloud by fusing all the inteEigenee that today is coUected by systems that often can't communicate with one another easily’.37 Data fusion gave two big advantages: it helped in intelligence gathering, and in precision and speedy attacks. The speed war could be expedited with fester data flow bud its quick conversion ir° n information, for use. Decision-making is the other critical issue since it allows capturing fleeting operational opportunities in the rapidly changing battlespace situation to achieve unexpected victories. According to Li Minghai of the PLA’s National University of Defence Technology, ‘In future intelligentised warfare, today’s “system of systems” confrontation could become instead a “game of algorithms” in which algorithm advantage is a dominant determinant of operational advantage. The employment of superior algorithms could dispel the “fog” of the battlefield and enable decision-making advantage, while increasing the efficiency of operations. Decision-making could leverage the respective strengths of human and machine cognition, while leveraging a “cloud brain” that allows for swarm and distributed decision-making, enabled by deep neutral networks.’38 Since quick decision-making was critical to stay ahead of the enemy’s kill chain, and having closely followed the PLA trajectory, the US military concluded that this would be addressed in the Joint All-Domain Operations (JADO) made public in March 2021. Once in a Century War The US military, which always took a hard look at the PLA’s defence white papers noticed that in ‘Defence White Paper of 2019, Chinese military planners have described their desire to create a multi­ dimensional, multi-domain, unmanned combat weapon systems of

37Richard Whittle, ‘ACC Intel Head Seeks Help Creating The “Combat Cloud”’. Breaking D efense, 28 October 2015.

• 18Elsa B. Ktinia, ‘Chinese Military Innovation in Artificial Intelligence’, Center for a New American Security, 7 June 2019.

systems on the battlefield’39. This meant that, unlike the US military, the PLA would eventually prefer unmanned systems in all domains. It could, at the beginning, have human-machine teaming like ‘loyal wingman’ with fighter aircraft, a few human soldiers amidst unmanned platforms and humanoid robots on land, a few manned ships along with unmanned ones, and autonomous submarines among manned submarines until trust in Al increases. If the PLA were to take the trajectory of ‘singularity’ (discussed below) in warfare, it would be impossible for the US military to voluntarily accept being behind on ethical and moral grounds. Meanwhile, the two issues which needed immediate atten tio n replacement of inflexible traditional networks with flexible and powerful networks, and a new war concept to fight in multi-domains with drones, manned, and unmanned systems—were addressed by the US joint staff chairman, General Mark Milley and conveyed to the senate armed services committee on 4 March 2020 where he proposed Joint All-Domain Operations (JAD O ).40 The concept that came to be known as Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JAD C2) strategy required all services to be networked to bring information into a single operating centre for all services. Thus, instead of fighting wars as army, air force, navy, the marines, and space forces, the US military would fight wars as a nation with allies and partners in INDOPACOM. The underlining idea of JADO would be to make data/information from all war domains available to every participant including allies and partners in their JADO operating centres. The JADC2 is a work in progress and could take a decade to fructify. To facilitate JADC2, the Pentagon instructed MDO of the three services be merged with DARPA’s mosaic warfare. A report on JADC2 and the division of work decided by the Pentagon to meet sought result was submitted to the Congress in March 2021.41 wBrose, Kill Chain, p. 98. ‘"‘Statement of General Mark A

.

Milley,

U S A

20th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff’,

Department of Defense Budget Hearing, 4 March 2020. ‘’Congressional Research

S e rv ic e ,

‘Joint All-Domain Command and Control: Background

and Issues for Congress’, 18 March 2021.

According to the report, the Pentagon would develop command data standards for joint operation. Since data is the key for autonomy at rest’ to keep the intelligent networks vibrant, and ‘autonomy in motion’ to create reliable robots, data from varied domains ought to be standardized. Another job for the Pentagon was thn integ* :vtior> of 5G wireless technology for communication. It would help m crunching and processing of large quantities of datasets from sensors on satellites, aircraft, ships, and ground-based radars at the source (sensors) itself by edge computing to develop actionable information for decision-making for targeting. Use of 5G would result in low latency and quick transfer of large amounts of information to operating centre and all weapon systems. Unused data at the sensor, not immediately needed, could, if needed, be transferred to the central cloud. The other use of 5G would be equally phenomenal. Unlike the 4G network, 5G can function as many networks all at same time: this is called network slicing. Its implication in war is that since the EMS will be congested and contested, 5G will allow multiple users to operate on the same frequency band. Called spectrum sharing, this will allow communication despite interferences. The Pentagon will also build the Fully Networked Command, Control, and Computer (FNC3) system. This will help in protecting radio frequencies in beyond-line-of-sight conditions; establish connections with submerged assets; and assist in multi-user and multi­ point laser communications. Laser communications in free space are similar to terrestrial fibre optic cables in providing broad bandwidth for transmitting more data in less time than radio signals. Both are free from electromagnetic interferences. Data/information in both is encoded into laser-based communication, travelling at the speed of light. The downside is laser communications need direct line of sight in free space for communicating. Since this is available in outer space, laser communications are best suited for inter-satellite communications. Furthermore, to create a resilient system, i.e., one that is free from jamming, cyberattacks, and latency, the DOD plans to create a communication layer in the low earth orbit. This will dispense with the

existing system of communication by satellites in geosynchronous orbit at 35,800 km altitude above the earth. China has similar plans to launch its Starlink satellites for broadband internet connectivity, it could use them for military purposes also. DARPA, meanwhile, will perform three tasks: connect sensors directly to shooters; facilitate fast and secure radio communications between command forces in multip-e aomains; and provide automatic real time location and status of all air assets to commanders. The JADO or the JADC2 would develop jointness amongst domains, optimize operability amongst capability nodes and dispense with the need for many operation centres which inhibit the speed and tempo of war. However, in addition to the technical and technological complexity involved in JAD C2, there are other questions that need credible answers. For example, given that the US forces will be operating in a cyber and electronic constrained environment, how reliable will the Al-enabled systems be? While in the MDO, the most senior service officers would take the call, who will be the decision­ making authority for all services? Where will the human be in the loop? Will the human be 'in the loop’, 'over the loop’, or ‘out of the loop'? This question will impact how soon the kill chain gets closed, thereby impacting the speed of war. These questions will need answers, which are not there at the moment. What is clear to the US military and the PLA is that quick decision­ making is needed for rapid, relevant, discreet, and precision effects by robots, weapon, missiles, and unmanned systems. In a 2017 paper, General John Allen (retd) and Amir Hussain argued that the new war was not a revolution in military affairs, but a revolution in human affairs. According to their hypothesis, which was accepted by the US DOD; Broad contours of how this new shift in the way war will be waged already are becoming clear. Technologies such as computer vision aided by machine-learning algorithms, artificial intelligence (Al)-powered autonomous decision making, advanced sensors, miniaturized high-powered computing capacity deployed at the edge, high-speed networks, offensive and defensive cyber

capabilities, and a host of Al-enabled techniques such as autonomous swarming and cognitive analysis of sensor data will be at the heart of this revolution. The major effect/result of all these capabilities coming together will be an innovation warfare has never seen before: the minimization of human decision making in the va- : majority of process >s tiaarrionaily required to wage war. This minimization likely will filter where vhe human will be located in the decision-action loop and the humans specific involvement in decision making itself. In this coming age of hyper-war, we will see humans providing broad, high-level inputs while machines do the planning, executing, and adapting to the reality of the mission and take on the burden of thousands of individual decisions with no additional input.42 In 2018, calling hyperwar the war of cognition, which will be the war of the future, the US army chief General Mark Milley said, ‘[The military means] to shift from battles of attrition to battles of cognition, where we think, direct, and act at speeds the enemy cannot match in order to achieve a perfect harmony of intense violence'; hence, ‘the goal is to combine US forces on land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace in a seamless multi-domain operation, assailing the enemy from all sides at once until they’re overwhelmed’.43 Meanwhile, addressing the INDOPACOM in April 2021, the US Pentagon chief under the Biden administration, Llyod Austin, spoke about maintaining ‘Integrated Deterrence' which seemed an expanded version of deterrence, what has been the US military’s first line—or cornerstone—of defence. According to him, ‘Integrated deterrence also includes new concepts of operation, the elimination of stovepipes between services and their capabilities, and coordinated operations on land, in the air, on the sea, in space and in cyberspace. What we need is the right mix of technology, operational concepts, and capabilities—all

■ ^General John R. Alien, US Marine Corps (Retired) and Amir Husain, ‘On Hyperwar’, U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, 10 July 2017. 4,Syc!ney J. Preedberg ]r., ‘“A Perfect Harmony Of Intense Violence”: A rm y Chief Milley On Future War', B rea k in g Defense, 9 O cto b e r 2 0 le ,

woven together and networked in a way that is so credible, flexible, and so formidable that it will give any adversary pause. We need to create advantages for us and dilemmas for them.’44 Austin’s integrated deterrence, Milley’s war of cognition, and Allen and Hussain’s hyperwar are different names for the JADO war concept. According to Austin, JADO or integrated deterrence will involve Tout challenges: one, how to bring ‘joint fires’ from all physical and virtual domains (without physical aggregation) at the same time under a single command structure. This will require mosaic web integration of capabilities from all domains. Two, how to bring logistics into the battlefield with speed by evading enemy fires. One possibility being looked at is by use of rockets bringing logistics by space trajectory. Three, to connect everything with the JADC2 so that a hack-proof central cloud, with all information at a central place which a commander can access any time and any place, is available. And four, information advantage. Once the above three challenges are met, commanders will always have an information advantage over the enemy for favourable outcome. Interestingly, a war game conducted by the US joint staff in October 2020 between the US forces and the PLA saw US forces failing miserably. The conclusion was that the US had to give up its traditional warfighting concepts where ships, aircraft, and other weapons platforms were brought together (or aggregated) for assault. According to the vice chairman, Joint Staff, General John Hyten, ‘We always aggregate to fight and aggregate to survive. But in today’s world, with hypersonic missiles, with significant long-range fires coming at us from all domains, if you’re aggregated and everybody knows where you are, you’re vulnerable.’45 The second war game conclusion was: ‘Even more critically, the blue team lost access to its networks almost immediately.’46 Hence, the need for JADO, where capabilities will replace weapons platforms, the war cloud will provide relative (not absolute) cyber protection, and 44C. Todd Lopez, ‘Defense Secretary Says “Integrated Deterrence” Is Cornerstone of U.S. Defense’, U.S. D epa rtm en t o f D efense News, 30 April 2021. 4iTara Copp, “'It Failed Miserably”: After Wargaming Loss, Joint Chiefs Are Overhauling How the US Military Will Fight’, D efense One, 26 June 2021. "Tbid.

information dominance will enhance situation awareness and close the kill chain faster than the enemy. However, a hyperwar, war of cognition, or integrated deterrence will lead to a situation where humans will find it impossible to keep pace with intelligent and autonomous machines. This will mean either enhancement (which is b.trusi-'T of human cognition or battlefield singularity. The US military and the P.l A are working on both. Battlefield Singularity The US military and the PLA seem to hold divergent views on actual combat. The US military would likely repose trust in ‘mission command* which means giving the mission outcome to young leaders and allowing them to figure out how to get there. The PLA is not expected to take this approach because of two operational shortcomings often listed by commentators: the PLA will hesitate to put too much trust in young leaders as they lack experience in conflict. The second reason flows from the first, that the PLA is not confident of effective command and control at lower levels. The PLA, therefore, is expected to repose greater trust in LAWs, autonomous missiles, drones, and unmanned systems to accomplish mission sets. Since networks drive unmanned systems and drones, thet PLA, as said earlier, came to the conclusion that the weapon of th$ future was software, and not tanks, guns, and aircraft, however cutting edge they may be. Virtual networks which build mission sets are thd future of warfare. Without networks there will be no war, it will instead be battles. The war fought independently in the air, land, sea, cyber/ outer space, near space, and EMS domains would deliver suboptimal outcomes and would qualify as battles. Since the PLA does not believe in ‘mission command’, it will not do combat training as a joint force. Its mission sets campaign will be assembled from capabilities in all domains, and training for these will be carried out as independent exercises. Western analysts believe that exercising as joint force strengthens interoperability, an advantage that PLA does not achieve. According to an analyst, ‘I got this from some

senior military officials that I spoke to recently on a trip, between the way the US is pursuing this (building interoperability) and the way China is and the advantages that the US has, is that we actually exercise already as a joint force all the time. Whereas China doesn’t exercise as well as a joint force, they exercise their services independently.’47 I learn- of i ’ PLAs anathema for joint force during my visit to China in 2019 to participate in the 9rh Beijing Xiang?-ban Forum. I was invited to speak on ‘AI and the Future of Warfare’. During my talk, I argued that there were two advantages in retaining flexibility in capabilities employment. Capabilities could be used as part of mission sets which are not theatre based but domain based. Mission sets, which as IoMT architecture, could be built as models. Such models might change depending on changes in data, need for mission change, or to cater for fog or uncertainty in war. This would require writing and adaptation of algorithms in the war zone, which, though not easy, was doable. A professor from Army Command College, Senior Colonel Shen Shoulin, was in the audience. Though he didn’t disagree with me outright, he said, ‘Algorithms are difficult to adopt in changing [war zone] situation.’48 Another senior colonel in the audience told me that the joint force concept would render the war rigid as it runs contrary to the flexibility of arranging and re-arranging all domains’ capabilities. When I pointed out to him that there would be no need to alter IoMT models in the WTC where the PLA would be pitted against the Indian military, he merely smiled, which I took as a sign of concurrence. The other advantage of not training as a joint force would be the option to use the six types of capabilities as independent wars. These would be cyber war; spectrum war (for control of EM S); missile war; drones war; light or laser or directed energy weapons war; and political war. ^Defense One Radio, ‘Ep. 89: JADC2, explained’, 31 March 2021, available at < h ttp s://w w w .d efen seo n e.co m /id eas/2021 /03/d efen se-o n e-rad io-ep -89-jad c2explained/173051 >. ^Remarks made in the session ‘AI and Future War’ at the 9'Jl Beijing Xiangshan Forum in October 2019.

Given the interest of the PLA in use of unmanned systems in war, it is not surprising that their analysts were the first to talk about battlefield ‘singularity’. It is believed that AI enabled war would be accelerated to the point where humans would not be able to keep pace with the tempo of operations. At this point, while being responsible for ultimate decision'•making, hu mans would no longer be in the loop for each decision in combat. It would be human command and robot control. This is what Chinese developer Zeng Yi had said (see the chapter ‘The Future of W ar’) that while rules would be made by humans, systems would be autonomous. Once AI reliability improves and human trust grows in machines by experimentation and use in actual operations, war concepts will then be limited only by imagination, ideas, computing power, data strategy, civil-military integration, and traditional resistance of militaries to change. And LAWs would be at the front of autonomous combat. Lethal Autonomous Weapons (LAW s) A distinction should be made between intelligence and autonomy. Precision guided weapons (PGMs) were the forerunners of intelligent weapons. Showcased to the world by the US military in the 1991 Gulf War, PGMs are guided weapon[s] intended to destroy a point target and minimize collateral damage’. These include air and ship launched missiles, multiple rocket launchers, and guided bombs which use a combination of radio signals from the Global Positioning System (GPS), laser guidance, and inertial navigation systems—using gyroscopes—to improve a weapon’s accuracy to less than 3 m.49 The PLA uses many indigenous PGMs like ground attack munitions and guided bombs for use with its armed UAVs. It also has artillery delivered high precision munitions like YJ-91 which is an indigenous version of the Russian Kh-31P, and the PH L-03 multi-barrel rocket launchers, equivalent to the Russian Smerch that India has. PGMs were missing two things: how to find the exact location of a ‘‘ ’ C o n g r e s s i o n a l R e s e a r c h S e r v i c e , ‘ P r e c i s i o n G u i d e d M u n i t i o n s : f o r C o n g r e s s ’, 2 7

F e b ru a ry

2020, p. 2

B a c k g r o u n d a n d Is s u e s

target not available before launch, and once launched, how to correct the weapon mid-course based on real-time situational awareness. The Israeli Harpy anti-radiation missile (against enemy radars) fulfilled the first requirement. After getting target information before launch, Harpy can loiter (hence the name loitering munition) in a designated area looking for the deadliest target, for over two hours. It has the freedom to choose the target by itself in an area defined by the ground controller. Having imported the Israeli Harpy UAVs, the PLAmade its own ASN-301 anti-radiation drone, an improved variant of the Harpy. Indian military too bought Harpy but did not make its indigenous version. Israeli Harpy-2 or Harop is an improved version of loitering munitions which brought human intelligence into the game. Harop’s advantage is that it remains in communication with human handlers on the ground through data link for mid-course corrections. On orders from the controller, Harop can dive down and destroy the target, kamikaze style, or it can be retracted to land back safely at a pre-determined base. While getting updates on the target during flight was a good thing, data linking could be jammed or spoofed by the enemy. It also meant that the weapon had little autonomy. Israel’s recent multipurpose tactical loitering munition ‘Mini Harpy’ has two exceptional specifications: it uses an electro-optical/infrared seeker for automatic search of stationary and moving targets. And, notably, it has a dual option of ‘man in the loop’ to avoid collateral damage and full autonomous operation. The missile’s limitation is its operational range of 100 km. With the arrival of AI, weapons gained autonomy but their reliability has decreased. The argument that autonomous machines are less reliable because of the unpredictability of algorithms though valid does not hold true in the case of the PLA’s W TC. Here robots and machines are taught, tested, and evaluated on large quantities of quality training datasets from real-world conditions. Since machine behaviour depends on integrity of data that train its algorithms, PLA robots will be in unique situation to learn from examples from actual war theatres. For major power militaries, including the PLA, the race is on to harness ANI where the weapon or missile is given the task by the human

controller whose role thereon is to keep fingers on the emergency button to end the mission if things go terribly wrong. Having got the task, "autonomous weapon systems select and apply force to targets without human intervention. After initial activation or launch by a person, an autonomous weapon system self-initiates or triggers a strike in response co information f'rom the emironment 'vceived through sensors and on the basis of a generalized "target profile’. Tins means that the user does not choose, or even know, the specific target(s) and the precise timing and/or location of the resulting application(s) of force.’50 LAWs can be launched in the hundreds with the certainty that its algorithm will find its target, without the fear that it will get jammed. For example, a swarm of three to four missiles could be launched to destroy the Indian S-400 air defence missile system site. The missiles wTould, among themselves, decide how best to silence the air and missile defence system, and then do it. The LAWs algorithm written by humans would have sophisticated capabilities in sensing, decision-making, and implementation. Experts unanimously believe that autonomy in motion’ will come earliest in missiles, munitions, drones, and armed robots. These LAWs— colloquially called killer robots—would be the imminent threat to the Indian military, since it neither has them, nor has the capability to counter them. The US defense department defines LAWs ‘as machines that once activated, can select and engage targets without further intervention by a human operator W According to the PLA dictionary, ‘[a]n artificial intelligent weapon is one that utilises AI to automatically pursue, distinguish and destroy enemy targets; often composed of information collection and management systems, knowledge base systems, assistance to decision systems, and management systems etc.’52 Undoubtedly, the complexity of LAWs is that leaving the kill decision in ‘ I C R C C ro ss,

p o s itio n 12 M a y

o n a u t o n o m o u s w e a p o n s y s t e m s ’, I n t e r n a t i o n a ! C o m m i t t e e

2021.

s,i)epartment

o f

in

s y s t e m s ’.

w e a p o n

o f th e R ed

D e fe n s e ,

U n ite d 21

S ta te s

N o v e m b e r

o r g / ?v i e w & d i d - 7 2 6 1 5 3 > . s‘ i v a n i a , ‘ B a t t l e f i e l d

S i n g u l a r i t y ’, p . 2 2 .

o f A m e r ic a , 2012,

‘D ire c tiv e

a v a ila b le

at

3 0 0 0 .0 9 :

A u to n o m y

< h ttp s ://w w w .h s d !,

to an algorithm may be dangerous, especially when explainability of why an algorithm took certain decisions is doubtful. Besides, there are ethical issues involved; LAWs do not understand humanitarian issues. While a global debate on whether LAWs should be used in war or not has been underway since 2015, there is apprehension that with LAWs poised to'enter service soon, no country will Willingly want to be at , disadvantage. Certainly not China. A PL A senior colonel told me in October 2019s3 that LAWs will be a reality soon. Interestingly, in April 2018, when the Chinese government expressed support for an international agreement to ban LAWs, on the same day, ‘its air force announced a project to develop fully autonomous swarms of intelligent combat drones’.*51*4 From missiles, to drones, to robots, it will be impossible to tell which weapon system should be categorized as LAW since that capability will be hidden in its algorithm code. Not willing to take a moral and humanitarian high ground at the cost of operational disadvantage, the USs National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, authorized by the US president, in its final report made public on 1 March 2021 rejected a ban on LAWs. The report, which created commotion in military circles worldwide said: ‘if autonomous weapon systems have been properly tested and are authorised by use of a human commander, then they should be consistent with International Humanitarian Law.’55 Unlike LAWs, unintelligent weapons and munitions (ballistic and cruise missiles, guns, multi-barrel launchers, etc.), which the Indian military has in its inventory in limited numbers, will only work as intended if its kill chain remains intact. If the enemy manages to disrupt or destroy the kill chain by breaking into it, the weapon or missile, howsoever awesome, will become inoperative. Thus, all kill chains need to be protected at all costs to sustain the war. India’s S-400 air defence and missile system, ballistic missiles or BrahMos cruise missiles are only ^During my participation in the 9th Beijing Xiangshan Forum. 51Elsa B. Kania, ‘China’s strategic ambiguity and shifting approach to lethal autonomous weapons’, L aw fare, J7 April 2018. ssLeo Kelion, ‘Biden urged to back A1 weapons to counter China and Russia threats’, B B C N ews, 1 March 2021.

as good as the sanctity of their kill chains. If the PLA breaks into the kill chain through cyber, electronic, or kinetic means, these weapons will be made ineffectual. This applies to nuclear weapons also. The PL A ’s Intelligentized War with the Indian Military Considering that the PLA would have major operational a d v a n ce s like excellent military data, known theatre, known enemy, mostly static targets, little worry about contestation in EMS, and so on against the Indian military, the 2027 timeline could be brought forward by a few years. Thus, given its dominance over EMS against the Indian military, the PLA need not worry about adversarial learning. It would also have the option of using satellite-based internet, cloud, and fog on land battlefield in actual combat. According to an analyst, ‘The Indian Army and India are yet to fully acknowledge the convergence between cyber warfare and electronic warfare, whether doctrinally, operationally or organisationally. The Indian Army’s thinking about the relationship between cyber and electronic warfare and how both can play out through the electromagnetic spectrum is, at best, evolving.’56 CDS General Rawat admitted this when he said in May 2021: ‘We need to look at the technological advancements that the Chinese are carrying out particularly in the field of non-contact warfare, cyber, space and artificial intelligence. These are the aspects we need to focus on. We have to now look at incorporating technology into warfare and [this] is currently being looked at.’57 There was little indication that the Indian military was working on enhancing these capabilities. More to the point, catching up with the PLA, which is more than three decades ahead, would be impossible. A key reason why the Indian Army and military have paid scant attention to cyber, outer space, EW, and EMS is that they are not networked. Each service fights its own tactical wars with

S6Kartik Bommakanti, ‘Indian Army’s approach to electronic & cyber warfare is nowhere as evolved as Chinas PLA’, The P rint , 24 July 2019. 5TMarya Shakil, ‘Border Issues Can’t Be Resolved Overnight, Can’t Afford to Lose Ground: CDS Bipin Rawat’, News 18, 22 May 2021.

their own separate doctrines giving minimal attention to operational level campaigns. Under these circumstances, the Indian Army will be blinded. It will be easy for the PLA Strategic Support Force (PLASSF) to jam Indian military’s tactical radios and spoof its radars. Fibre optic cables expected to be laid by 2024 might get destroyed by mis- 4e salvos on marked headquarters. Thus, communications between vauous headquarters would get destroyed or function erratically, /m other operational advantage of the PLA will be in fighting with capabilities and war concepts which it has honed over two decades with the US military in mind. Fighting with the Indian military with outdated war concepts of Air-Land battle, mostly obsolete technologies, and with bulk of legacy equipment will not be difficult. The AI black box dilemma too would not be of much concern. Since AI is as good as the data used to train it and given minimal collateral damage in sparsely populated combat zone, the PLA is expected to be aggressive in use of robots and LAWs. Regarding mobility and manoeuvre by unmanned systems, the PLA has, since the beginning of the 2020 Ladakh crisis, started building roads right till the LAC. These will be used by manned and unmanned combined armed brigades formations and units for advance on several fronts. The PLAA’s land campaign will likely take place within seventy-two hours of war being joined once the PLA is in control of the combat space, has decimated most of the LAF capabilities, achieved dominance in EMS, used its missiles to destroy command centres, communication hubs, and operational logistics routes, and decimated forward ammunition storage sites and fuel dumps. Between the options of using mission sets and independent capabilities, the PLA could likely use both since there would be little resistance from the Indian Army. As mentioned earlier, the PLA, unlike the US military, prefers mission sets to joint force operations. Regarding independent capabilities, the PLA would have the option to choose from seven wars: cyber war, spectrum war, missile war, drone war, integrated long range precision lire assaults, light (laser and microwave weapons) war, and air strikes. It would be theatre level action on several fronts. Offensives would be launched at high speed, intense rates, and without

;>ny break. True Indian Army's gams, tanks, air defence systems, and other vm waging capabilities will oe silenced, ne reay assault will be on the Indian Army's will to fight—this is what is referred to as cognitive ability.

T H E IN V IS IB L E WAR

he battle was set to be joined. Tanks and guns were arrayed on both sides promising fierce fighting. The home troops were in red; the enemy was painted in blue. Tipping his wooden pointer towards the row of blue tanks, Senior Colonel Su Rong, commanding officer 1 Armoured Regiment (brigade) said with a grin, ‘Those are the US Army’s Abram tanks.’ This was in August 2012. I was on a visit to China at the PLA’s invitation and spending a day with the 1 Armoured Regiment outside Beijing. Senior Colonel Su was demonstrating a simulation exercise on a sand model, where Chinese troops were battling the enemy, which was unambiguously the US. After pointing out the Abram tanks, Su mentioned the factor that would carry the day for the Chinese. ‘The PL A soldier,’ he claimed, ‘can fight better with one-fourth the food required by a US soldier.’ Lest one thought that the Chinese were warmongers, Rong concluded his briefing with, ‘Unlike the US which dropped nuclear bombs, Chinese soldiers will fight only in self-defence.’ Later that evening, at the dinner table, Senior Colonel Xu Weidi turned the conversation to cyberwar. ‘No one will win the battle in cyberspace and hence no one should engage in cyberwar. In cyberspace, through which cyber weapons move, there is convergence of cyber and physical domains. This has blurred the boundaries between the two,’ he told me. ‘We should focus on security in cyberspace.’ Xu, a professor at the strategic and research department of the PLA’s National Defence University, was back from Washington where the two sides had deliberated on aspects of cybersecurity. My two takeaways from the visit were: the PLA had identified its enemy and the means to challenge it—through cyber operations in

cyberspace. The PLA had chosen computers and the internet, where cyberspace exists, as the future battlefield, as opposed to the physical one, where the US had a lead. The choice of cyber operations was not accidental but was aligned with the thinking of Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu. In his book The Art o f War, he said: to light and conque; in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.’5 This is what cyber operations do by achieving information dominance over an adversary—denying information vital for operations to the enemy and by getting maximum information for one’s own operations. For the PLA, information is the critical strategic resource in modern warfare. In six decades of doctrinal thinking, the PLA has gone from considering information as an enabler to it being the main line of effort. The PLA’s Information Warfare (IW ) is much more than the annihilation of the enemy’s operational systems in hot war with the aim to disrupt, destroy, and incapacitate communications. It is first and foremost about paralysis and disruption of commercial, telecommunications, power, and other essential services networks to create widespread chaos and panic amongst civilians. To be the first responder in both the pre-war and initial stages of war, cyberwar has the ability to make Sun Tzu’s words— Victorious warriors win first and then go to war’—true. Since the Indian military’s three services would, at best, be partially networked by 2024, the PLA’s IW will focus on incapacitating individual services’ networks, communications, and various command and control headquarters: thus making the enemy blind and deaf. The importance of information has grown with every defence white paper made public by the Chinese Ministry of National Defence. The 2004 paper spoke about fighting local, wars under informationized conditions’. The 2015 paper expounded upon ‘informationized local wars’. By 2019, Chinese thinking had graduated to ‘inteliigentized local war’ by harnessing AI with information. This paper mentioned ‘safeguarding China’s security interests in outer space, electromagnetic

'Liu M ingfu, T h e C h in a D r e a m , Beijing

CN Times Books, 2015, p. 103.

space, and cyberspace’, which are responsible for IW, as an important national defence objective. The evolution of the PL As thinking on IW can be traced through four milestones; the arrival of the internet; the 1991 Gulf War when the US showcased its network-centric war (N CW ); the 2009-2010 assault by the first cyber weapon Smxnet, nd Xi jinping’s 2015 military reforms. The internet (with standard communication system.) was officially invented in 1983. It started as a modest US defence department experiment called ARPANET, connecting a few computers. The World Wide Web began in 1989. While the world was yet to grasp the internet’s potential to usher in the third industrial revolution or the Digital Age, China saw in it a route to challenge the US. A little-known Chinese lecturer, Shen Weiguang, had announced at Beijing’s National Defence University in 1988 that the battlefield of the future would be invisible—consisting of information space. He declared that the age of IW had arrived. No one had used the phrase IW before. According to Shen, ‘Virus infected microchips can be put in weapon systems. An arms manufacturer can be asked to write a virus into software embedded into the computer system of an enemy nation and then activated as needed. Tactics like this could have profound strategic implications if carried out carefully and systematically. Viruses could also destroy the enemy’s political, economic, and military information infrastructures, and perhaps, even the information infrastructure for all of society.’2 If China could inject deadly viruses into cyberspace, Shen said, it could achieve the greatest of all strategic military objectives: destroy the enemy’s will to launch a war or wage a war. At that time, Shen was not taken seriously within Chinese strategic circles. Today, he is regarded as the founding sage of Chinese IW theory. Cyberspace combines information technology with communication infrastructure that comprises internet and computer systems including software, embedded processors, routers, all wired and wireless transmission, controllers, and so on. This space had grown exponentially with increased digitization in commerce, private uses, and military. With

2Joel Brenner,

A m e r ic a th e V u ln e ra b le ,

New York: Penguin Press, 2011, p. 118.

this, opportunities for cyber operations, which target the data passing through cyberspace and the systems that use it, have expanded, Cyberspace connects with EMS: the medium that allows all human activities such as watching a movie on a computer, X-rays, wired or wireless phones, and so on. Comprising of a series of frequencies, EMS can be divided into seven waves, formed by a chain reaction generated by alternate electric and magnetic fields in the atmosphere. These waves, which can pass through the atmosphere as well as vacuum of outer space, are radio waves, microwaves, infrared waves, visible light waves, ultraviolet waves, X-rays, and gamma rays. All these waves have differing wavelengths. For instance, radio waves have long wavelengths while gamma rays have short wavelengths. These lengths determine their applications. All communication on land (terrestrial fibre optic cables), sea (with submarine cables), air and outer space (by electronic means) use some EMS waveform. For example, the majority of military communications use radio waves (with low energy but can travel long distances and pass through solid objects like buildings), microwaves (with higher energy which can transmit more data to limited ranges and can be disrupted by solid objects) are used in radars and satellites, and infrared waves (with high energy) are used for intelligence gathering purposes. However, emerging communication technologies use lasers which transmit light instead of radio waves. In addition to cyber, outer space capabilities also transmit through EMS, which is the sole medium of receiving and transmitting information as electronic signals. Sophisticated cyber malware (malicious software) can be transmitted to space assets through EMS to destroy, disable, or disrupt satellites in various orbits—geosynchronous, medium, and low earth. This makes satellites extremely vulnerable to cyberattacks. Once malware gets inserted into the electromagnetic pulses, connecting satellites with ground stations, space-based sensors comprising electrooptical, synthetic aperture radars, to name a few, could be rendered inoperative. Cyberspace and EM S through which information is transmitted becomes one continuum. The PLA’s informatized warfare is about taming this continuum since it will be the central battleground. This

continuum has two operational implications: one, since military operations in air, land, sea, and near space are dependent on data/ information in cyberspace, it has become the controlling domain in all domain warfare. Commensurate with connectivity (networking) of domains, the criticality of defending cyberspace has grown. And two, since FMS is the foundation domain being the enabler of operations in every other domain (cyber, outer space, near space, land, air, and sea), without dominance or superiority (depending upon the adversary) in this domain, war cannot be won. Combat in EMS has traditionally been done by EW —electronic warfare. Given these truisms, the PL As informatized warfare—that has evolved over twenty-seven years from 1988 when Shen first mooted the idea with his IW theory and until Xijinping’s 2015 military reforms—has integrated cyberspace, EMS, and outer space into an exceptional service called the Strategic Support Force (SSF) which oversees operations in virtual battlespace as opposed to the land, air, near space and sea domains which constituted the physical battlespace. The warfare in virtual battlespace can be called by many names such as cyber war, information war, electronic war, space war, electromagnetic manoeuvre war, spectrum war, or simply invisible war. Strategic Support Force By 2013, the PLA had developed its asymmetrical IW thinking further. ‘PLA strategists called for combining network cyber and EW against an adversary’s information systems at the start of any conflict.’3 Cyber and EW were clubbed together since cyberattacks the data that is transmitted through communication infrastructure and networks (wired and wireless) while EW attacks the wireless network waveforms that carry data. Given the PLA’s special attention to psychological warfare, they decided to emphasize ‘public opinion war’ too. Consequently, the PLA’s goal for asymmetric non-kinetic war was called ‘Integrated*9 3Bryan Krekel, ‘Capability of the Peoples Republic of China to Conduct Cyber Warfare and Computer Network Exploitation'., The U.S.-China Economic Review Commission, 9 October 2009, p. 10.

Network and Electronic Warfare’ (IN EW ). Moreover, realizing the criticality of outer space for ballistic and cruise missiles operations— from initial detection, identification, and targeting to guidance and damage assessment—the PLA created the Space Systems Department (SSD). It was responsible for every aspect of the PLA space operation comprising launch, telemetry, -qcking, support, information, and space warfare. Remaining a step ahead of the US military in IW, the PLA decided that the two organizations responsible for non-kinetic warfare—INEW and SSD—ought to be merged. This new entity was the SSF. Established on 31 December 2015, the SSF is an independent military service under the direct command of the CMC, with its control (strategic and operational functions) vested in the tri-service Joint Staff Department (JSD ). The JSD, on behalf of the CMC, has five roles: • To oversee the work of the three services’ headquarters (the PLA’s army, air force, and navy) responsible for force construction, management, and capability building. • To oversee the five theatre commands responsible for conventional integrated joint operations. • To oversee the work of SSF responsible for invisible or nonkinetic operations. • To work closely with the Rocket Force (R F ) that is responsible for all strategic and operational surface to surface missiles, another new organization created by the 2015 military reforms reporting directly to the CMC through the JSD. With no representation in the theatre commands, the SSF and RF maintain responsibility for physical and virtual battlespace by non-kinetic and kinetic operations; strategic (nuclear weapons) operations; supporting integrated joint operations in theatres; and own force construction and management. The SSF working closely with RF also helps in delivering PLA’s hypersonic, ballistic, and cruise missiles by providing initial detection, target ing, guidance, and battle damage assessment. • To work directly under the CMC for nuclear war planning arid

mo

its command (control is with the R F), and provide seamless transition from conventional to nuclear war. Headed by a theatre command grade military officer, the SSF oversees two equal deputy theatre command-level departments: Network Systems Department (NSD) responsible for Information Operations (1 0 ), and Space Systems Derr.rtmeru (SSD) responsible for all space, operations including space warfare (space attacks and space defence). Tne 10 is responsible for cyber warfare, electronic warfare, psychological warfare, and EMS management, and all operations leading to them. The SSF has two primary roles: • One, information support for enabling joint operations in a theatre. This involves collection and management of strategic, operational, and technical intelligence to support theatre commands in its tasks ranging from continental defence, power projection, strategic defence and offense operations in space and nuclear domains. • Two, information operations, which are done in conjunction with RF. These are meant for ‘systems destruction warfare’ by nonkinetic and kinetic means in order to paralyse, incapacitate, or destroy enemy’s command and control system at the beginning of conflict. Military political warfare was added to the SSF with the specific purpose of maintaining their own peoples’ resolve while weakening the enemy’s will to fight. This would be done by shaping the political and diplomatic narrative in China’s favour. Conscious of the PLA’s growing threat to EMS with its INEW and SSD, the US decided to improve its own EW systems. In 2013, the US Navy introduced the concept of Electromagnetic Manoeuvre Warfare (EM W ) to meet the twin challenges of the PLA’s cyber and EW capabilities to its Information Warfare. According to vice admiral Ted N. Branch of the US Navy, ‘We are making major investments in the Fleet’s ability to maneuver freely and right in the EM environment. Central to this investment is the concept of EM Manoeuvre Warfare or EMW, which anticipates future

conflicts in the battlespace created where cyber and the EM spectrum converge. Core to EM W is a complete awareness of our EM signature and others’ in real time; the ability to manipulate our EM signature to control what others can detect, maximize our ability to defeat jamming and deception, and guarantee our use of the spectrum when needed; and use of, EM and cyber capabilities as non kinetic fires to inhibit adversary C4ISR, targeting, and combat capabilities. Successful EMW requires the seamless integration of the communications, commandand-control, signals intelligence, spectrum management, electronic warfare, and cyberspace disciplines to permit our freedom of action across the spectrum.’4 Unfortunately, the operational importance of the virtual battlespace has been lost on the Indian military which continues to assess land, air, and sea as the only warfighting domains. It does not consider cyber, outer space, near space, and EMS as war domains, but as force multipliers for the fighting domains. Thus, it is not only PLA fighting in seven warfighting domains as opposed to Indian military fighting in three, which would put India at a disadvantage. What would debilitate the Indian war effort is neglect or minimal attention to the invisible war, leading to the end of war for India before it is joined. By consolidating cyberspace, EMS, and outer space under the SSF, the focus shifts from attrition to gaining overall superiority in the virtual cyber and EMS continuum. This is done by EMS management by moving away from contested EMS space and by using as much of the EMS spectrum as possible. There will be a constant need to open new areas of the spectrum to operate in, which will also create uncertainty for the enemy. Moreover, once war domains are coalesced into battlespace, boost is provided to integration of defensive and offensive capabilities to disrupt enemy’s communications, situation awareness, and decision­ making. The PLA’s EMS management has relevance against peer competitor (US military), not so much against the Indian military. Ihe US military understood the value of the PLA’s SSF in 2019.

‘Vice Admiral Ted N. Branch, ‘A New Era in Naval Warfare’, US Naval Institute, Vol. 140/7/1,337, July 2014.

According to former US deputy secretary of defense, Robert O. Work, ‘The US should consider replicating the Chinese model of a single unified Strategic Support Force overseeing satellites, cyberspace, electronic warfare, and information warfare—functions that the US splits between Space Command, Cyber Command, and other agencies. I think the unified Strategic Support Force is a better way to go, but this is something that would be analysed, war-gamed, experimented with." China Rises in Cyberspace In 1991, when the US launched the Gulf War against Iraq, the PLA remembered Shen’s advice. Within months of the war, Major General Dai Qingmin of the PLA General Staff observed, ‘Information domination could only be achieved by pre-emptive cyberattack.’ He added, ‘Counter approach to the [1991 US-led war on Iraq] Operation Desert Storm experience had to be to challenge America’s control of the battlespace by building capabilities to knock out their satellites and invade their cyber networks.’6 Since the key to the US military winning the Gulf War was connectivity, China realized that the US military could be blocked if its connectivity networks could be penetrated, disabled, destroyed, or corrupted by powerful viruses. This was exactly what Shen had proposed. Taking their cue from the PLA’s acceptance of Shen’s suggestion, China, starting 1998, invested sizeably in cyber operations with the launch of ‘the first experiment with a cyber militia: a forty-person unit in a state-owned enterprise in Datong city of Shanxi province, which had a rich talent pool drawn from twenty universities, institutes and companies’.7 It was clear to the PLA that cyber weapons could bypass the battlefield completely. In the event of a war, China could inflict damage on the enemy’s home front, not with conventional weapons, but cyber

sFreedberg Jr, ‘We May Be Losing The Race’. ‘Richard A. Clarke and Robert K. Knake, C y b e r

W ar,

New York: HarperCollins, 2012,

p. 50. 7‘2009 Report to Congress of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review' Commission’, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2009, p. 173.

weapons. To accomplish this, ‘China created citizen hacker groups, engaged in extensive cyber espionage, took several steps to defend its own cyberspace, established cyber war military units, and laced US infrastructure with logic bombs (a software application that causes a system or network to shut down and/or erase all data or software on the network). Richard A. Clarke, who served in the White House under four presidents, said that while announcing the creation of cyber units in 2003, China had listed ten examples of weapons and techniques it would be pursuing: planting information mines; conducting information reconnaissance; changing network data; releasing information and logic bombs; dumping information garbage; disseminating propaganda; applying information deception; releasing clone information; organizing information defence; and establishing network spy stations.9 China has an army of hackers in its cyber warfare units. ‘It is estimated to have anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 individuals.10 Cyber operations are diverse with devastating implications beyond war, and cover all aspects of civilian life like financial institutions, power grids, nuclear plants, and so on. These involve hacking using internet and information systems for strategic or military purposes. This is done through malware (malicious software), a standard term for hostile software such as Trojan, computer viruses, worms, and ransomware; while spear phishing involves use of fraudulent emails to induce a target into revealing confidential information. The three malwares, namely, computer viruses, worms, and Trojans are different. Computer viruses get attached to a file or programme. Only on human intervention do they get into the system, self-replicate, and spread into the network to attack data. They can disrupt access, corrupt, and destroy data. Worms, on the other hand, do not require human intervention. They enter the networks by exploiting vulnerabilities and once inside, they quickly move from one computer to another, with

’'Ibid., p. 54. vCIarke and Knake, Cyber War, p. 57. lci>c! Monte, Genius Weapons, p. 87.

the potential to disrupt systems worldwide. Trojans are innocuous appearing malware which come as email attachments and require human intervention to infect a system and steal or corrupt data. Unlike computer virus and worms, Trojans cannot self-replicate. And, unlike biological viruses, computer viruses do not mutate. With quantum computing, it might he possible tc build malware that i.s able to mutate inside the system and hence would be impossible to defend against. But this is in the future. In a military context, malware could be used to attack or disrupt enemy computer networks, defend information systems, and exploit enemy servers and systems through intelligence collection. Chinas 1W requires destruction or crippling of ‘enemy’s operational system, command system, weapon system, support system, etc., and the internal links within each system. Destroying these links results in the enemy carrying out isolated instead of concerted campaign operations, thus degrading the enemy’s overall combat capabilities.’11 While the US military considered its C4ISR networks as its biggest strength, the PLA saw them as its biggest vulnerability. What the US called ‘network centric warfare’, the PLA named IW, intended for system-of-systems destruction. Shock and Awe Stuxnet was the world’s first digital weapon. This weaponized worm was created by a team of US and Israeli cyber warriors in 2009-2010 to target centrifuges at Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment facility. While Iran was allowed low grade enrichment of uranium for civilian purposes by the International Atomic Energy Agency, it was not permitted to enrich uranium to 90 per cent and above to make nuclear bombs. Israel and the US suspected Iran of pursuing nuclear weapons grade enrichment. So they developed Stuxnet to target and destroy hundreds of centrifuges that did uranium enrichment. The speed of centrifuges was controlled by certain programmable logic controllers (PLCs) used in industrial applications. The job of the PLCs—that are part "Roger Cliff et al., Entering the Dragon’s Lair, Santa Monica: Rand Corporation, 2007, p. 37.

of administrative supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) software networks—-was to maintain health parameters like temperature, pressure, and voltage of values, pumps, generators, and transformers to ensure that centrifuges inside the secret nuclear complex maintained the required speed needed for enrichment. SCADA was part o f the airgapped network that separated the unsecure administrative computers from the secure nuclear power plant computers. Air-gapping or firewalling is the concept of physically isolating computers or networks from unsecure networks like public internet. Inserted into the SCADA network, Stuxnet targeted the specific PLCs, took control of them, and having changed their settings, made the nuclear centrifuges rapidly speed up and speed down leading to their destruction. Stuxnet was both enormous in size and sophisticated in capability. The Stuxnet digital weapon could act on its own, find its way through cyberspace looking for a specific target to destroy. It had a lifespan of thirty-six days to complete its task before self-annihilation. It is believed that the Stuxnet attack on Iran’s centrifuges set their nuclear weapons programme back by a few years and forced the government to negotiate. While the attackers never acknowledged its existence or its role in the destruction of Iranian centrifuges, four lessons were learnt from this extraordinary attack. One, a determined adversary with good cyber offensive capabilities would always manage to get through air-gapped and firewalled systems. China was one such nation. Moreover, it is fair to assume that all these years after Stuxnet, many nations will be able to build far more lethal Al-enabled digital weapons which can breach hardened firewalls. For example, in 2018, an IBM team demonstrated an AI attack programme called DeepLocker, which was a highly targeted and evasive malware powered by AI, which is trained to reason about its environment and is able to unleash its malicious behaviour only when it recognises its target’.12 The Government of India has consistently ignored the emergence of cyberspace as a war domain. Probably because of its concern about

,2Clarke and Knakc.

F if t h D o m a i n ,

p. 250.

being pulled into an area it neither understands nor has much capabilities in. For instance, the Indian government initially denied the cyberattack on India’s Kudankulam nuclear power plant in September 2019. Later, it clarified that the breach was not critical.13 This was conveyed by means of a tweet from the official handle of the Nuclear Powrer Corporation of India limited: The investigation re vealed that: the infected PC (personal computer) belonged to a user who was connected [to the] internet connected network used for administrative purposes. This is isolated from the critical internal network. ...Investigation also confirms that the plant systems are not affected. It was further clarified that the power plant control systems wrere ‘standalone and not connected to any cyber network outside or the internet. Any cyber-attack on the nuclear power plant control system is not possible/14 The government assertion was that air-gapped systems were safe from cyberattacks. It was believed that the point of breach into the administrative network was provided by former chairman of the atomic energy commission, Anil Kakodkar. Holding a chair of excellence, he, a specialist on thorium-based reactors, had, as part of his research been using an email account given to him by the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC). He clicked on a link sent from within the organization which led to the malware infecting the administrative computers. While Kakodkar was doing legitimate work, the malicious link was generated by foreign hackers disguised as employees of BARC.15 Identified as the North Korean Dtrack malware, it was, according to the government, intended for theft of information on the thorium-based nuclear plant. The purpose, it was said, was extraction of confidential information not 13Vakasha Sachdev and Sushovan Sircar, ‘Was the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant Hit by a Malware Attack?’, The Quint, 30 October 2019. M‘Cyberattack hits India’s largest nuclear plant: What really happened?’, Times o f India, 31 October 2019. ,5Maj Gen P. K. Mallick, VSM (retd), ‘Cyber Attack on Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant', New Delhi: Vivekananda International Foundation, 2019.

destruction of the power plant. It could be so. Or it could have been cyber reconnaissance to ascertain vulnerabilities in the administrative network. While the cyberattack was supposedly generated by North Korean malware, the originator could have been someone else, perhaps Chinese hackers impersonating the North Korean virus. .according to th : US Defense ImeTgence Agency’s 2019 report, ‘Cyber reconnaissance allows the FLA to collect technical and operational data for intelligence and potential operational planning for cyberattacks because the accesses and tactics, techniques and procedures for cyber reconnaissance translate into those also necessary to conduct cyberattacks.’16 Two, cyber weapons could go beyond virtual cyberspace and destroy targets in the physical world, for instance, Iran’s centrifuges. While this was known to cyber warriors before the Stuxnet attacks, the successful demonstration validated this capability, resulting in two lines of effort: improving digital weapons with varying payloads; and finding out vulnerabilities and access points into an adversary’s cyberspace. According to India’s first National Cyber Security Coordinator, Gulshan Rai, ‘India is among the top 10 countries facing cyberattacks. These incidents have increased manifold during the lockdown period (twenty* three starting March 2020)—almost three times in cases of phishing, spamming, and scanning of ICT [information and communication technology ] systems, particularly of critical information infrastructure/17, This period coincided with the military stand-off between India and ' China in Ladakh. Three, since cyber weapons which perform targeted attacks are difficult to build, they need cyber warriors who can write complex algorithms and have access to computers with fast processing capabilities and nano technology. Making digital weapons which can damage hardware components requires going beyond Advanced Persistent Threat (A P T ) and can only be undertaken by nation states. A P Is are

’“ D e f e n s e

In te llig e n c e

,7Gtiishan Rai, 22 Ju ne

2020

‘ In d ia

A g e n c y , ‘C h in a needs

to

re v ie w

M ilita ry its

2013

P o w e r ’, p . 4 6 . c y b e r

s e c u r ity

p o l i c y ’,

Times o f India,

offensive cyber actions executed as long-term campaigns to penetrate deep into an organization's computer system. APTs require good understanding of an adversary's network and systems, non-attributable characteristics with the ability to disguise as normal network traffic, use of anti-forensic materials for obfuscation and customized resources which non-state actor: carrno i do. Hackers' militia carry out cyber offences like Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS). DDoS are executed by a botnet that allows threat actors to overwhelm networks or websites rendering them unsafe. Botnet is a network of devices that are brought together by a malicious actor to execute large-scale operations in a coordinated fashion. Thus, a way to recognize the source of cyberattack—whether by non-state actors or nations with cyberwar capabilities—is to know that ‘cyberwar is sophisticated since it involves application of nano-weapons...and highend computers.’18 China excels in both. Small Is Powerful Nanotechnology is ‘science, engineering and technology conducted at the nanoscale, which is about 1 to 100 nanometres—the diameter of a human hair is about 1,000 nanometres. This means that nanotechnology (nano-weapons) is not visible to the naked eye or even under an optical microscope.’19 In the decades since Stuxnet, the PLA has developed impressive nano malware weapons capable of disrupting or destroying physical infrastructure. India has done little in the field of nanotechnology. According to the DRDO, it is a work in process. In an interview with me, chairman of DRDO, G. Satheesh Reddy said, ‘Nano technology is a natural evolution and would increasingly be a part of, what we refer to as, hardware for any system. As far as research is concerned, we have been working with several countries including the United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, and Israel through joint working groups on technology. We have identified several futuristic technologies for joint research in areas like nano technologies, nano sensors, deep learning etc. l8Louis A. Del Monte, Genius Weapons, Mew York: Promerhus Books, 2018, p. 76. "Ib id ., p. 78

However, we are still to have any specific collaboration or agreement.’20 Clearly, catching up to China in cyber offensive operations or cyberwar is not possible for India given the huge gap in nanotechnology and lack of high-end computers. And four, Stirxnet pushed major cyber powers including China to develop cyberwar campaign strategies w ; we offensive cyberwar capabilities would be commanded and controded during war. There are three ways of running a cyber campaign: Cyber operations are (fires). Commanders identify targets, and then cyberwar units determine how to generate effects for such targets, Cyber operations are organised as a campaign to generate an overall effect, one planned and executed by cyber command, Cyber operations campaign is planned and executed by the regional commander.21 Moreover, cyberwarfare capabilities serve as a force multiplier when coupled with conventional capabilities during war. The PLA has an unspecified number of cyber specialists in each CAB, its basic unit for combined arms manoeuvre. One of their key tasks is to attack the enemy’s wireless networks meant for communications and protect their own in the battlefield—so that their own radio networks work, while the enemy radio nets are rendered inoperative. The PLAAF and PLAN also have their own cyber warriors. While the SSF provides strategic and operational support to the theatre commands, the theatres have their own cyber warriors for tactical level tasks. Thus, in addition to the SSF,'cyber specialists for tactical tasks have been training in TAR since 2018 when the W TC began its combat exercises and training. China’s cyberwar campaign against India will likely be planned and executed at the highest level: by the JSD in consultation with the SSF (both under the CMC). This will be done at the national level for overall effect by strategic targeting. The military or operational level campaign,

“’‘Interview , D r G. Sathcesh R ed d y’, F O R C E . "M a rtin C. Libicki, ‘Organising a C yberw ar C am paign’, C y b e rs p a c e in P ea ce a n d W a r, Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2016, p. H i .

planned at the JSD level, could be executed and monitored by the W TC. Strategic targets, meant for massive disruptions in civil society, will include power grids, nuclear plants, telecommunication services, manufacturing hubs, information and communication services, satellite stations, financial institutes, hospitals and other essential services, water supplies, trains, airports, and e thing which would impact daily life of citizens, The purpose will be to maximum damage by choosing vital targets which will create panic and chaos among the people resulting in severe pressure on the government. Planning a cyberwar campaign is a long-drawn and elaborate process where the effect of cyber weapons will be linked to the target’s importance, adversary’s reaction to cyberattacks, ability to recover, and what lessons it learnt from being attacked. Certain vital targets like the PMO, which would be better cyber defended, would need to be monitored and worked upon for months, even years. All these factors come under the rubric of Battle Damage Assessment (BDA); there is a direct link between cyberattacks and BDA. Like all military operations, BDA is part of the feedback on the last operation to plan the next bigger one. Cyberwar campaign preparations will differ from traditional military campaigns in three respects: one, it will be long-drawn. Two, since no nation has conducted cyberwar, the targeted people may not get to know till too late that a war is going on. The truth is most experts do not even agree on cyberwrar classification with many questioning its existence. And three, a nation that conducts cyberwar will have first mover advantage in developing campaign strategies and management of the primary battlespace for optimal operational gains. Battle Damage Assessment In October 2020, Mumbai suffered an unprecedented power outage, temporarily disrupting civilian life—trains stopped, the stock exchange had to close down, hospitals switched to emergency power generators, and so on. Tata Powder, which supplies power to the metropolis, blamed

it on ‘cascade tripping’22*at the sub-station leading to the grid failure. However, on 28 February 2021, the New York Times™ quoting US firm Recorded Future, which monitors use of internet by state actors, reported that the Chinese state-sponsored group was ‘seen to systematically utilize advanced cyber intrusion techniques to quietly gad:, a foothold in nearly a dozen cxitical nodes across the Indian power generation and transmission infrastructure’. Coming as it did in the midst of the military stand-off in Ladakh, the Mumbai power grid failure, according to the N Y T, was engineered by China to send the message to India that it could disrupt life in India’s financial capital thousands of kilometres away from Ladakh. India refused to detect the Chinese signalling. Responding to the N Y T article, union minister for Power, R. K. Singh told the media on 2 March 2021 that the massive grid failure was ‘caused by human error and not due to cyber-attack’. ‘There is no evidence to prove that the October 2020 electricity blackout in Mumbai was caused by a cyberattack perpetrated by China or Pakistan,’ he said.24 Interestingly, around the same time, Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh blamed cyberattacks for the October grid failure. According to him, ‘Maharashtra Power Department had sought an inquiry into the incident based on which we had asked Inspector General of the State cybercrime unit to conduct an inquiry. An analysis of Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition System (SCADA) has shown that there is a possibility that this incident was cyber sabotage. The department has given a report which we have handed over to the Power Department.’25* Notwithstanding government position, the Mumbai incident should be viewed as part of a BDA exercise by China. Hence, New Delhi’s denial

22‘Tata Power shares the factual position on Power Failure issue the Mumbai Metropolitan Region experienced on 12th October 2020’, Media Release, Tata Power, 16 October 2020. 2JDavid E. Sanger and Emily Schmall, ‘China Appears to Warn India: Push PIbo Hard and the Lights Could Go Out’, N ew York T im es , 28 February 2021. 24Meghna Sen, ‘Mumbai power outage due to human error, no proof of Chinese role: Power minister R. K. Singh’, M int, 2 March 2021. 25‘Cyber sabotage led to October 2020 outage in Mumbai: Minister’, The H in d u . 1 March 2021.

was good news for China and bad news for India. By not acknowledging the cyberattack, the message sent to China was that India was unwilling to join a cyberwar since it lacked cyber offensive capabilities. For Indian stakeholders who were aware of the cyberattacks, the government’s reaction created confusion. Instead of working on remedial measures, they were obliged to take no action against the cyber offensive. Finally, an obscure acknowledgement of the Chinese cyberattack came from the CDS General Bipin Rawat during a webinar organized by Delhi-based Vivekananda International Foundation on 7 April 2021. Rawat was also responsible for cybersecurity in defence and military systems as head of the military’s Defence Cyber Agency (DCA) created in 2018. Speaking at the webinar he said, ‘India was seeking help from some western nations, and efforts were being made to downtime cyberattacks’ effects by alternate means and firewalls.’26 General Rawat was clearly out of his depth as far as cyber warfare was concerned. No nation shares its offensive cyber capabilities—which are confidential—with any other nation, with perhaps the exceptions of the US-Israel, that are known to collaborate, and China-Pakistan since their strategic interests for use of cyber capabilities are aligned. Friendly nations would, at best, share (or sell) cyber defensive capabilities and help India analyse the Mumbai malware code software. Defensive capabilities can be both passive and active. The traditional antivirus software packages that adopt a ‘blacklist’ approach wherein certain known viruses are blocked from corrupting the hardware and software (data) is a passive measure; India still uses this in most of its computer systems. This nearly thirty-year-old cybersecurity method has now been replaced by active operations like ‘endpoint protection system’ which use AI. In this, the system questions unusual activities, seeks to know whether it safeguards or harms the Information and Telecommunications (IT C ), and thus identifies patterns by learning. Worlting in an aggressive fashion, active defence protects cyberspace 36

36Vivekananda International Foundation New Delhi, ‘Vimarsh on Shaping the Armed Forces to meet likely Current and Future Challenges’, YouTube, 7 April 2021, available at ch rtp s:// www.youtube.ccm/watch?v=QT-XlbZaX3c>.

from viruses. Another Al-backed application is known as "vulnerability managers’ where the "manager’ prioritizes cyber threats and prompts that they be fixed to keep the network safe. In cybersecurity, offence is better as defence is more difficult to do since there are hundreds if not thousands of networks to defend. Testifying to the US Senate A. ~>ed Service' Committee in 20) 5, a former head of the National Security Council said autonomy (using AI) was essential for defence. According to him, "keeping all networks within the department of defence up-to-date manually was near impossible. Patching network vulnerability at manual speed could take months. It should be automated with human out of the loop.’27 India does not have automation in its cyber related activities. The way to deter cyberattacks is to have cyber offensive capabilities, and to let adversaries know that you have them. For example, after the 2010 Stuxnet attack, Iran went on to develop offensive cyber capabilities, which it has since demonstrated on a few occasions. Besides BDA, which a nation gets from probing or feinting cyberattacks, the other two elements needed for cyber offensive campaign planning are knowledge of access points into the enemy’s systems, and his overall vulnerabilities. These three elements comprise the requirement for developing varying digital weapons’ payloads in terms of their design, size, and capabilities. While access points are well known and include internet, WiFi, USB ports, backdoors and spyware, chip swaps, and supply chains, a nation’s vulnerabilities and the remedial measures it adopts are important. With growing digitization and arrival of disruptive technologies like AI, machine learning, IOT, and big data in the industrial sector and services sector (power, telecommunications, etc.), vulnerabilities in software (data) and hardware have shot up. According to Aruna Sharma, former secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technologies, response time to cyberattacks is slow, and desired preventive measures are absent. She attributes slow response time to lack of a national umbrella policy-each ministry and group have their own policies, and no

J?P a u ] S c h a r r e ,

A rm y o f N one, New

Y o rk;

W .

W . N o rto n

&

C o m p a n y,

2018, p. 201.

formalized inter-ministerial linkages for quick consultations. Moreover, each ministry and group has its own cybersecurity testing standards, protocols, norms, and separate laboratories for testing of software and especially hardware, which is procured from numerous sources. The global supply chains are the biggest culprits since electronics supplied by them c ome diverse nations. On the Defence M inistry, she says the missiles and denies which have electronics and are software controlled may not work in war if some supplier inserts bugs and backdoors in them. According to her, there in an urgent need for national cyber security policy that lays down guidelines for both quick reaction time in the event of cyberattacks, and preventive measures by setting standards and identifying laboratories for cyber testing.28 Sharma has only referred to the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The problems are more fundamental. In cybersecurity, there is need for regular monitoring of network traffic and ability to detect unusual activity. Furthermore, there is no national quality assurance body which can test software codes before they make their way into critical infrastructure. And, after a cyberattack, there should be expertise to collect traces of codes for forensic examination. There should be what experts call ‘common criteria laboratories’ with the capability to test cybersecurity to Level Seven. All this is absent in India. Undoubtedly, India needs a single authority overseeing the innumerable cyber agencies across the country. For example, in the US, the National Security Agency has total control over the complete spectrum of the nation’s defensive cyber operations. In India, the first National Cyber Security policy released in 2013 was generic, with little mention of consolidating disparate cyber security agencies with their individual control and reporting systems. These agencies are in ministries of home, defence, electronics, and information technology. Then there are departments like the National Technical Research Organisation and National Security Council Secretariat, in addition to specialized units like Computer Emergency Response Team, National Critical Information Infrastructure, National Cyber Coordination

“ T h e W i r e , ‘ S ta te o f In d ia's C y b e r s e c u r i t y ’, Y o u T u b e .

Centre, Cybercrime Ecosystem Management Unit, and so on. The list is endless. It is axiomatic that without a single national overarching cyber umbrella, reaction time to cyberattacks will be slow. The defensive tools used to keep networks secure by regular updates are the manual and passive ones. 7 Tien a^-ked about DRBO’s role in preparing for cyberwar, Satheesh Reddy told me: ‘The defence ministry is cognizant of cyberwar. As an R&D organisation, DRDO has been working in the domain of cyber defence because protection of systems is very important. We work and interact closely with Integrated Defence Headquarters (IDH) and follow the directive issued by them.’29 The Indian Story The government approved the raising of the DCA under a two-star officer on 28 September 2018. With a modest staff drawn from all three services, the DCA became operational under Rear Admiral Mohit Gupta in November 2019. However, once General Bipin Rawat was appointed CDS on 1 January 2020, he assumed operational command and control of the DCA. The task of the CDS as overall commander of DCA will be to move from coordination to integration of cyber capabilities with the three defence services. Until the appointment of the CDS, the three services did not share their cyber capabilities with the IDH. The DCA was raised with the modest aim of securing internet, telecommunication networks, and computers including software from cyberattacks. Total focus was on cyber defence. Interestingly, according to Wikileaks, RAW was stealthily trying to buy malware meant to infect mobiles and computers.30 If true, this showed that RAW did not have the claimed cyber offensive capabilities. In a January 2022 article, former foreign secretary Shyam Saran pointed out that, ‘For items like electronic components, the dependence [of India] on Chinese imports is over 70 percent. This cannot change I n te r v ie w , D r G . S a th e e s h R e d d y ’, FO R C E. wS h e m in j o y , ‘ I n te llig e n c e a g e n c ie s n o t in fa v o u r o f in v o lv in g M u s lim s , re v e a ls W i k i L e a k s ’, Deccan H era ld , 11 J u ly 2 0 1 5 .

overnight/31 Given that, it is fair to assume that most of the electronic components of the IAF’s Air Force Net (A FN ET), which is the backbone of its network-centricity, most of south India’s BSNL grid and most of the northeastern power grid might have Chinese components as does Air Traffic Control at most Indian airports. Chinese companies could get into power, communication, and defence grids because ihey are always the lowest bidders. If this be so, once the balloon goes up, the army, according to its mobilization plans will requisition trains and civilian aircraft to move troops to the Chinese front. Within hours, there could be panic and uncertainty. Train signals could malfunction, forcing all trains proceeding towards the northeast to stop. No one will take a chance of trains colliding. The northeastern power grids could stop functioning, plunging the entire region into darkness. The airports could report faulty ATC and not allow civilian aircraft to fly. In all this confusion, it will be a long time before cyber specialists are mustered and brought in to inspect various systems. Unaware of the backdoors, they will not know where to start. It will be same story with defence systems. The IAF aircraft will not be able to take off since the AFNET will be disabled by cyber weapons’ assaults. Meanwhile, the radars could come under double attack from cyber and by the PLAAF drones with powerful EW capabilities. Radars would be destroyed the moment they open up. Moreover, Indian satellites in various orbits (geosynchronous, medium, and low earth) could be blanked out, including the GSAT series of communication satellites and remote sensing CARTOSAT satellites. India’s Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS), operationally called NAVIC, which provided real-time positioning and timing services, could be partially debilitated, destroyed, disabled, jammed, or their inter-satellite links broken. Given this, India’s C4ISR grid would be severely hit. Few have bothered to appreciate China’s massive cyber offensive capabilities; if they had precautionary cyber defensive measures would have been taken. Furthermore, at ISRO, there has been

,!Shyam Saran, ‘G eopolitics drives X i’s economic agenda’, Business S ta n d a rd , 17 January

2022.

a thin line between commercial and military space infrastructure. There has been too much reliance on commercial satellites to gather images and other data. Commercial satellites, unlike military satellites, are not built to strict security standards. Besides, there are weaknesses in the supply chain that can be exploited. Control stations on ground can be .injected.with malware. India is not using artificial intelligence and machine learTug for spotting and stopping cyber threats. India’s cyber space agency is too small and ill-equipped to take on the Chinese cyber offensive challenge. Given the heavily skewed asymmetry, China would go the whole hog, using its cyber offensive capability7 for whole-of-nation war against India. These include advanced cyber weapons and Al-backed intelligent and autonomous cyber agents. These extremely intelligent cyber agents would decide on their own when and for how long to lie quiet in cyberspace and when to strike and destroy enemy system-of-systems. The success of the military mission would, to a large extent, depend on these autonomous cyber agents and India’s ability to confront them successfully. The PLA has these capabilities now. Given this, the raising of the present Defence Cyber Agency to the level of cyber command should be a priority for at least four reasons. One, since this would elevate cyberspace to a war domain, it would necessitate development of offensive cyber capabilities. This will help create a combination of defensive and offensive capabilities required for cyber stability, at least with Pakistan; China, with over a two-decade lead in cybersecurity, remains far ahead. Used with AI and machine learning, it could increase capabilities to defend systems. With humans out of the loop, patching up of network vulnerabilities would transit from human-speed to automation. Moreover, raising of cyber command could incentivize development of the needed national cyber security policy which should cover future cyber vulnerabilities owing to AI, IoT, and 5G wireless networks in industry and even services sectors. Two, it will help in defending the military’s networks, especially of the air force and the navy, which are moving fast towards digitization. It becomes more relevant since the IAF is moving towards network centricity. This implies networking of all sensors, systems, weapons, and

command and control centres for increased situational awareness and for enhancing tempo of operations. The downside of network centricity is more cyber vulnerability since the enemy will have more physical and signal infiltration nodes. Physical cyber intrusions could happen through systems hardware like cockpit controls, while signal infiltration could come from infrared and n dio frequency sensors. For these reasons, it is critical to integrate cyber operations with lA F’s defensive and offensive operations. Since all services would be networked at some future time, planning for integration of cyber operations with conventional war planning becomes essential. Three, it will help in protecting the defence industrial complex which makes platforms and weapons. It is no secret that most technology in the defence public sector undertakings is imported even for systems that are built under the ‘Make in India’ category. The cyber command could be a watchdog to ensure all technologies are rigorously tested for backdoors and spyware. And four, cyber command would blend cyber and EW in operations, like the PLA has done, and the Pakistan military is in the process of doing. Since cyberspace and EMS are inextricably linked, their synchronization would give tremendous advantage to commanders. There may be targets which are not connected to IP-based networks (internet). For such targets, cyberattacks would need to be done through the EMS. This requires cyber and EW working as a combination. Electronic Warfare As mentioned earlier, there are two ways by which EMS could be disrupted or destroyed. By cyber malware, which target data and associated systems of the internet, and EW which interferes with transmission of radio frequency signals by techniques called jamming and spoofing. Jamming is a type of electronic attack that interferes with radio communications by creating noise in the same frequency band within the range of hostile radar or antenna or receiver of targeted satellite. Spoofing is when the attacker tricks a receiver into believing that a fake signal generated by it is the real signal it was trying to receive.

By injecting false signal/data, the adversary’s communications can be manipulated. Communications use a variety of signals: radio frequencies for talking with own forces; microwaves for data links, satellite communications and radars; infrared for intelligence and finding targets; and lasers to communicate, send data, and destroy targets. From a military perspective, EW is the ability to use EM S- -signals such as radio, infrared, or radar—to protect, sense, and communicate. At the same time, it can be used to deny adversaries the ability7to disrupt or use these signals. It can also be involved to listen and collect an enemy’s radio signals or sensing hostile incomingmissiles. The whole range of EW operations is under three categories: electronic protection, electronic support, and electronic attack: this is done by use of electromagnetic energy to deny or degrade an adversary’s use of EMS. According to the US’s DOD, ‘directed energy weapons (lasers and high-powered microwave weapons) can amplify or disrupt an EM field, resulting in jamming, overpowering, and deceiving of information managed by computerised systems or electronic platforms such as surveillance or telecommunication satellites. With enough power, these weapons can also overheat the electric circuitry of almost any piece of equipment—computerised or not—resulting in the destruction or interference of a machine’s electrical-based functions and components.’32 EW has always played a critical role in war long before the invention of the internet and cyberspace. Traditional EW systems are designed to operate in an anticipated EMS environment where they collect SIGINT over time, send the captured waveforms to the back office where EW experts analyse them, and update their electronic order of battle and electronic signals library with new radar signal threats. Based on this EW systems could be reprogrammed. Resembling an assembly line, this forensic based process was tedious, time consuming, and did not keep up with rapidly changing EMS domain profile. Miniaturization, ubiquitous sensors, big data, and fast computing on the spot led to many more waveforms or signals in the battlespace

w ‘T h e

n e w

Technology ,

b a ttle fie ld : 6 June

2018.

th e

ra ce

to

in te g ra te

cy b e r

an d

e le c tro n ic

w a r f a r e ’,

Army

than could not be analysed by outdated EW methods. Moreover, the telecommunications boom with thousands of signals from smartphones and computers had made the radio frequency spectrum congested and saturated. It has become difficult to find signals of military interest. This problem would get further accentuated with the arrival of 5G wireless communication and the IoT which would add u> the electro spectrum fog making threats difficult to detect, analyse, and respond to. Given this, understanding enemy's signals and reacting with countermeasures has to be done in minutes if not in seconds. The luxury of taking weeks or months to decipher the signals is not feasible today and will not be possible in the future. The need, therefore, is for EW systems that are agile, adaptable, and fully integrated with the forces with the ability to think and respond immediately. This is what cognitive EW systems, nothing short of transformational, are ail about. With the help of AI and large amounts of data, smart intelligence would be put into the sensor allowing the EW system to adapt, on the fly, in real time during the mission, based upon what it is observing and how well it is performing. For example, if you see a radar threat with characteristics you have never seen before and try to jam it, cognitive EW will measure how effective you are in keeping the radar from seeing you. And it remembers what works so you can use that same technology the next time you see it.’33 Thus, the cognitive E W systems would carry a signal features library where technical characteristics (frequency, modulation, bandwidth, and waveform) would be stored and available for instant use. Once the signals are identified, the attack strategy library would automatically find the appropriate response and use it. Much like cyber operations, the cognitive E W operations would occur at the speed of light obviating the need for ‘human in the loop’. With this in mind, in March 2016, the US’s deputy secretary of defense Robert Work said: ‘We [DOD] will not delegate lethal authority for a machine to make a decision. The only time we will delegate a machine authority is in

-u f. R. Wilson, ‘Today’s battle for the electromagnetic spectrum’, M ilitary & A erospace Electronics, 1 Aug 2016.

things that go faster than human reaction time, like cyber or electronic warfare.’34 Cognitive EW systems, once developed, will not be limited to manned aircraft, but will become commonplace on Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs) and UAVs. Drones with cognitive EW systems could b ' used for attacks and as swarming EW robots. Since the US’s DARPA and the PLA have been working on cognitive E W technologies for a decade, it is reasonable to estimate this capability will be fully operational by 2023. Especially against India, where the PLA A F would have gathered enough signal waveform data through the long Ladakh crisis, and from the PAF which had fought wars with the IAF and remains focused on it. The PLA had been using collected SIGINT and ELIN T to conduct spectrum war exercises under the aegis of the Strategic Support Force in theW TC . For example, cIn 2018, the SSF increased joint communications and reconnaissance training with the PLA Army and the PLA Air Force to improve operational support capabilities and joint operations in advanced electromagnetic environments. Included in this training was the Luoyang-2018 series of force-on-force exercises in which the SSF base challenged PLA group army brigade’s communications with hostile jamming and interruptions to their operational electromagnetic environment.’35 The PLA used its advanced J-l6D aircraft equipped with E W systems. Resembling the US Navy’s EA-18G Growler electronic attack fighter, the J-16D uses electromagnetic sensors that can analyse frequencies and help determine the position of radar determining devices—data that would be useful for jamming radars and for targeting them for destruction. The SIGINT and ELIN T would also be used by the PLA A F’s airborne EW attack capabilities which have been fully integrated with its air manoeuvre warfare.

wScharre, A r m y o f N o n e , p. 95. 35.

cheap, harder to track, and having good manoeuvrability, can move at high velocity. They could collide with the targeted satellite and destroy it or could lock on the targeted satellite as parasite and destroy its electronics. A form of microsatellite, co-orbital satellites with robotics arms, being developed by die PLA could displace a satellite from its orbit by mechanical means and render it ineffective. India’s intelligence gathering, earth observation, and scientific spacecraft are most susceptible to these co-orbital threats. Moreover, in addition to space-based jamming, and accurate air and missile attacks, the PLA could also do high altitude nuclear explosions referred to as High Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (HAMP). The latter creates an instantaneous intense energy field that can overload or destroy at a distance numerous electric systems and high technology micro-circuits and render satellites dead. This, however, would not be the favoured operation since Chinese spacecraft could also be affected by HAMP. According to the US’s annual report to the Congress, ‘In addition to the development of directed energy weapons and satellite jammers, China is also developing anti-satellite capabilities and has probably made progress on the anti-satellite missile system in July 2 0 14.’38 China demonstrated its direct ascent anti-satellite (ASAT) capability by destroying its own weather satellite that was at an altitude of 863 km (low earth orbit) by a successful direct hit on 11 January 2007. It left thousands of debris particles hanging in space. China had done similar ASAT tests in 2005 and 2006 without hitting a target. After the 2007 test where China faced world opprobrium mostly on account of debris in space, it decided not to advertise ASAT tests. For example, experts believe that in May 2013, China tested the rocket component of a new direct ascent ASAT weapon system derived from a road mobile ballistic missile. It neither used a satellite to demonstrate destruction, nor accepted the conduct of the test. However, it was evident that China has developed capability to hit satellites in all three orbits—low earth

^'M ilitary and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2019', p. 50.

(below 2,000 km), medium earth (2,0 0 0 -3 5 ,0 0 0 km) and high earth or elliptical (above 35,000 km). This marked a significant AS AT capability. Interestingly, in June 2019, China launched a satellite using a rocket from a floating launchpad in the Yellow Sea. China could well be considering modifying its JL -2 submarine launched ballistic missile capable of carrying nuclear warhead to 7,400 km to accommodate an anti-satellite warhead to give it a sea-based ASA.T capability. The US believes that China is unlikely to use its kinetic direct kill AS AT capability to hit its satellites to degrade its C4ISR capabilities. It is more likely to use its huge non-kinetic counter space capabilities to knock out a satellite from its orbital space and other space-based platforms. In addition to counter-space, China’s BeiDou global constellation system has matured. With the fifty-fifth satellite launch in May 2020, China completed its global BeiDou navigation satellite system in three phases. Started in year 2000, the BeiDou regional satellite navigation was completed in 2012 by launching 10 satellites. The second phase comprising twenty-seven satellites provided coverage over Asia. The BeiDou family of satellites is the Chinese equivalent of the US’s GPS system. Like the GPS, BeiDou has dual-use applications. These will be used to improve Chinese missile guidance. Eight SSF-run BeiDou base stations for ‘tracking, telemetry, and as command stations are in Namibia, Pakistan, and Argentina. The SSF also has a handful of Yuan Wang space support ships to track satellites and intercontinental ballistic missiles launches.’39 Pakistan is the first and perhaps the only nation to share BeiDou military keyholes for accurate missile launches. In a major breakthrough, China said that series of tests with BeiDou satellite navigation system had broken underwater barriers: it could both provide accurate positioning data to underwater vessels and send tracking and positioning information from underwater vessels to a shore-based station. According to Chinese naval specialist Li Jie, ‘These advances would help Chinese submarines and underwater drones to

^ ‘Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China 2020’, Annual Report to Congress, Department o f Defense, United States o f America, 2020, p. 63.

improve their ability to track other vessels and mount precision stealth strikes. Precision and communication are the two most important elements for submarines and underwater drones. If the underwater BeiDou system can provide accurate positioning information and support communication between submarines and drones and land-based stations .it would be a big strategic achievement f ir the Chinese Navy * they will have finally built ar independent global navigation system.’40*44* In contrast, India, on 27 March 2019, successfully conducted its first ASAT test, destroying its own satellite at an altitude of 283 km. This was done amidst much fanfare with Prime Minister Modi calling it Mission Shakti. In a carefully planned operation, a microsatellite was placed in space on 24 January 2019. The PDV Mark II interceptor developed for the indigenous Ballistic Missile Defence was used to kill the target satellite. The DRDO claimed that it had the capability to conduct ASAT at 1,200 km altitude, but deliberately kept it low to avoid large debris in space for years. Indian analysts declared that India could now defend its own satellites and threaten the Chinese ones. The reality is that Indian satellites and ground stations may be at high risk from Chinese cyber and counter space capabilities. Indian drones, which have been assessed as game-changers, will lose contact with ground in little time of war commencement. However, pleased with the single ASAT, in March 2021, the Indian government announced the setting-up of the Defence Space Agency (DSA) in Bengaluru41. The tri-service agency working under a two-star air force officer was expected to command all space assets including ASAT capability. Earlier, in June 2019, the government created the Defence Space Research Organisation (DSRO)42 to work under the DRDO to support the space assets needed by the DSA. The agency, according to the DRDO chief, Dr Reddy, was ‘working on a number 40Minnie Chan, ‘China’s BeiDou satellite navigation system breaks underwater barriers, naval shipbuilder says’, South China M orning Post, 20 June 2019. “‘M anjeet Negi, ‘India enhancing military capabilities in space with new sensors, satellites’, India Today, 26 March 2021. India creates Defense Space Research Agency, plans July war game simulation’, Space D aily,

13 June 2019.

of technologies like DEWs, lasers, electromagnetic pulse (E M P) and co-orbital weapons etc. I can’t divulge the details/ he told FORCE, ‘but we are taking them forward/43 With the appointment of CDS Rawat on 1 January 2020, the DSA like the DCA came under his command and control. In his numerous addresses to the media while speaking on his military reforms, Rawat did not mention any reforms in DSA and DCA. India seemed to have missed the criticality of the invisible war that China was preparing for.*

*y In ter view, Dr G. Satheesh Reddy5, FORCE.

M ISSILE WAR

n 1 October 2020, most national newspapers reported that India had moved its 1,000 km-range indigenous Nirbhay subsonic cruise missile to the LAC as part of the troops build up against China.1 This was an unusual move. The maiden test of this missile with an indigenous small turbofan engine (S T F E ) had been scheduled for the second week of October. But Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, as head of the Defence Acquisition Council, had not only cleared the induction of the missile but its forward deployment too before it was tested, formally inducted, and operationalized by the Indian Army. In normal circumstances, operationalization of a missile like this could take up to one year after its induction into the army. Not in India though, where the deployment trajectory had clearly been turned on its head. Meanwhile, the DRDO told the media that the subsonic missile ‘has a single shot kill ratio of more than 90 per cent5, adding ‘the missile which travels at a speed of 0.7 Mach has both terrain-hugging and sea-skimming capability that helps it avoid detection and counter­ measures.5 This proactive step didn’t get very far as Nirbhay failed the scheduled test on 11 October 2020.2 Undeterred, the DRDO attributed it to a minor snag. A few months later, in February 202.1, I attended India’s premier aviation show Aero India in Bengaluru. A model of the Nirbhay missile

’Shishir Gupta, ‘India moves terrain-hugging Nirbhay missiles with 1,000-km range to defend L A C ’, H in d u s ta n T im es, 1 O ctober 2020. i P T I, ‘Nirbhay .subsonic cruise missile develops technical snag during trial’, N e w Indian E x p r e s s , 12 O ctober 2020.

was also on display but was not attracting much attention. A senior member of the Nirbhay team sitting by himself was happy to chat. About the induction of Nirbhay into the army, he said that, if at all it happened, it was a decade away. There were technical, hardware, and software issues which needed to be resolved, he said. The reality is that except for BrahMos, India does not have any cruise missiles. A joint venture with Russia, as part of the sharing arrangement, the BrahMos engine comes from Russia. Given the uncertainty in relations between India and Russia, nothing stops the Russians from withholding delivery of BrahMos engines. The story about DRDO’s attempt to build hypersonic cruise missiles follows the same pattern of premature euphoria without tangible breakthrough. In September 2020, the DRDO test-fired the Hypersonic Technology Demonstrator Vehicle (H T D V )3 for a short duration of 20 seconds. The HTDV is the precursor to the scramjet engine. With this test, DRDO chief Sateesh Reddy said, India would have hypersonic cruise missiles in four to five years. His optimism appears misplaced. India has failed to meet the challenge of the PLA’s hypersonic and cruise missiles. India’s ballistic missile—the Agni series—has been identified as a nuclear weapons vector since it is with India’s tri-service Strategic Force Command that administers them. The command of the Agni missiles is with the Cabinet Committee on Security headed by the prime minister, and control is with the NSA/CDS. Since the Agni series has been identified for use with nuclear weapons (and therefore needed in small quantities), it is unlikely to have a production line, the existing missiles being pre-production models. Moreover, India’s Prithvi series of missiles with liquid propellants and long logistics train that make it an attractive target, are old, and need to be decommissioned. These are in three versions for the army, air force, and navy (called Dhanush) with trade-off between range and payload.

^Ministry of Defence,

‘DRDO

successfully flight

Demonstrator Vehicle’, Press Information

tests

Hypersonic Technology

Bureau, 7 Septem ber 2020, available

at < https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspxPPRID - 165195 6 > .

Other Indian ballistic missiles in varying stages of development and testing are Agni-P,**4 Pralay5 short-range quasi-ballistic missile (does not leave the atmosphere), Prahaar short-range ballistic missile, and medium-range Shaurya missile.6 The guidance systems for all surfaceto-surface missiles have been provided by France7 and suitably modified by the DiTUQ. Surprisingly, no one in the Indian Deft nee Ministry and the ser ices headquarters is losing sleep over the unavailability of operational surface-to-surface missiles, when, on the other hand, the US is worried about the PLA’s formidable inventory of this category of missiles. The US formally withdrew in August 2019 from the 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (IN F) treaty signed between the US and the Soviet Union, whose mantle was passed to the successor state Russia. The reason being that despite the US’s urging, China, which was not a signatory to the original INF treaty, refused to join. Hence, unlike the INF signatories, China continued with the testing and inventory building of ballistic and cruise missiles of ranges from 500 km to 5,500 km, which were prohibited by the treaty. The PLA’s short and intermediate range land-based missiles as part of the A2/AD firewall across the Taiwan Strait have been assessed by the US military as the biggest danger to its bases in the region. Considering that the PLA has built a similar missile firewall on the LAC, there should have been panic in the chiefs of staff committee. On the contrary, there is pretence that the single biggest threat to India does not exist. The PLA ’s First Line of Attack The combination of the PLA’s conventional ballistic, cruise, and now hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs), hypersonic cruise missiles (HCMs), Tlidzwan Rahm at, ‘India conducts second test launch o f new nuclear-capable ballistic missile’, Janes D e fe n c e W eekly , 21 Decem ber 2021. ^E X P L A IN E D : The Pralav Missile And Its Quasi Ballistic Trajectory’, N e w s lS , 26 December 2021. 6Debabrata Mohanty and Rahul Singh, ‘India successfully tests nuclear-capable Shaurya missile’, H in d u sta n T im es , 3 O ctober 2020. ’Shishir Gupta, ‘Looking Ahead: France, the ally and partner’, H in d u sta n Times, 28 December 2021.

and Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FO BS) armed with HGVs will not supplement the PLA Air Force but pre-empt it as the first line of offence. The lethal combination of these conventionally armed missiles provide three operational advantages: unlike the air forces, it does not require air superiority for employment, it provides coercion, deterrence, arid compeilence 8 and unlike aircraft that require a runway, they can be launched from anvwnere. The PLA is expected to undertake massive pre-emptive missile strikes to start hostilities without giving the enemy a chance to react. This is consistent with China’s principle of Active Defence, first enunciated by Mao Zedong in 1936. While maintaining a strategic defensive posture, it calls for operational and tactical level offences. According to Michael S. Chase of the US Naval War College, ‘The missions of a conventional missile strike campaign could include launching fire power strikes against important targets in the enemy’s campaign and strategic deep areas. Potential targets of such strikes would include command centres, communications hubs, radar stations, guided missile positions, air force and naval facilities, transport and logistical facilities, fuel depots, electrical power centres, and aircraft carrier strike groups.’*9 Many more could be added like hardened jet shelters, runways, air defence systems, power grids, bridges, tunnels, television and radio centres, and so on. The PLA has traditionally given importance to ballistic and cruise missiles over fighter aircraft. The PLA Rocket Force (P L A R F) is the new name of the 1966 formed PLA’s Second Artillery Corps comprising these missiles. While designating PLARF as a support force upon its raising in December 2015, Xi Jinping called it ‘China’s core force for strategic deterrence, a strategic buttress for China’s position as a major power, and an important cornerstone for defending national security’.10 While “Compeilence is a form o f coercion that seeks to change behaviour of an adversary through threats to use force or an actual use o f limited force. 9Thomas Shugart and Javier Gonzale, 'First Strike: China’s Missile Threat to U.S. Bases in Asia’, Center for New American Security, 28 June 2017. l0Michael S. Chase, ‘PLA Rocket Force Modernization and China’s Military Reforms’, Santa Monica: Rand Corporation, 15 February 2018.

the earlier Second Artillery had only nuclear missiles in its inventory, the present PLARF, with a strength of 100,000 soldiers, has both nuclear and conventional use missiles under it. The PLA RF provides the kinetic component to

the PLAs

informatized war, while the non-kinetic or invisible component comes from the PLASSF. The PLA RF s missile campaign is meant to destroy the enemy’s command system, weaken his military strength to continue with operations, and create shock in the enemy to weaken his resolve to fight. Since PLARF and PLASSF are two sides of the informatized war, both as independent support forces report directly to the CMC. Much like China’s cyber doctrine, the missile doctrine too advocates the principle of ‘strike first, strike hard’. PL A R F’s inventory of nuclear and conventional ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missiles which includes inter-continental, intermediate, medium, and short-range ballistic missiles as well as anti-ship and land attack cruise missiles (LACM ) is massive. According to a former US Pacific commander, Admiral Harry Harris, ‘China launches more than 100 missiles a year for training and research and development.’HAccording to a 2021 annual report of the Pentagon to the US Congress: ‘In 2020, the PLA RF launched more than 250 ballistic missiles for testing and training. This is more than the rest of the world combined.’12 China surprised the world by displaying its D F-ZF Hypersonic Glide Vehicle (HGV) at the National Day Parade on 1 October 2019. China also showcased its new medium-range DF-17 ballistic missile with a 3,000 km range. Unlike traditional ballistic missiles, the D F-17 does not follow a pre-determined trajectory. The first ballistic missile of its kind, DF-17 ‘can change its trajectory in mid-flight, giving enemies a minimal chance of interception’.13 The HGV on DF-17 was operationalized in

“ Admiral Harris statement before the house armed services committee on US Pacific Command posture, 26 April 2017. u‘Military and Security Developments Involving the Peoples Republic o f China 2021’, p. 60. 13Yang Sheng and Liu Xuanzun, ‘DF-17 ballistic missile makes debut at National Day parade’, G lobal Times, 1 O ctober 2019.

2020.54 Meanwhile, China has been regularly testing hypersonic cruise missile with scramjet engines. It’s worth knowing that a jet engine can attain speeds from zero to Mach 3; a ramjet engine achieves speeds from Mach 3 to Mach 6, implying that ramjet engine would need an initial boost till Mach 3. Scramjet engines have speed from Mach 6 to Mach 10, and hence need a powerful boost to get started. Scramjet engines are easier to make than the jet engines used in aircraft and cruise missiles since they have no moving parts where air flow needs to be controlled to produce speeds of Mach 5 and above. What they need is rigorous ground wind tunnel testing. The stunning thing about hypersonic missiles is that, unlike ballistic and cruise missiles, there are no sensors to detect and track them or interceptors to defend against them yet. Given this operational advantage, the PLA seems to have divided the traditional air domain into air and near space domains after its successful FOBS test15 in August 2021.16 The near space domain is from an altitude of 20 km to 100 km, below which is the air domain where aircraft, UAVs, and cruise missiles operate. Within near space, HCMs operate between altitudes of 20 km to 40 km, while the HGVs glide between 40 km and 100 km. Beyond 100 km altitude, it is outer space where ballistic missiles and FOBS rise from the ground to then re-enter the air (atmosphere) domain. Robert O. Work has explained why the PLA needed such a vast and varied inventory of ballistic, cruise, and now hypersonic missiles: ‘Rather than try to build a symmetrical, high quality air force, the Chinese opted to pursue a high-quality missile force.’17 According to Work, there were many reasons for doing so: • The Chinese aerospace industry failed to develop performance turbofan engines for its fighter aircraft.

high-

H‘Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2021’, p. 60. ^Explained in a later chapter. "H'ucker, ‘China Wants to Own the Hypersonic: ‘Domain”. ‘’Robert O. Work and Greg Grant, ‘Beating the Americans at their Own Game’, Center for a New American Security, 6 June 2019, p. 10.

• The US had unmatched stealth capabilities. • Developing ballistic and cruise missiles was a cheaper option than fighter jets. • It was easier to extend ranges of missiles than providing refuellers for manned aircraft. • It was easier to generate massed missile strikes than aircraft strikes. • China, unlike the US, was not bound by the INF Treaty which prohibited ballistic and cruise missiles with 500 km to 5,500 km ranges. The US walked out of the INF Treaty in February 2019. • Missiles, unlike aircraft, could cover the envelopes of space, atmosphere, and sea. • Missiles could generate surprise with a sudden attack.18 To understand the employment of hypersonic, ballistic, and cruise missiles, it would be instructive to know their characteristics. Hypersonic Missiles The HGVs are game changers. Not merely because of their speed of Mach 5 to more than Mach 20 as is commonly believed but because of their unique flight trajectory and endo-atmospheric (inside atmosphere) characteristics. Most importantly, they remain unchallenged so far. Neither the Ballistic Missile Defence architecture meant to counter ballistic missiles, nor the air and missile defence systems like Russian S-400 and the US’s Patriot will be helpful against HGVs. The HGVs neither go into space nor follow a pre-determined trajectory. They stay within the atmosphere, but at the higher reaches, flying at altitudes of 40 km to 100 km. They are highly manoeuvrable, so they keep the enemy befuddled about the target identity until it is too late to defend it. Thus, HGVs have three distinctive features: high speed, extreme manoeuvrability, and ability to glide in the upper atmosphere. Hypersonic missiles can be launched in two ways. They can be lifted by ballistic missile rockets with HGV as the warhead. Or, hypersonic

cruise missiles could be powered by high speed, air breathing scramjets after the target is acquired. These missiles could have ranges of 2,775 km. At the time of writing, only two nations—Russia and C h in a have operational hypersonic missiles. The advanced US hypersonic programme is expected to be fielded by 2023. Tiie Chinese programme is inspired by Russia’s two hypersonic weapon programmes—Avangard and Zircon—which are hypersonic glide vehicles that can be launched from ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missiles) with effective unlimited (or unspecified) range. Interestingly, Russia has other unique programmes called Kinzhal (Dagger)—which is an air-launched manoeuvring ballistic missile, and not a cruise missile—and the Tsirkon hypersonic anti-ship missile. Since Kinzhal poses defensive challenges like other hypersonic weapons, it is not listed as a ballistic missile. The Chinese HGVs can be launched by any ballistic missile rocket: D F-17, D F-21, or DF-26. China has also tested the road mobile, fourthgeneration DF-41 ICBM rocket with Mach 23 speed and 15,000 km range modified to carry conventional or nuclear HGV. Given its road mobility and speed, the sensors of Ballistic Missile Defence will not be able to detect DF-41 fast enough for decision-making. By the time rocket launch is detected, the HGV would have separated and manoeuvred away at hypersonic speed. The PLA’s D F-ZF HGV has been tested many times. China and Russia had originally developed hypersonic weapons for use with nuclear warheads. However, given the challenges of speed, flight altitude, and manoeuvrability, hypersonics are ideal for use with conventional warheads. Conventional hypersonic weapons use only kinetic energy to destroy unhardened targets in underground facilities. According to former commander of US Strategic Command, General John Hyten, hypersonic weapons can enable ‘responsive, long-range strike options against distant, defended, and/or time-critical threats [such as road-mobile missiles) when other forces are unavailable, denied access, or not preferred’.19With nukes, hypersonic missiles do not require greater

‘’Congressional Research Service, ‘Hypersonic W eapons: Background and issues for

accuracy since "a nuclear armed glider would be effective if it were 10 or even 100 times less accurate due to nuclear blast effects".20 China also successfully tested Starry Sky-2 wave-rider, a nuclear capable hypersonic vehicle prototype in August 2 0 18.21 Unlike the DFZF, Starry Sky-2 uses powered flight after launch but once detached, derives lift throughout its flight by kdlng own shockwaves. It can achieve a speed of Mach 6 and a series of u npredictable manoeuvres. It is expected to be operational by 2023. Raytheon is one of the leading missile and missile defence manufacturers of the US. A senior executive from the company told me in June 2019 at the Paris Air Show that the debate on HGVs and hypersonic missile defence architecture was inconclusive. The complicated debate has many issues. Given the flying profile of DF-ZF HGV and Starry Sky-2 wave rider, BMD sensors of ground-based radars which usually detect ICBMs at 3,000 to 4,000 km will fail against HGVs gliding towards the target in the stratosphere, 50 km above the ground. Instead of ground-based radars, over-the-horizon (O TH ) radars could be used for detection and tracking; unfortunately, they are not accurate. So, the dual warning system that the US follows for assured ICBM identification (space-based infrared tracking system and groundbased radars) will be reduced to a single-source satellite warning leaving uncertainty over nuclear retaliation decision-making. Even the ‘current space-based sensor architecture are insufficient to detect and track hypersonic weapons which are 10 to 20 times dimmer than what the US normally tracks by satellites in geosynchronous orbit’.22 On the one hand, ground-based radars will not identify the HGV until it is too close to the target. On the other hand, satellite-based sensors meant for timely detection of bigger ballistic missiles will not work against much smaller HGVs.*25 Congress’, 17 March 2022, available ar < https://sgp.fas.org/crs/weapons/R45811.pdf>. 25James M. Acton, ‘China’s advanced weapons’, Testimony to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, 23 February 2017. ^'Congressional Research Service, ‘ Hypersonic weapons: Background and Issues for Congress’, 11 July 2019. '’’Ibid.

To overcome these difficulties, the US is pursuing multiple approaches. It has commissioned technical papers to ‘explore hypersonic missile defence options, including interceptor missiles, hypervelocity projectiles, laser guns, and electronic attack systems.... It is also in the process of evaluating proposals for a space-based (low earth orbit) layer that could theoretically exr- nd the range at which incoming missiles could be detected and tracked—a critical requirement for hypersonic missile defence.’23 Interestingly, the BMD, on which the US has spent billions over four decades, will fall short on two counts regarding the PLA’s HGVs and hypersonic missiles: the existing sensor layer of dual redundancy (with satellite and ground-based radars) will not work. And the present command and control system meant for decision-making will fail to process data quickly enough to respond to an incoming hypersonic missile or HGV. The US is also debating whether the existing BMD could be modified by integrating tracking and fire control systems directly to high powered laser weapons. However, short-circuiting the traditional command and control systems comes with its own hazards. The other question is whether to have two entirely different BMD and hypersonic missile defence systems. Or to consider a single integrated missile defence system catering for both threats. Quantifying the number of missiles with the PLARF, the 2019 US DoD report concluded that China had ninety ICBMs: mobile and silobased with multiple independent re-entry vehicles with ranges of up to 15,000 km. It had 750-1500 SRBM (1,000 km range); 150-450 MRBM (3,000 km range); and nearly 1,000-1,200 IRBM (5,500 km range). Its cruise missile inventory comprises 2 7 0 -5 4 0 LACM ; and wide range of ASCM equipping the majority of PLAN ships and aircraft. This inventory merely suggests the operational importance that PLA gives to surfaceto-surface missiles. The numbers could be increased whenever needed. The most startling inference is that China is making hypersonic missiles—operating in the near space war domain—the backbone of its rocket force strategy. According to Janes Defence Weekly:

2Tbid.

China is investing heavily in hypersonic ground testing facilities. It operates the FD-02, FD-03, and FD-07 hypersonic wind tunnels which are capable of reaching speeds of Mach 8, Mach 9, and Mach 12 respectively. It also operates the FD-12 hypersonic wind tunnel, which reaches speeds between Mach 5 and Mach 9, and the FD21 hypersonic v.' nd tunnel capable of reaching speeds of Mach 25 by 20207"

Ballistic Missiles Ballistic missiles are unmanned surface-to-surface weapons. They are powered briefly during the initial launch stage, but not during descent. For example, a ballistic missile is guided for the first five of the fifteen minutes it takes to travel 5,000 km. As a result, it follows a curved, or ballistic trajectory once gravity takes over. Ballistic missiles fly outside the atmosphere in space. There are different classifications of ballistic missiles by range. The consensus is that ballistic missiles with ranges of up to 150 km are called Battlefield Support Ballistic Missiles (BSBM ); between 150 km and 800 km are called Short Range Ballistic Missiles (SRBM ); between 800 km and 5,000 km are called Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBM ); and beyond 5,000 km are referred to as Intercontinental Range Ballistic Missiles (ICBM ). The Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile (SLBM) does not have any specific range classification. Ballistic missiles have good military value. They travel at high speeds and are valuable in launching surprise attacks in depth; they are virtually unstoppable and are certain to enter hostile territory. A ballistic missile consists basically of two parts: a booster rocket that may have two or more stages, and a structure on top of the booster rocket that contains the payload. The payload could have one or more re-entry vehicles for re-entering the atmosphere from outer space at high speed without damaging the weapon inside. The re-entry vehicle consists of the warhead, an inertial navigation system, a digital autopilot, and arming

2*Kclvin Wong. ‘China conducts further tests\ Ja n e s D efence Weekly, J.8 August 2018.

and fusing systems. It is evident that a large portion of a payload is taken up by the paraphernalia that accompanies the warhead. It is essential, therefore, that a warhead be light and compact, but also provide a big bang. Therefore the importance of warhead testing, especially in the case of nuclear warheads. AL1 ballistic missiles require an understanding of three technologies, namely, propulsion, re-entry vehicles, and guidance. In long range and accurate ballistic missiles, these technologies become more and more complex. The booster rocket which creates the propulsion can be a single or a multi-stage one. Each stage of the booster rocket consists of a fuel supply and a thruster engine which burns the fuel. The lowest stage ignites first, pushing the entire missile upwards. When the fuel of that stage is exhausted, the stage drops off—there is no need to carry useless weight—and the second stages ignites, providing propulsion to the remaining part of the missile. When no more propulsion is needed, the payload is separated from the last stage and starts its descent into denser atmosphere. Stage separation is a complex technology that gets even more complicated when stages are added in a booster rocket. Unfortunately, a single stage rocket cannot have a strategic reach. A re-entry vehicle is shaped like a slim aerodynamic cone in order to pass quickly and smoothly through the atmosphere. Such a vehicle gets red-hot as it collides with air molecules on its way to the target. So, it must either be given a blunt shape to move slowly through the atmosphere, creating a bow wave that protects the rest of the vehicle from overheating, or it must be covered with a material that gradually peels and bums off, carrying away excess heat. The first technique called heat-sink is easier to master, but it exposes the re-entry vehicle to considerable drag, thereby reducing accuracy. The second called ablation or peeling off is difficult to develop. For example, in the case of ICBMs, the rocket nose cone enters the Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of 15,000 to 18,000 kmph. In the case of India’s Agni II with a range of 2,000 km, the outer surface of the re-entry vehicle heats up to 3,000 degrees centigrade. The composite (carbon-carbon) bonded material on the nose cone of Agni’s re-entry vehicle has been successfully designed to ablate and ensure that the inner temperature of the payload does not

exceed 40 degrees centigrade. India has mastered the manufacture of Agni re-entry vehicles but developing re-entry vehicles for a prospective ICBM will be an entirely different ballgame. The precise navigation of a ballistic missile is achieved by a method called inertial guidance. It utilizes a totally self-contained system of instruments on board the ru stle. Once it is given the position of the target with respect to the laun ,b t. oint and the initial position, velocity and acceleration of the missile, the inertial navigation system (INS) can guide the ballistic missile during the powered portion of its flight so that the payload acquires the precise terminal velocity required for a trajectory that terminates at the target. In concrete terms this is done by three accelerometers rigidly mounted on a platform stabilized by a gyroscope and suspended in gimbals. Even as the ballistic missile rotates and turns during flight, the three accelerometers are mounted in such a way that they always point in the direction of the target. Such INS gives accurate guidance, but the instruments, bearings, and gimbals must be engineered with a very high order of precision which can be provided by only a few manufacturers in the world. The INS system is costly, particularly for long-range ballistic missiles where drift of the instruments must be kept to a minimum. A potentially cheaper method of achieving guidance is by a strapdown INS. As the name implies, the accelerometers and gyroscopes are fixed direcdy, or are strapped, to the missile airframe itself. The missile’s inaccuracies as it rolls, drifts, and drags through the atmosphere because of various extraneous factors are passed on to the strapdown INS. Ballistic, missiles with ranges more than 1,500 km ideally require INS guidance. A strapdown INS would be unacceptable for ICBM ranges even with nuclear warheads. All Indian ballistic missiles use strapdown INS. Cruise Missiles A cruise missile is a dispensable, pilot-less, guided, continuously powered, endo-atmospheric vehicle that is supported by wings and is powered by the same kind of jet engine as an aircraft. Unlike a ballistic missile, a cruise missile requires continuous power and guidance, since

both the velocity and the direction of its flight can be unpredictably altered by local weather conditions or changes in the performance of its propulsion system. For instance, a cruise missile that usually flies at subsonic speed would require close to six hours of continuous guided flight to cover the distance of 5,000 km, which a ballistic missile would take fiftec minutes to cover, as mentioned earner. Hence, guidance errors that accumulate over time would be nearly hundred times larger for a cruise missile than for a ballistic missile with a comparable range. Accurate arrival of a cruise missile at a target will be achieved with continuous inertial guidance only by correcting it from time to time with fresh information about the missile’s position. Not only are cruise missiles less costly to design, develop, procure, maintain, and operate, they are better suited than ballistic missiles for use with conventional warheads as their accuracy is far better. The aerodynamic stability of the cruise missile permits the use of less sophisticated and therefore less costly guidance and control methods than in the case of ballistic missiles, which undergo the stresses of re­ entry into the atmosphere and high speed. For example, cruise missiles can receive satellite navigation corrections all the way to the target from the US Global Positioning System (GPS) or Russian Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) or China’s BeiDou Global Navigation Satellite System. Cruise missiles can fly low and hence pose severe detection challenges even for airborne radars due to ground clutter. Moreover, cruise missiles’ exhaust plumes are not generally detected by launch warning systems and, unlike ballistic missiles, their flight paths are unpredictable. Given the fact that reductions in radar cross-section are easier to accomplish in cruise missile designs than in manned aircraft, cruise missiles pose a formidable challenge to modern air defence systems. In comparison, at least to a limited extent, defences against ballistic missiles are available. In more specific terms, the operational importance of LACM is because of the advances in propulsion (engine), guidance, and navigation technologies. The air breathing engines for propulsion are of two types: turbojet and turbofan. Turbofan engines consume much less fuel than turbojets of equivalent size; hence are more complex

systems and extremely expensive. The turbofan engines are considered suitable for long-range cruise missiles with ranges between 600 km and 2,000 km. China is amongst the countries that have mastered the turbofan propulsion technology; India is not. China unveiled its WS500 turbofan engine (subsequently used in Pakistan’s Babur LACM ) at the Zhnhai Air Show in late 2004. Developed by the Chinese Gas Turbine Establishment, the W S500 is claimed to produce around 1,125 lbs of thrust. By comparison, the US Tomahawk engine produces 700 lbs thrust. The turbojet engine is more widely used in cruise missiles with ranges of up to 500 km referred to as tactical missile. The ramjet propulsion engine is a derivative of the turbojet engine. Unlike turbojet propulsion that produces subsonic speeds, in ramjet, adequate pressure is built up within the engine to produce supersonic speeds of Mach 2 (Mach 1 is equivalent to the speed of sound, 300 m per second) to Mach 4. The main disadvantage of the ramjet is that it has to be boosted from static to a suitable high velocity, usually around Mach 2, to create a high enough pressure (called ram pressure) for the ramjet propulsion to work. However, a ramjet is much simpler than turbojet or turbofan propulsion. Regarding the navigation and control of cruise missiles, it can be done by various methods that include simple mid-course correction by a pre-programmed autopilot, and terminal guidance by passive radio frequency homing, radar, or passive infrared. The INS that uses accelerometers and gyroscopes that detect motion and calculate changes in relative position are not helpful with cruise missiles given their slow motion and long ranges as adequate inaccuracies accumulate that make it unreliable for use in conventional missions. It is relatively easy to scale up the range of an existing cruise missile system than a ballistic missile. The technology required to produce a 600 km range cruise missile is not fundamentally different from that needed for very short-range cruise missiles. Moreover, the structures, propulsion, autopilot, and navigation systems used in manned aircraft are essentially interchangeable with those of cruise missiles. However, for all their advantages, ballistic delivery is superior on long ranges as compared to cruise missiles. Militarily, they are better because it is difficult to stop a re-entry vehicle from reaching its target

once it has been launched properly. With the coming o f ‘missile intelligentization’, the complexities have increased. Since 2000, the PLA has been working on the objective, as Wang Changqing from the CASIC’s Third Academy’s General Design Department puts it, to have ‘future cruise missiles with a very high level of AI and automation such that commanders will be able to control them in real-time manner, or to use a fire-and-forget mode, or even to add more tasks to in-fiight missiles’.-5 The application of A I to cruise missile’s mission management systems, flight management systems, and control and implementation would make them deadly weapons of choice. While it is not clear what breakthrough has been achieved in this, two inferences can be made: one, experts unanimously agree that intelligent and autonomous weapons will precede intelligent and autonomous systems. And two, the PLA deems that AI weapons will learn rapidly from battlefield ‘like a human recruit growing into a battlehardened veteran’.26 Three aspects of the PLA’s cruise missiles deserve closer attention: 1.

The PLA’s CJ-10 ground launched cruise missiles (GLCMs) with a 2,000-km range, air-launched cruise missiles and LACM provide immense operational flexibility. Add to this A I’s autonomy in cruise missiles. Fired from greater distances and with the capability to choose the target or rearrange tasks mid-flight, these missiles would frustrate an adversary’s air and missile defence plan. Variants of these cruise missiles have been made for deployment with the PLAA, PLAN, and PLAAF.

2.

‘The PLA navy has expanded its network of Over-The-Horizon (OTH) radars in conjunction with reconnaissance satellites to support long range precision strikes, including employment of ASBMs.’27

“ Kama, ‘Battlefield Singularity’, p. 25. “ Remark made by a senior colonel rank PLA officer to me at the 9th Beijing Xiangshan Forum in October 2019.

“‘Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2019’, p. 47.

3.

There is close operational cooperation between the PLASSF and PLARF. The PLARF, which will be the first line of attack, has been training under combat conditions, which include contending with an enemy’s electromagnetic jamming, air attacks, satellite reconnaissance, and special forces. The purpose ■ is ' 0 acquire training data for / I in cruise missile. The PLA’s plethora of cruise missiles and hypersonic missiles supported with AI would comprise a deadly attack envelop within the atmosphere.

There is plenty of US and Western literature on the PLA’s missile force and its ‘projectile centric strategy’ which the senior Indian military brass cannot have missed. Yet, there is an urge to either underplay or ignore the PLARF. Or to make exaggerated claims. A case in point is retired Rear Admiral Sudarshan Shrikhande who, despite the Ladakh crisis, said in August 2021 that, ‘India may have to consider ways and means of taking naval leverages and readiness for battle into the South China Sea. Sea powers reach and offensive potential would matter there.’2* Surely, Shrikhande must have heard of the PLA’s DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missiles with a 1,500-km range; the DF-26 ‘carrier killer’ ballistic missiles with a range of 4,000 km extendable to 5,000 km mated with hypersonic glide vehicle D F-ZF; and JL -2 submarine launch ballistic missile with an operational range of 7,200 km and with capability to accommodate an anti-satellite warhead to give it a sea-based anti-satellite capability, to name a few. The DF-26 and DF-21 both have manoeuvring re-entry vehicles capable of hitting large ships, such as aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships. India does not have any missiles in this category.28

28Unnithan, 'Line of No Control’, p. 33.

DR ONE WAR

D

uring the course of a series of conversations with me since the Ladakh 2020 stand-off with China, Rahul Gandhi, member of Parliament from the Indian National Congress, once asked, ‘What is the logic for the use of US Predator drones which India is buying?’ Before I could respond, he answered his own question. ‘The Predator is a very slow aircraft [217 km per hour] and can only be used once there is air superiority or dominance. India is unlikely to achieve this against either China or Pakistan/ I later learnt that Gandhi is a trained radio controlled (R C ) pilot. An RC plane is controlled by a pilot on the ground using hand-held transmitter, while a drone has on-board computers. Since an RC plot needs to learn to control the orientation of the plane and execute a safe landing, the pilot gets a feel for controlling unmanned planes. This explained his interest and concern about the growing threat of drones in Indian airspace. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and unmanned aerial systems (UAS), both referred to as drones by the uninitiated, are significantly different. While all UAVs are drones, all drones are not UAVs. A UAV is an unpiloted aerial vehicle controlled remotely or guided autonomously whereas a drone is an unmanned vehicle in air, on ground, on sea, and undersea, piloted either remotely or autonomously. The UAS refers to both UAV and drone systems comprising humans controlling flight from ground or air, and the communication system which connects the two. On Gandhi’s question on the Predators, there could be a couple of answers: the US was keen to sell its extremely expensive drones, and India was finding it difficult to say no or the US military believes that it will be safer to share information on situational awareness through its own drones or the Indian military was enamoured with the idea

of buying a sophisticated weapons platform rather than capabilities, because it conflates the two. The reality is that Predators and Reapers are out of sync wi th present and future trends in warfare. Both drones can carry big payloads— Reapers with bigger size, payload, range, and mission capability carry double the number of HeOfire missiles compared to the Predator. Both have electro-optic video cameras, laser designators, good communication relay with ground station, good electromagnetic systems, and signal intelligent equipment, and they have endurance of over forty hours. On the downside, with slow speed they are low on performance and can be shot down by enemy air defence systems. They lack autonomy, are not stealthy and, most of all, they require lots of people on the ground to control them. According to US analyst Paul Scharre: Predator and Reaper drone operations require seven to ten pilots to staff one drone orbit of 24/7 continuous around-the-clock coverage over an area. Another twenty people per orbit are required to operate the sensors on the drone, and scores of intelligence analysts are needed to sift through the sensor data. In fact, because of these substantial personnel requirements, the US Air Force has a strong resistance to calling these aircraft unmanned.1 The irony is that when these UAVs had a lucrative market in the early 2000s, the US’s laws did not allow their sale. Now when the US has approved their export, many more cost-effective UAS options are available, with China as a leading exporter of drones. According to Gandhi, drones are a strategic industry in China and have emerged as a bottoms-up sector. Recounting one of his visits to Singapore, he says he was surprised to find that The teaching of electronics, mathematics, and flight dynamics are embedded in their school curriculum.’ It is the same in China. Given his interest in aeromodelling, he says that he tries to keep abreast of the trends on his visits abroad. Zhao Xu, the engineer who pioneered the early UAVs, had said in 2018, ‘The future direction of PLAAF UAV development will enable

'Scharre, A rm y o f N o n e, p. 16.

their emergence as a second air force for China/2 It might become the first air force by replacing the manned aircraft, given the pace at which China is investing in drones. Meanwhile, the US Air Force and its industry were highly sceptical. Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, said at the Air Force Association Air Warfare conference in Orlando on 28 February 2020: ‘The fighter jet era has passed. Drone warfare is where the future will be. It’s not that I want the future to be—it’s just, that is what the future will b e/3 He further said that the drone should have a competitor. ‘The competitor should be a drone fighter plane that’s remote controlled by a human, but with its manoeuvres augmented by autonomy. The F-35 would have no chance against it/4Musk was referring to advanced drones with artificial intelligence, deep learning, edge computing, intelligent and autonomous networks, and loads of datasets assisting the drone fighter with jet engine and human in the loop, and perhaps with stealth capabilities. The Chinese drone industry did not react to Musk’s extraordinary remarks. It is, after all, engaged in cutting-edge research, development, production, and operationalization of increasingly intelligent or autonomous systems ranging from UAVs, Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs), stealth UCAVs, flying wing UCAVs with capability for wings swapping for different mission profiles, swarms of UAVs and UCAVs, to hypersonic space planes. The unmanned, silent, lethal, and autonomous UAVs are fast becoming a reality in all operational services and support services of the PLA. The PLA has been expanding unmanned and increasingly autonomous systems pervasively into other war domains, such as Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs), UGVs, and Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs). All PLA services, the army, navy, and air force, and 2Elsa B. Kania, ‘The PLA’s Unmanned Aerial Systems’, China Aerospace Studies Institute, p. 8. 3Amanda Macias, ‘Elon Musk tells a room full of Air Force pilots: “The fighter jet era has passed”’, C N B C , 28 February 2020. 'Tyler Rogoway, ‘Elon Musk Says Era Of Fighter Jet Is Over And F-35 Should Have Drone Competitor’, The D rive, 28 February 2020.

support services like rocket force and strategic support force and even joint staff department field a wide range of UAVs. Meanwhile, China commissioned a cutting-edge stealth attack drone (Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle, UCAV) called Gongji (GJ-11) into its military in 2019. It was showcased along with W Z-8 supersonic reconnaissance UAV at the 201Q NaDoml Day parade in Beijing. According to analysts, ‘...the strong stealth capability enables it to sneak deep into enemy territory and launch strikes with weapons hidden in its weapons bay’.5The GJ-11 has over a 1,000 km range with a single turbofan engine and can carry a 2,500 kg payload. The GJ-11 could be the platform for the autonomous mission execution that Musk spoke about. According to a report, 'Depending on how widely produced GJ-11 is, it could form an important base of knowledge and development for concepts such as autonomous mission execution, autonomous swarming, mannedunmanned-teaming (MUMT)/ioyal wingman, as well as more dispersed and redundant sensor/shooter concepts. Software and avionics tested and verified aboard a mature and in-service GJ-11 fleet could then be duplicated aboard more capable UAV and UCAV designs.’6 MUMT or loyal wingman is a Western concept. For example, the US’s Boeing Airpower Teaming System (ATS) has developed a few 'loyal wingmen’ unmanned aircraft with a manned jet. The nose of the unmanned aircraft or drone is detachable and can be replaced by payloads for various missions. With limited AI, the pilot can pass instructions to his ‘loyal wingman’ team. The loyal wingman flying independently in support of the manned aircraft will carry out the pilot’s instruction, while maintaining safe distance from other aircraft. The ATS provides three major tactical advantages: more payloads for different missions can be carried on the drones’ nose; the pilot can concentrate on the larger tactical picture; and the wingman drones could be in front of the manned jet providing protection to the pilot. Thus, if the mission is about

5YangShengandLiuXuauzun, ‘Chinese military commissions G J-11 stealth attack drone’, G lo b a l Times.,. 1 October 2019.

6R ickJoe, 'Chinn’s Growing High End Military Drone Force’, The D iplom at, 27 November

2019.

taking on enemy fighters, one drone can have an infrared search and track system, another can have radars, one a communications gateway, another an electronic warfare payload and defensive laser system. This way, one can get just the right feature mix to put maximum pressure on the enemy while not having to buy a drone that needs to accommodate a!! these systems simultaneously, which would be far more expensive. Given this, the Boeing’s modular nose is far more of a game changer than it may seem at first glance. Using the entire nose section is a great idea because that is where some sensors and payloads have to be in order to be most effective. Even as Western air forces are excited about the ‘loyal wingman’ concept, they worry about full autonomy in UAVs, drones, and UAS. The case in point is the British Taranis drone. The jet engine powered Taranis UCAV has stealth capabilities, long range, and endurance. It will follow a pre-programmed plan on the authority of mission command and will be guided through its flight path by secure satellite communication. It will always be under the mission command commander who will verify targets and authorize weapons release. The key point is that Taranis will not be an autonomous weapon system. Emphasizing this, the UK joint doctrine has painstakingly defined ‘autonomous weapon systems’ as follows: As computing and sensor capability increases, it is likely that many systems, using very complex sets of control rules, will appear and be described as autonomous systems, but as long as it can be shown that the system logically follows a set of rules or instructions and is not capable of human levels of situational understanding, then they should be considered to be automated.7 Computer scientists, however, do not share the thinking of policymakers on autonomous systems being used as automated systems. According to Stuart J. Russell, professor of computer sciences, University of California, Berkeley, ‘Machines would become more powerful and intelligent (than

7S c h a r r e ,

A rm y o f N one,

p.

110.

humans). How do we control them?’8 The issue gets complicated; like the arms race during the Cold War when the US and Soviet Union could enter into arms control treaties, UAS and swarm UAS control treaties will not be possible. Being software driven, its quantification would be ruled out. China is not enamoured with the iue : of placing restrictior s on technology that is software driven. The UAS, oner all, is simply a physical platform. W hat matters are the controls, computation, autonomous navigation which feed on datasets. In the state-of-art drones and swarm drones, the competition is between software engineers rather than the human soldiers on opposing sides. Since the competition will be stiff, major powers will pump money into research and are unlikely to sell or share cutting-edge software and processing power with others. As mentioned earlier, Robert Work believes that China is ahead in the development of software networks with AI embedded in them. Chinese military developers have a wealth of experience to draw on from companies like DJI which has nearly 70 per cent global market share in commercial drones in just sixteen years of existence. Headquartered in Shenzhen, which is considered China's Silicon Valley, DJI benefits from direct access to commercial suppliers, young talent, and raw materials which are used in software development for autonomous technology in drones for civilian applications. It is the fusion of commercial and military drone makers that will allow next generation drones to be faster, stealthier, and equipped with new missiles, cognitive electronic warfare capabilities, and laser weapons. China, which is a world leader in Medium Altitude Long Endurance (M A LE) UAVs fields a number of these systems in PLAAF. M ALE UAVs can fly up to 9,000 m with twenty-four hours or more endurance. They are powered by propellers, not jet engines. The prominent PLA UAVs in this category is BK2-005 which does Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) with an electro-optical turret and is with the PLAAF and PLAN. 'Ihe GJ-1 M ALE UAV with an 4,000 km range and twenty hours endurance can carry a dozen air-to-ground missiles,

“D e l M o n te ,

G enius Weapons,

p. 77.

precision guided rockets, and precision guided bombs. It has ISR and strike capabilities. The GJ-2, the successor to the GJ-1, is a larger aircraft with bigger payload and synthetic aperture radar to enhance target acquisition. The export version of GJ-I and GJ-2 are called Wing Loong-I and Wing Loong-II: both have been sold to Pakistan. ' Starting in 2GL\ the ri-A A F started selecting drone pilots from amongst the serving fighter pilots since the requirements for drones were assessed as similarly demanding. In 2011, the PLAAF formally raised its first UAV unit (95835) armed with GJ-1 (M ALE) UCAV. In 2014, this unit was transferred to a base in Lanzhou military region, and since the middle of 2018 ‘its location remains Bazhou, Xinjiang.’9 This unit with upgraded GJ-2 has been training with multiple types of manned aircraft since 2017 and has participated in the Shaheen series of exercises between PLAAF and the PAF. Meanwhile, China’s Cai Hong (CH) series of unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) which have been in production since the 1990s have been sold worldwide. The CH-3 and CH-4 UAVs and their UCAVs have been sold to Pakistan. The UAVs do a variety of tasks ranging from ISR, targeting, battle damage assessment, information operations, suppression of enemy air defences with anti-radiation missiles, survey, and mapping of operational geography, use with special forces, EW, and data relay. ‘In a scenario in which space-based capabilities were compromised, the PLA might utilise UAVs to replace that capability, at least at a localised level which could facilitate its operation in a denial environment.’10 The CH-7 unveiled in November 2018 is 10 m long, is high altitude (10 to 13 km altitude), subsonic, with stealth capabilities and fifteen hours endurance UAV with internal weapons bay capable of launching anti-radiation missiles, air to ground and anti-ship missiles, and long­ distance precision guided bombs. Its missions include guiding missiles to strike high value targets, ISR, combat support, etc. According to its chief designer, Shi Wen, ‘The CH7 can intercept radar electronic signals,

T C a n ia , " I h e 10I h i d . , p . 8 .

P L A ’s U n m a n n e d

A e r i a l v S y s te m s ’, p . 1 9 .

and simultaneously detect, verify and monitor high-value targets, such as hostile command stations, missile launch sites and naval vessels.’11 In the High-Altitude Long Endurance (H A LE) UAV category, which achieves 18,000 m altitude with a jet engine, there is one prominent PLA UAV called variously EA-003, W Z-7, or ‘Soar Dragon’. This was tested in 2012 and has been deployed in Poklam since 2017. The PLA also has HALE ‘Divine Eagle’ Airborne and Early Warning and Control (AEW &C) radar. It can provide persistence coverage and battlefield assessment in dangerous areas where manned AEW&C are not advisable. While there is a lot of information about Chinese drones online, two areas which need to be put into perspective are: loiter munitions and swarm drones. As explained in an earlier chapter, Israeli UAS like Harop are loitering munition. They can loiter over a target area for hours and, on orders from the ground controller, can dive down and destroy the target kamikaze style, and they can be retracted to land back safely at a pre-determined base. The two downsides are less autonomy and the possibility of jamming by the enemy. These shortcomings will be removed in LAWs or killer robots. With this background, let’s consider the Second Nagorno-Karabakh war which generated lots of global attention. While the UAS loiter munitions has been used in the past by non-state actors, what made this war between Armenia and Azerbaijan exceptional was that it was fought for forty-four days from 27 September to 10 November 2020, and it was the first state-on-state war fought with loiter munitions and drones, which led to the capitulation of Armenian forces. And both sides were medium powers. To draw an analogy, this war could have been fought between Indian and Pakistan militaries which are matched at the operational level of war. The game changer in the NagornoKarabakh war was different war-fighting methods. The Azerbaijani were familiar with Armenian force capabilities, especially with their air defences systems and poor electronic and cyber warfare and won by using technology that the other side was unprepared for.*

n P T I,

‘C h in a

u n v e ils

N o v e m b e r 2018.

“m o st

a d va n ce d ”

s t e a lt h

d ro n e :

R e p o r t ’,

E conom ic Times,

6

Hence, the first lesson should be that drones and loiter munitions would have an operational role between peer competitors like India and Pakistan, or the PLA and the US military. However, it would have little role between unequal adversaries like the Indian military and the PLA. The latter has formidable A2/AD firewall which includes laser and microwave weapons capabilities. Laser power weapons, which are scalable, can take out UAS and microwave weapons can burn and destroy electronics. The reason microwave weapons are not used freely is because of the possibility of collateral damage to one’s own systems. Moreover, since Pakistan has developed deep interoperability in electronic warfare, and electromagnetic spectrum management with the PLA, the Indian military might find entering Pakistani airspace equally difficult. Thus, without Al-infused electronic and cyber capabilities, the Indian military’s drones and swarm drones will have very little war­ fighting utility against Pakistan military and none against the PLA. Another lesson of the Nagorno-Karabakh war is that the UAS, loiter munitions, and LAWs, and not Predators and Reapers, will be the primary mode of assault. The UAS are cheap, affordable (nearly 1,000 UAS can be bought for the cost of one Reaper), and, importantly, will provide battlespace transparency. Since each UAS has sensors that illuminate the area, it provides reconnaissance on the fly and damage assessment on the spot. This is unprecedented. Given this, command and control centres will need to be chosen with care. The third lesson is that drones use five domains of war. Drones cannot operate in an environment without good control over EMS and cyber. Drones cover the domains of space (for GPS communication), land, and air. With more AI, it is likely that drone IoMT might be preferred over swarm drones. In IoMT, teams could be formed and given roles and responsibilities for better outcomes. At present, however, all the major powers are betting on swarming. For example, in June 2017, China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (C ET C ), China’s electronic research and manufacturing company ‘demonstrated its advances in swarm intelligence with the test of 119 fixed wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) with autonomous swarm control including communication and coordination amongst

UAVs’.12 The C ETC ’s UAV expert, Zhao Yanjie characterized future intelligent swarms as a disruptive force that will change the rules of the game in warfare. What is swarming? An individual drone has three basic characteristics: it has sensors for collecting data, it has processors for converting data into ;nfofip-i' . 17I b i d .

a t U n ite d

2022.

U n ite d 13

A p r il

S e r v ic e s I n s t it u t io n S e r v ic e 2022,

In s titu tio n a v a ila b le

at

in

D e lh i

o f In d ia , c h ttp s ://

Bulletin o f the Atomic Scientists, ‘There are a lot of obstacles to building an effective, true drone swarm. Commanders will face the cognitive challenge of keeping track of a high number of systems at the same time. Communicating with the swarm will require a lot of bandwidth. While a drone swarm may comprise small, cheap, and disposable units, these characteristics will put stark limits on energy use, on-board processing power, communication equipment, and sensors. All these factors mean developers will find it difficult to make a useful swarm. Because swarm development is still at an early stage, the vast majority of swarm research is conducted with simulations or in a controlled laboratory environment.’18 The PLA is working on micro killer swarm drones too, which will take air war to the battlefield frontline. The drones are six inches long with both facial and pattern recognition algorithms and armed with tiny payloads. The micro drones can find their own way, look for enemy human soldiers with certain facial features, and once detected, strike at the forehead with instant kill. The US has similar micro killer drones called ‘Slaughter Bots’, which when released in the thousands from a combat jet or cargo plane can attack human targets like a swarm of bees. Policymakers in the US and other Western countries, already distraught over the UAVs’ ethical, moral, and humanitarian implications are having difficulty accepting Slaughter Bots in their inventories. In October 2020, the PLA demonstrated a swarm of forty-eight CH-901 loitering munition from the rear of a military truck and from a helicopter. The truck demonstration was conducted by the Tibet Military Command facing India. According to analysts, ‘If the PLA doesn't have an operational drone swarm capability, it is getting ever closer to fielding one. A swarm that can be deployed from multiple platforms, on the surface and in the air, potentially approaching a target area from multiple directions, would give the complete system immense flexibility and resiliency.’19

"V e rb ru g g e n ,

‘D ro n e

s w a rm s : c o in in g

( s o m e tim e )

to

’ ’J o s e p h T r e v i t h i c k , 'C h in a

C o n d u c t s T e s t O f M a s s iv e

F ro m

The D riv e ,

A

B o x

O n

A

T r u c k ',

a w a r n e a r y o u '. S u ic id e

14 O c to b e r 2 0 2 0 .

D ro n e

S w a rm

L a u n ch e d

An operational swarm of drones will take warfare to the next level For example, with UAS, the human remains in the loop, guiding the drone all the way to the target. With loiter munitions, the human gets on the loop, allowing the munition to find its target and destroy it. With a genuine swarm of drones, the human will be out of the loop. A swarm of three to four missiles will collaborate and communicate* to decide how best to destroy a hostile S-400 air defence and missile system. The ability to take the human out of the equation to a large degree and let the networked UCAV swarm reach its maximum potential to work as fast as possible to overwhelm and neutralize the enemy’s defences and war-fighting abilities is both a transformative concept and an inevitable one. As more and more AI is injected into the swarm networks, they will be able to accomplish bigger and more dangerous missions with 1,000, 10,000, or more UAS without human control. This will result in two transformative moves: one, much like the ‘kill web’ of Mosaic warfare, drones will move away from the ‘kill net’ concept of human intervention to ‘kill web’ concept where intelligent software would automatically connect and decide the right sensor drone to the right killer drone. And two, humans will no longer control the swarm. They would instead command them and let the intelligent software control them. This is exactly what the IoMT concept is all about. And this perhaps is the future where the PLA and US militaries as peer competitors are headed. India is not in this game. The story with the PLAN is the same. The PLAN is the PLA’s focus area since it has declared sea and deep sea (depths below 300 m) as threats. The PLAN has been involved in multiple activities, including Indian Ocean seawater data collection critical for anti-submarine warfare and submarine operations; building of USVs and UUVs; regular voyages by its blue water ships including nuclear powered submarines to the Gulf of Aden under the garb of anti-piracy operations since 2008; and its computer engineers using all procured data from the above activities for algorithm writing. Take the case of the high-profile launch of fourteen underwater gliders by a PLAN survey vessel in the TOR in December 2019. Called Sea Wing, these floatable gliders can stay sunk for extended periods and

travel vast distances while monitoring underwater activities. The then Indian navy chief, Admiral Karambir Singh, confirmed that a Chinese survey ship, the Shi Yan-1, owned by the Chinese Academy of Sciences was found doing research activities near Port Blair, the capital of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Since the area was within the Indian EK 7 and\tT> ship had not sought permission tc enter, ii was asked to leave immediately, which it did 20 The purpose of these gliders was to gather oceanic data like ‘seawater temperature, salinity, turbidity, chlorophyll and oxygen levels...this information is commonly gathered for naval intelligence. It is relevant to submarine warfare.’21 A research vessel like this one has to merely sail through India’s proximate waters to collect vital data relating to sea water and salinity profiles. These are amongst critical parameters for anti-submarine warfare and submarine operations. So why did the Chinese vessel enter the Indian EEZ? The Andaman and Nicobar Islands are India’s sea-based Achilles heel just as the LAC in the Himalayas is the land-based one. Karambir also said that at any given time ‘seven to eight Chinese ships are available in the area (IOR), including the ones involved in anti­ piracy role’. The purpose of PLAN activities in IOR are three-fold: collect data on Indian Ocean waters for USVs and UUVs warfare; familiarization of crew with SLOCs, including computer scientist for algorithm writing; and test capability and capacities of vessels for long voyages.22 Unlike the W TC where the PLA can do military exercises, in the IOR this will not be possible anytime soon. However, when the BRI matures in nations of South Asia which have signed up for it, PLAN will do exercises in the IOR, in India’s backyard, as part of cooperative security with those nations. Meanwhile, China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation is a leading shipyard involved in autonomous vessels. In January 2020, it reported sea trials of its new killer robot USV, the first in the world, capable of

“ R a h u l S in g h , ‘ N a v y w i t h o u t p e r m i s s i o n ’, “ Ib id .

“ Ibid.

c h ie f K a r a m b ir

S in g h

H industan Tim es,

says

C h in e s e

1 A u g u st 2020.

v e s s e l e n te re d

In d ia n

w a te rs

multiple roles like anti-submarine, anti-surface combat, and air defence with powerful missiles. Called JARI, ‘the USV can be loaded onto an aircraft carrier or amphibious assault ship to provide their strike groups with extra reconnaissance and attack platforms’.23 This done, the twin activity of removing technical glitches in JARI and making it combat worthy by appropriate algorithms would hr- done simultaneously. Similarly, China revealed its first large displacement autonomous underwater vehicle (submarine) at the National Day parade in Beijing on 1 October 2019. According to experts, ‘China is developing large, smart and relatively low-cost unmanned submarines that can roam the world’s oceans to perform a wide range of missions. One of the missions is almost certain to be anti-submarine warfare.’24 According to reports, by early 2020s, small autonomous robot submarines with humans onboard would be deployed. With limited AI, the vessels will be assigned simple tasks with the human crew taking the final decision on whether to attack or not. With improved AI, the submarines will be gigantic, being called extra-large unmanned underwater vehicles or XLUUVs. These vessels will be able to deal with the sea’s complex environment on their own. Eventually, ‘[t]he submarines will have no human operators on board. They will go out, handle their assignment(s) and return to base on their own. They may establish contact with the ground command periodically for updates but are by design capable of completing missions without human intervention. The new class of unmanned submarines will join the other autonomous or manned military systems on water, land and (space) orbit to carry out missions in coordinated efforts.’25 To mount stealth attacks by submarines and UUVs, two things are needed: precision (coordinates of enemy’s submarines and surface vessels) and communication between submarines and drones and

23L i u

Z h e n ,

‘ C h i n a ’s n e w

M o rn in g Post,

k i l le r r o b o t s h ip

17 J a n u a ry

goes

th ro u g h

its

f i r s t s e a t r i a l ’,

South China

2020.

^ Z a c h a r y K e c k , ‘ W e ’ v e G o t t h e D e t a i l s o n C h i n a ’s S u b m a r i n e D r o n e s ’ ,

N ational Interest,

7 N o v e m b e r 2019. 2sS t e p h e n sea

C h e n ,

p o w e r ’,

‘C h in a

m ilita r y

d e v e lo p s

South China M o rn in g Post,

r o b o tic

2 2 J u ly

s u b m a r in e s

2018.

to

la u n c h

a n e w

e ra

o f

land-based stations. Tests by BeiDou Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) seemed to have overcome technical barriers to provide accurate and consistent positioning data to underwater vessels. According to experts, ‘the tests are understood to be part of Beijing’s plan to turn the BeiDou system into a global geolocation network, covering land and sea by 2020’.26 This is not all. Under project Guanlan (watching the big* waves), China is reportedly developing a satellite with a powerful laser for anti-submarine warfare up to 500 m below the sea. The satellite-based laser could also collect data from the IOR. Song Xiaoquan, a researcher involved in the project, said: ‘If the team can develop the satellite as planned, it will make the upper layer of the sea more or less transparent.’27* It is clear that China is designing stealth unmanned oceanic combat vessels with big funding on research of systems for the intelligent control of ships. ‘As the PLAN seeks to enhance its capabilities, intelligent USVs and UUVs could start to be integrated into its force structure.’25 Once that happens, India’s sea-based deterrence (SSBNs) will be in trouble. The UUVs linked with BeiDou GNSS will disrupt the undersea status quo by casting doubts on SSBNs attributes like stealth, discretion, mobility, and survivability. What stops the PLAN —having a swarm of UUVs in real time communications with ground stations and its own satellites with powerful lasers capable of destruction 500 m undersea—hunting for Indian SSBNs? The counterforce technology will erode deterrence value and credibility of SSBNs. Is the Indian Navy thinking ahead? The Indigenous journey India’s record on UAVs has been disheartening. Under development for two decades, the last of the four DRDO developed Nishant UAVs with the army crashed in November 2 0 15.29 The army refused to take

“ C h a n , ‘ C h i n a ’s B e i D o u

s a te llite

n a v ig a t io n

s y s te m

b re a k s

u n d e r w a t e r b a r r i e r s ’.

2T b i d . 2KK a n i a , ‘ B a t t l e f i e l d ^ V is h n u

S o in ,

S i n g u l a r i t y ’, p . 2 4 .

'H o m e g r o w n

N is h a n t

D r o n e ’s

P e rfe c t

C ra s h

R e c o r d ’,

NDTV,

19

any more deliveries of Nishant. Launched by a catapult system with parachutes provided for recovery after every mission, Nishant, with claimed endurance of four hours, was meant for tactical intelligence gathering by the army. Frustrated by inordinate delays with Nishant and having learnt lessons from the 1999 Kargil conflict with Pakistan, the army procured Israeli Searcher and Heron'^JAYs. The Nishant project that had basic design flaws was expected to go bfec& to the drawing board.. Instead, it was given a makeover and a new name: Panchi. Nishant’s cumbersome catapult system was replaced with a wheeled variant. Conscious of Nishant’s technical shortfalls, the DRDO teamed up the private sector to produce another tactical UAV called Netra. With a flying distance of about 2.5 km after take-off and altitude of 200 m, Netra can be used by the police and paramilitary services; but doesn’t have much use with the army. Meanwhile, the armed services needed both a powerful UAV and UCAV for which the government was in talks with Israel and the US. The DRDO in the 90s came up with the Rustom UAV project in three variants. Rustom-1 was a tactical UAV with twelve hours endurance; Rustom-H was meant to be MALE with twenty-four hours endurance; and Rustom-II was to be UCAV with stealth provided by internal weapons bay. Each variant prototype had a few flights, but none reached user evaluation stage for induction into the defence services. Undeterred, the DRDO made another ambitious attempt through a quasi-secret project called Autonomous Unmanned Research Aircraft (AURA) UCAV. The ^3,000 crore research and development project, AURA, was eventually to be called Ghatak UCAV. It was to use derivative of the abandoned Kaveri engine initially meant to power the Light Combat Aircraft. To be developed with the private sector, it was to have medium-weight, cutting edge stealth, titanium airframe, and sufficient thrust. Meant to fire both bombs and missiles, it was to become operational in eight years after allocation of funds.30 Nothing has

N o v e m b e r 2015. wM a n u

P u b b y , ‘G o v e rn m e n t s e t to

f i r s t U C A V ’,

E co n o m ic Tim es ,

c le a r ? 3 ,0 0 0 c r o r e p la n

1 5 J u ly

2018.

to d e v e lo p

e n g in e

f o r I n d i a ’s

been heard on allocations of funds for AURA UCAV project. It appears that like the Rustom project, Ghatak UCAV is unlikely to enter service at least for a few years. Even as the future of Ghatak UCAV remained uncertain, yet another UAV project called Remotely Piloted Strike Aircraft (RPSA) has been launched. A member of the RPSA team told me at Aero India in February 2021 chat a pilot project called Stealth Wing Flying Test Bed (SW IFT) would be flight-tested in 2021. Using the Kaveri engine (dry) without an afterburner, SW IFT would be tested to validate three areas: flying configuration to test aerodynamic forces; automatic take-off and landing; and stealth by shape and design. The SWIFT test will use the data link of Tapas, which is the new name for Rustom-H. Only once SW IFT is validated, the 13-ton RPS A UCAV would be sanctioned by the government. The reality is that not a single indigenous UAV or drone is in service with the defence forces that rely on imports from Israel and now the US. The DRDO meanwhile has confused the media by using different names for the same project. The only good news thus far has been the delivery of tactical drones called SWITCH31 to the Indian Army by a domestic start-up company. Not to be left behind, India’s public sector Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) announced a mega MUMT project named Combat Air Teaming System (CATS) in February 2021 at the Aero India show in Bangalore. In CATS, the mothership, which will be a manned fighter aircraft, for instance Tejas or Jaguar, will be integrated with up to four unmanned Warriors which will defend and perform combat missions with the fighter. The fighter will also be integrated with Air-launched Flexible Assets (ALFA) comprising swarm drones like the ones showcased at the Army Day parade on 15 January 2021. According to R. Madhavan, the chairman of HAL, 'We will be ready to fly (CATS) in the next four to five years and have put in ?400 crore of our own money on the project.’32

3 ,S h i v a n i S h a r m a , ‘A r m y D r o n e s A t L A C ’, A S r n r m i D ., 'H A L

T o

R e c e iv e

R epublic W orld F ie ld s

C A T S ’,

F ir s t

.11 J u l y

FO R C E ,

B a tc h

O f 30

I n d ig e n o u s

2021. 5 F e b ru a ry

2021.

S W IT C H

T a c tic a l

This will not be possible for numerous reasons. One, the mothership used for experimentation is the slow-moving Kiran aircraft. Two, HAL does not have data for autonomy sought in Warriors. For instance, the project engineer, Rajesh A. K., told me that given the lack of labelled data, reinforced learning (R L) (discussed in the chapter Future of War) wis being done to train Warriors. RL is fine for close combat, but not lor stand-off combat which is the norm with modern fighters. It is known that earlier fighters sought manoeuvrability for dogfights; with the availability of long-range precision weapons, the big things now in fighters are stand-off combat and stealth, both missing in Warriors. Three, the Warriors are powered by a subsonic (0.75 Mach) engine used in Lakshya pilotless target aircraft for training purposes. These will make Warriors sitting ducks. Four, given the PLAs A2/AD and control over the electromagnetic spectrum, it will be impossible for CATS to enter Chinese airspace. Entering Pakistani airspace with hugely visible and slow-moving CATS will also be difficult. The same will be the case with the unproven ALFA. And five, with the CATS project at the time of writing still in the preliminary design phase and without the IAF being on board, it is strange that HAL has set a timeline for the programme. The fact is timelines can be set only after the IAF approves the detailed design.

he Ladakh crisis brought home an unpalatable truth: India’s nuclear weapons, whose raison d’etre is deterrence, had in fact failed to deter China. By reportedly occupying 1,000 sq km of Indian territory in Ladakh, China not only walked past India’s conventional military capabilities, but also made it clear that it did not consider India’s nuclear weapons of consequence.1 After a series of five nuclear tests (Shakti) on 11 and 13 May 1998, India’s prime minister, A. B. Vajpayee, sent a letter to US president Bill Clinton explaining that the Chinese nuclear tests and the nuclear weapons nexus between China and Pakistan had forced India to conduct its own tests. India also announced a nuclear no-first use policy, which meant that if deterrence failed, India would be prepared for an assured and credible second-strike capability after absorbing the enemy’s first strike; China, in the present case. The second-strike capability is based on a triad of land, sea, and air vectors. Given the paucity of combat aircraft for conventional war, especially when in a scenario of a two-front war, aircraft availability for the nuclear role is merely theory. The land vector will be provided by the Agni-5 ballistic missile with a 5,000 lorn range meant to cover all of China. While it was yet to be operationalized at the time of writing, the DRJDO announced plans for Multiple Independently-targetabie Re-entry Vehicles (MIRVs) that can deliver a number of warheads at different targets simultaneously instead of a single big bang.*2 The DRDO

‘Pravin Sawhney, ‘Ladakh Stand-off Has Exposed India's Failed Nuclear Deterrence against China. Now What?’, V ie W ire, 1 September 2021. Tiemant Kumar Rout, ‘India plans deployment o f nuclear-capable Agni-V this year’, N ew In d ia n E x p ress, 4 January 2021.

is awaiting government clearance for MIRVs, which is technology of the late 1960s. The sea vector of the triad will be India’s indigenous ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) INS A rihant3 the follow-on vessel INS Arighat, and two more with similar specifications which are expected to be armed with rrA submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) with a range of 3,500 Vjn (to reach China). The K-4 missile's are still under development. Another SLBM Sagarika with codename K-15 and 750 km range meant for Pakistan has reportedly been testfired from a submerged pontoon.4 Launching a ballistic missile from a submarine is more difficult than launching one from a static submerged pontoon for two reasons: one, it is mobile rather than a fixed launcher, and it is submerged in the ocean when it fires the missile. A missile guidance computer needs exact latitude, longitude, and altitude (depth of submarine below sea level) of the submarine position, the direction of the local north and the local vertical, and the speed and direction of the submarine at the instant of launch for accurate firing. This cannot be done from a static pontoon. Moreover, if the pontoon is submerged at 10 to 20 m; the test firing should be done from greater depth. Incidentally, INS Arihant was commissioned in August 2016 and did its only deterrent patrol in November 2018. However, it was not clear what was meant by deterrent patrol since SSBNs should carry nuclear missiles, which the Arihant did not do. Meanwhile, unsure about India’s assured second-strike capability especially against China, Indian analysts, according to former NSA Shivshankar Menon, believe ‘that India should change its no-first-use policy and begin to think of nuclear weapons as warfighting weapons to compensate for India’s conventional inferiority against China.’5 The assumption is that since nuclear-weapon nations do not go to war, there is no possibility of a full scale war between India and China. 3Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan, ‘India Launches 3rd Arihant Submarine’, O bserver R esearch Fou nd a tio n , 7 January 2022. ■*T. S. Subramanian, ‘DRDO plans another K-15 missile launch’, The H in d u , 28 January

2011.

sShivshankar Menon, India, 2021, p. 355.

In d ia a n d A sian Geopolitics,

Now Delhi: Penguin Random House

The origin of this thinking lies in Cold War theology where it was correctly believed that the fact that the US and Soviet Union had nuclear weapons prevented war between the two blocs—NATO and Warsaw Pact—that had divided the world. This was also true in the case of Russia’s special military operations in Ukraine in 2022 where NATO was pitted against Russia which took possession of all Warsaw Pact nuclear weapons after the latter s demise once die Cold War ended. Indian analysts, comprising policymakers, military brass, and retired senior officers, have superimposed this template on the India of today. And this popular belief has been touted once again since the Ladakh 2020 stand-off between India and China. Before examining India’s case, there is a need to put into perspective the US and Soviets, the NATO and Russian, and the US and Chinese nuclear weapons. In the 1950s, the Soviets had an overwhelming advantage over the US military in conventional forces. While the Soviets were not as technologically advanced as the US, they believed that quantity had a quality of its own. Instead of matching the Soviets’ quantity—tank for tank and gun for gun—US president Dwight Eisenhower introduced battlefield atomic or tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs) to thwart Soviet conventional offensive in the European theatre. The TNWs worked because the US has superiority in strategic nuclear weapons (big yield bombs). Called the New Look strategy, the belief was that if the Soviets retaliated with strategic nukes in response to the US’s TNWs, the latter could counter with a bigger nuclear arsenal. Since the Soviets did not put the US’s assumption to the test as it would have resulted in mutual assured destruction, the New Look strategy, which came to be known as the US’s first offset strategy, worked. However, by early the 1970s, two things happened. While retaining large quantities of conventional arsenal, the Soviets managed to match the US in certain key conventional technologies. And their strategic nukes inventory matched the US’s nukes in range and yields, making an early use of TNWs extremely risky. Thus, on one hand, the Soviets or Warsaw Pact forces outmatched the US-led NATO in conventional forces size while maintaining near-technology parity; on the other, TNWs,

without superior strategic nukes arsenal became too risky for use since US's control over the nuclear escalation ladder was no longer credible. This led to the US’s second offset strategy where reliance on nukes was abandoned. Instead, they sought highly accurate and long-range conventionally guided munitions that could stop Soviet forces before they arrayed for an assault. Making use of battle networks and space for precision and stand-off attacks, conventional munitions that could achieve battlefield effects comparable with TNWs were fielded. The US used this second offset strategy in the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq with spectacular success. The central point of the second offset strategy' was that both conventional and nuclear forces had to be credible and strong for major powers to not go to war since neither side would feel confident of exercising war control that was needed to accomplish war objectives. This line of thought holds good even today as observed between the US and China with regard to military tensions in the Taiwan Strait. In Taiwan Strait, the PLA has built a formidable A2/AD firewall in addition to excellent cyber and electronic warfare capabilities comparable with the US military. So, while the US military could continue with its aggressive freedom of navigation in the theatre, which is meant to signal its intent to China, Taiwan, and ASEAN, it worries about crossing Chinese red lines since it is not confident of winning a conventional war. For this reason, the Biden administration has, since taking office, been seeking an appointment for defence secretary Lloyd Austin with Chinese senior vice chairman of the CMC, General Xu Qiliang to determine mutual red lines. China has repeatedly refused this meeting on the ground that Xu has higher status than Austin. The real reason, however, is that uncertainty over Chinese red lines will worry ASEAN which will request the US military to slow down, if not totally abandon its sea and air combat patrols. Having achieved parity in conventional war with the US military in the theatre, China worries about getting overwhelmed by the US’s massive nuclear arsenal and aggressive first-use posture. This, theoretically, could lead to the US’s first offset strategy situation where, with a bigger strategic nuclear inventory, the US military could, if

outdone in conventional war, use its tactical nukes. While refusing to be party to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) between the US and Russia on the plea that its nuclear weapons arsenal is comparatively small and unwilling to change its no-firstuse posture since it could affect its peaceful rise, China has decided to increase its strategic w eapojs inventory to build credible nuclear deterrence to discourage the US military from any nuclear misadventure or blackmail. This explains the unexpected Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FO BS) test using a Hypersonic Glide Vehicle (HGV) conducted by China in August 20216 which General Mark Miller, chairman, Joint Staff, described as Very close to a Sputnik moment’.7 Demonstrated by the Soviets in the 60s, FOBS involved the launch of nuclear delivery from space. Making a modification to FOBS, the PLA’s Long March 3C rocket armed with HGV was lobbed at 150 km altitude in low earth orbit. Once it started orbiting, its re-entry into the atmosphere was planned at a point where the US’s North America Aerospace Defence Command’s radars that face north were evaded. Moreover, once inside the atmosphere, the HVG with a 2,000 km range, armed with a nuclear warhead took over with its three unique characteristics of speed higher than Mach 5, high manoeuvrability, and gliding at the higher reaches of the atmosphere to evade terrestrial radars for most of its flight towards the target. China overcame the technical challenge with the replacement of the re-entry vehicle with HGV capable of withstanding extremely high temperatures on re-entering the atmosphere from space. With this successful test, China had theoretically moved the traditional triad vectors to quad capability by adding space to the present land, air, and sea. China undertook modernization of its triad too. According to Pentagon’s 2021 annual report to the US Congress, ‘the People’s Republic of China is building hundreds of new Intercontinental Ballistic Missile

6Tylcr Rogoway, ‘China Tested A Fractional Orbital Bombardment System That Uses A Hypersonic Glide Vehicle: Report’, The W ar zo ne, 16 October 2021. ’Abraham Denmark and Caitlin T alm ad gc, 'Why China Wants More and Better Nukes’, Foreign A ffairs, 19 November 2021.

(ICBM ) silos and is on the cusp of a large silo-based ICBM force expansion comparable to those undertaken by other major powers’.8 This included its DF-41 and DF-31 ICBMs. Moreover, from its de-alert status—with separate launchers, missiles, and warheads—the PLA seems to be moving towards keeping a part of its nuclear arsenal on launch on warning (LG vV) nuclear posture. This refers to initiating a nuclear strike on detection of an incoming hostile missile. The early detection system comprising ground- and space-based components, control centre, and data processing system has been provided to China by Russia. This strategic early warning, command and control, and rapid reaction system is only available with three nations—the US, Russia, and China. China has also deployed lower yield nuclear weapons for use against campaign targets to reduce collateral damage. Its DF-26 ballistic missile that can conduct precision strikes is the likely vector for lower yield warheads. On the sea leg of the triad, The PRC fields newer, more capable, and longer ranged [9,000 km to 12,000 km] submarine launched ballistic missiles such as the JL -3, with which the PLA Navy will gain ability to target the continental US from littoral waters.’9 Alarmed by the rapid modernization of China’s nuclear capability, the US has allocated US$ 1 trillion for its own nuclear modernization in 2021-22. Against this backdrop, Menon’s contention that India’s use of nukes for warfighting could compensate for its conventional inferiority against China is an ignorant proposition. For one, shift to first-use policy will not diminish the need for conventional deterrence. For another, it could compel the PLA to use any or all three options: destroy Indian nukes’ kill chain with its cyber, electronic, directed energy weapons, or long-range precision hypersonic glide vehicles; use lower yield nukes in campaign as a warning signal; or resort to LOW nuclear posture. Moreover, nukes for warfighting would require an entirely different command and control architecture which will be expensive and dangerous. It will

“‘Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2021 p. 94. '"Military and Security Developments Involving the Peoples Republic of China 2021’,

lower the nuclear threshold and necessitate induction of TNWs with field commanders. For example, despite its full spectrum deterrence, according to a Pakistani officer who has worked at a senior level with the Strategic Plans Division (that is responsible for nukes), ‘The introduction of Nasr [b'miefie-d ballistic missile with 70 km range] is a purely defensive measure meant to bolster conventional deterrence by creating strong barriers that will deter assaulting forces at the tactical level. ...Should a nuclear warhead system be used in a tactical role, it will still have strategic impact.... This warrants the highest command and control and use of authorised National Command Authority/10 Simply put, India’s use of nukes against China would be suicidal. The same argument is applicable against Pakistan So why did the Vajpayee government conduct the Shakti tests? Cosying Up to the US Weeks before India’s Shakti tests, US energy secretary Bill Richardson, who was close to President Bill Clinton, came to India on a familiarization visit. The Vajpayee government had just been sworn in for the second time (the first stint had been a brief thirteen days) and the US wanted to know if it was serious about conducting the nuclear tests as mentioned in the B JP ’s election manifesto. When Richardson retired to Roosevelt House (the US ambassador’s residence in Delhi) after a day packed with meetings, the ambassador, Dick Celeste, told him that he had an unexpected visitor. Since the surprise visitor came with Vajpayee’s request, Richardson had no choice but to meet him. The visitor was Jaswant Singh. Singh, who held no government office, had come alone. Alluding to his closeness to the prime minister of India, he told the Americans that if the US president wanted to convey something directly to the Indian prime minister, he, Singh, w'ould be the back-channel person. What he implied was that Vajpayee preferred direct access to the IJS President-through Singh-—bypassing ,0K h v m ,

E ating Grass,

p. 396.

the lumbering Indian bureaucracy. The perplexed Americans understood the real purpose of Singh's late night call a few weeks later when India conducted the Shakti tests. Within hours of the tests, Vajpayee sent a letter to Clinton mentioning China as the reason for the tests and offered to work closely with the US.11 This was unusual. Any nation that undertakes nuclear tests to strengthen national security will consult its armed forces since they would be the ultimate users of the big weapon. India, instead, offered itself to the Americans as a counterweight to China. An incensed White House, which then had good ties with both Russia and China, leaked the missive to the New York Times.*12 Thereafter Clinton consulted Chinese president Jiang Zemin on how to get India and Pakistan (which, within days, followed with its own nuclear tests to maintain strategic parity with India) to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (C T B T ) and to reinvigorate the peace process in Kashmir. China, as the rotational head of the Permanent Five (the US, Russia, China, UK, and France) of the United Nations Security Council drafted and unanimously got Resolution 1172 passed on 6 June 1998. It called for India and Pakistan to immediately stop their nuclear weapons development programmes and join the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty as non-nuclear weapons states. Since the nuclear genie could not be put back into the bottle, this development should have spurred India to take the nuclear tests to their logical conclusion of nuclear weaponization. Instead, it collaborated with the Americans to curtail its own nuclearization under the grand pretext that Washington would help end its nuclear apartheid by getting it admitted as an equal member into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) for trade in high end technology. Once tempers cooled in Washington, it was concluded that to keep strategic weapons in check in South Asia, it was easy to arm-twist India "See Vijay Gokhale, The L o n g G a m e: H ow the Chinese N egotiate with In dia, Delhi: Penguin Random House, excerpt: ‘Pokhran Tests, Vajpayee-Jaswanr Singh Got the Better of China & Its Strategy to Isolate India’, 'The W ire, 1 July 2021. ^ ‘NUCLEAR ANXIETY; Indian’s Letter to Clinton On the Nuclear Testing’, N ew York Tim es, 13 May 1998.

since Pakistan's nuclear programme was linked to it. This led to the longest engagement of over two and a half years between Jaswant Singh and the US deputy secretary of state, Strobe Talbott, when they ‘met fourteen times at ten locations in seven countries on three continents'.13 From Talbott’s perspective, the purpose of the meetings was three-fold: to vet India to sign the CTBT since Washington knew that the May 1998 tests would " enough for credible nuclear deterrence. While India had announce*, a moratorium on nuclear tests, it could not be trusted for ever. The second purpose was to get India to define its minimum credible nuclear deterrence. Since India had announced its nuclear no-first-use policy, the assurance level for second-strike capability would require a flexible nuclear arsenal. The US, instead, wanted India to exercise strategic restraint. As Talbott said, ‘The essence of the concept of strategic restraint was essentially to take the [Indian] slogan of minimum credible deterrence and translate it into deployment and other practices that would be minimal as well as credible and would diminish the danger of an arms race in the region.’M The third purpose was to press India on a fissile material moratorium even before work had begun on the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FSM T ). Discerning observers knew that a global fissile material cap under the FSM T would remain a pipe dream for two reasons. One, China would not accept a formal moratorium on its fissile material until the US and Russia sharply reduced their nuclear weapons stockpile to China’s level, which was unlikely. And two, the US would prefer to keep open its option of more fissile material. Meanwhile, NSA Brajesh Mishra released a draft nuclear doctrine on 14 August 1999 which mentioned the need for a strategic triad (nukes on land, air, and sea vectors or launch platforms). Talbott took strong objection to Mishra’s nuclear doctrine. To this, Jaswant Singh

l3The dramatic sequence of events before and after India’s nuclear tests are from Strobe Talbott's book E n g a g in g In d ia : D iplom acy, D em o cra cy , a n d the B o m b, Mew Delhi: Penguin Random House India, 2007. M P ra v in

S a w h n e y,

‘ U n e q u a l M u s i c ’.

FO R CE,

O c to b e r 2004.

said, ‘The paper had no imprimatur from the government, it should not be taken too seriously. It is not really a doctrine—it was just a set of recommendations that Vajpayee would almost certainly not accept. The United States should not dignify it by overreacting. India could not possibly afford a strategic triad.3ls In India and across the world, the draft nuclear doctrine was a subject of hot debate. While Jaswant Singh informally told Talbott that India would sign the CTBT by May 1999, the matter ended when the Republicandominated Senate of the US rejected the CTBT. The incoming George W. Bush administration, picking up the threads from the outgoing administration, signed a special agreement called Next Steps in Strategic Partnership (NSSP) with the Vajpayee government in January 2004 for cooperation in three areas of civilian nuclear activities—civilian space programme, high-end technology trade, and discussion on ballistic missile defence. The Americans wanted to keep in check India’s ballistic missile programme, the likely vector for nuclear weapons, by suggesting that New Delhi focus on missile defence. Since the six years from 1998 to when the Vajpayee government lost the elections in 2004 were crucial for national security, the question worth considering is how did Pakistan and India fare on nuclear weapons? The moment news of India’s nuclear tests reached Pakistan, chief of army staff, General Jehangir Karamat, assumed charge. Scientists were ordered to prepare for nuclear tests and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was instructed to remain silent. So, when the US ambassador to Pakistan, Tom Sanders, could not get through to his usual contacts in the prime minister’s office, the call was made to General Headquarters (GHQ) to facilitate Talbott’s visit to Pakistan. Karamat immediately cleared the passage and the two—Karamat and Talbott—met to talk on issues known to both already. After hearing Talbott’s case for Pakistan to not conduct its tests in reply to India’s, Karamat told Talbott, ‘Pakistan would look out for its own defence. What was needed from the United States was a new, more solid relationship in which there was no arm-twisting or

'Talbott, E n ga g in g India, p. 123.

forcing us into corners/16 Karamat ‘directed an army study focused on three areas: (I ) nuclear diplomacy, (2) nuclear doctrine, and (3) nuclear command and control/17 With nukes no longer a secret and in control of GHQ, the army chief assumed a larger role, straddling national security and foreign policy. Karamat told Sharif that the army should have a formal role in governance. Moreover, with a hybrid civil-military government' in place, the army would have no need to depose elected governments. However, Sharif failed to understand the new reality, forcing Karamat to resign. Sharif appointed General Pervez Musharraf as the new army chief, who eventually deposed Sharif and became the ruler of Pakistan. The first thing Musharraf ordered was the creation of Strategic Plans Division (SPD) within the GHQ, which started functioning by December 1998. According to Feroz Khan, who had worked in the SPD, ‘its first goal was to establish an operational deterrence'.18 This meant defining minimum deterrence in terms of quality and quantity of nuclear weapons, crafting the development strategy, and ensuring integration of nuclear forces with conventional war plans for seamless transition from one war-fighting level to another. Musharraf tasked the SPD to create ‘an informed forum for (nuclear) debate and to demonstrate to the international community that Pakistan was becoming a responsible nuclear nation'.19 This was the National Command Authority (NCA) that came into being in February 2000 with the prime minister as its head. The NCA was used against India for nuclear signalling on 26 February 2019, the day after the IAF carried out the Balakot air attacks. Finally, ‘separate strategic forces commands were created within each of the services: the army strategic force command, the air force strategic command, and the naval strategic force command. The three services were to retain training, technical, and administrative control over their respective forces/20 The Pakistan Army had a proven l6Ibid., p. 62. 17Khan, E a tin g Grass, p. 323. l8Ibid., p. 330. !7Ibid.; p. 334. J0Ibid., p. 33.5.

ballistic missile nuclear warhead design since the early 90s. China had passed on the fourth fission weapon’s atmospheric test design of its Deng Feng-2A missile armed with nuclear warhead using uranium-235 as fissile material to Pakistan.21 Musharraf is also credited with acquiring tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs) design from China and for opening an alternate plutonium route to design compact composite cores containing a mix of both fissile materials—plutonium and enriched uranium - thereby reducing the overall weight of a nuclear missile warhead. Pakistan’s ballistic missiles, like nuclear cores, both under GHQ’s command and control are the only vector for nuke delivery. The PAF cannot have nuclear role for two reasons: one, GHQ is not likely to share its power source with another service. And two, a reliable and assured delivery will need about sixty aircraft for a nuclear mission, which, given its inventory, it would not be able to set aside. For instance, two aircraft armed with nuclear weapons would require three to four electronic countermeasure escort aircraft, the same number of aircraft in air defence role, and a few aircraft to suppress the enemy’s ground-based air defence, making a total of about twenty aircraft for a single mission. And the mission will also need two or three decoy missions. With a conventional war going on, the PAF (as well as the IAF) would find it difficult to take on the nuclear vector role. Unlike India, which announced a ‘No First Use’ policy, Pakistan stayed silent on its nuclear declaratory policy. This ambiguity assumed that it could use nukes early in war. This impression was strengthened when Pakistan’s NCA formally announced Full Spectrum Deterrence (FSD) in September 201322 as its answer to India’s Cold Start doctrine. Given Pakistan’s elongated geography and valuable assets close to the border with India, it was indicated that a sudden Indian conventional attack would be met with TNWs response. Ibis was FSD: the capability to employ nukes from tactical to strategic levels. The vector for the

2lPravin Sawhricy, ‘Difficult Choices’, F O R C E , September 2006, p. 33. “ Beenish Altai", ‘Pakistan’s policy of full spectrum deterrence’, Foreign Policy N ew s, 15 December 2017.

tactical nukes was its 60-km-range Nasr missile. In military terms, TNWs would provide Pakistan with three advantages: offer a nuclear option below the strategic level; help to defeat India's sudden conventional attacks; and provide flexible response over the whole range of possible military threats. However, the lessons of the US’s second offset strategy would not have GcOi on the Pakistan Army lb sui i. up, between 1998 and 2004, Pakistan accrued the following advantages: • With nukes under his command, the chief of army staff gained enormous global stature. Immediately after the tests, Karamat approved the [nuclear] policy review7 and sent it to the foreign office in order to coordinate a solid negotiating position [with the Americans]’.23 GHQhad taken charge of Pakistan’s foreign policy. • Pakistan weaponized nuclear devices validated by tests (based on proven ballistic missile nukes design it got from China). • The Pakistan Army established operational deterrence which boosted nuclear weapons credibility. • Opened twin routes for fissile material production to make compact warheads with good weight to yield ratio for ballistic missiles. • Developed and tested numerous ballistic missiles. • Acquired TNWs from China, which eventually led to declaration of full spectrum deterrence, and • Laid the foundation for increased interoperability with the PLA. An early sign of the interoperability was Chinese commitment to the Gwadar port. ‘In 2000, Musharraf asked the Chinese to consider funding the development of a deep-water port at Gwadar. A few weeks after 9/11, as it happened, the Chinese agreed.24 The China Pakistan Economic Corridor was inspired by the Chinese involvement in Gwadar. All this would not have been possible had India not conducted its 1998 nuclear tests. 23Khan, E a tm g Grass, p. 291. 24Kaplan, Aiansoon, p. 70.

In India, doubts were cast on the outcome of the series of five Shakti tests. This was not unexpected since the tests were done under great secrecy and haste with the two stakeholders—DRDO and Department of Atomic Energy (D A E )—squabbling over the outcome. Since American satellites always kept watch over Indian nuclear activities in the Pokhran desert (the only location where nuclear tests could be done), the cDRDO [led by Dr A. P. j. Abdul Raiam] was of the view that the miniaturized standard fission weapon design based on the 1974 Peaceful Nuclear Explosion (PN E) test, which had been developed, integrated and dummy-tested with missiles and aircraft, should be qualified using the two available shafts (dug for PN E).>2SThe DAE, on the other hand, wanted to conduct a range of tests including for thermonuclear capability by using the two available shafts and some abandoned wells in the area. With the political leadership having washed its hands off such an important decision, Kalam made Anil Kakodkar, who was leading the DAE team, give a written acknowledgement that the tests would be safe. Nowhere in the world has something as sensitive and demanding as nuclear tests been done in such haste where the mission seemingly was not the substance but optics of the momentous event. No sooner had the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Dr R. Chidambaram, announced that the design and development of various kinds of nuclear explosives, namely, fission, boosted fission thermonuclear, and low yield, based on twenty years of research and development had been validated, many Indian nuclear scientists, especially Dr P. K. Iyengar, Dr A. Nagaratnam, and Dr T. Jayaraman contested the claims.*26 According to them: • The thermonuclear device was tested with a boosted fission device as its primary stage. However, there had been no independent test of either a thermonuclear device or a boosted fission device. • From a purely scientific view, the goal of submarine-based

“ Anil Kakodkar and Suresh Gangotra, F ire a n d F ury, New Delhi: Rupa Publications, 2019, p. 79. 26Pravin Sawhney, The D efence M a k eo v er: 10 M yths That S h a p e In d ia ’s Im age, New Delhi: SAGE Publications, 2002, p. 387.

deterrent could not be achieved without further testing. A submarine-based missile requires careful minimizing of weight without loss of yield ratio into smaller and smaller spaces. Weight

*

to yield ratio is the main consideration for a submarine-based missile. Ic takes many steps to graduate from a nuclear den ca explosion to a deliverable weapon. These include getting the correct yield to weight ratio, reliability, fusing and arming, and safety features. For example, around 4 per cent of the tests conducted by the US have been safety related.

The consensus amongst technocrats was that only the fission test (of 15 kiloton yield) was a weapon, the others were tests of nuclear devices. If these devices were to be made into weapons without further testing, they would have low reliability, unacceptable to a professional armed force that had the ultimate responsibility to employ the nuclear weapons. However, no serving or retired Indian military officer ever questioned the reliability factor of the ballistic missiles’ nuclear warhead, which, unlike in the case of Pakistan, are not based on proven design. According to the US office of Technology Assessment, ‘many nations can design and construct nuclear explosives which could be confidently expected to, even without nuclear testing, have predictable yields of up to 1 0 -2 0 k t/27 Since free fall bombs and ballistic missile warheads have different requirements, missile warheads do need proven design. This fact, however, did not discourage the DRDO from undertaking sophisticated missile projects. For example, in the middle of the 2020 Ladakh crisis with China, there were reports that the DRDO had ‘planned to test new technologies, the multiple targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRVs), which allows long range missiles to deliver multiple warheads programmed to destroy different targets hundreds of kilometres away from each other and alternatively launch more than one warhead assigned to one target.’2* Few questioned the DRDO on the MIRVs reliability. 27Ibid. 2SRout, ‘India plans deployment of nuclear-capable Agrii-V rhis year’.

Despite these grim realities, no one in India bothered to ask how a single series of nuclear tests done with hasty preparation could provide assurance against Chinas nuclear weapons capability. China was a nuclear weapon power under the NPT and has conducted a total of forty-seven nuclear tests of all types. Its first fission test was carried out in 1964, the first fusion test (for the hvdtogen bomb) in 1967, and the last in September 1996, days before it s m e CTBT. The Shakti tests were better avoided., diey did not generate the deterrence that they had set out to accomplish. After the tests, the PLA’s intrusions and transgressions on the LAC increased. Moreover, disregarding India’s nuclear weapons deterrence, China occupied a large chunk of Indian territory in April-May 2020 in Ladakh. There are questions regarding the credibility of India’s second-strike capability, which few within the country appear willing to address. Since the Shakti tests were not in national interest, the only winner was the Vajpayee government that demonstrated its political will to go ahead with the nuclear tests, and Pakistan, where it bolstered GHQ status and brought Pakistan and China closer. The loser was the nation.

BOOK IV TH E LAST WAR

I n d i a ’s A n a l ;

jw d o w n

w ith

jhjna

he tragedy of military planning in India is that those who are supposed to do it don’t have a sense of history or the future. If they had a sense of history, they would know that even at its weakest, China has always dug in its heels and never compromised on its core interests even when the adversary was the victor of World War l i ­ the US. If they had a sense of the future, they would have seen how China is preparing to challenge the US, both strategically and militarily. If they remembered the old Indian adage ‘jiski lathi uski bhains’ (the one who wields the stick controls the cattle), they would realize that the nation that has military power will dictate both the course and the outcom e of a conflict. And if they knew anything about emerging military technologies, they would understand that they continue to prepare for the wars of the past. W hat is inexcusable is the deliberate obfuscation. Indian military planners have turned the whole process of war appreciation on its head. W ar appreciation is a logical process of reasoning by which a commander considers the enemy’s and one’s own strengths that affect a military situation. He then arrives at a decision on the course of action that must be taken to accomplish the mission. Understanding the enemy’s strengths, which include its political will, political thought, strategic culture and, importantly, its war concepts based on technologies that it has (war art and war science) are the important tasks of all commanders. Given this process, it is normal to flag certain issues as the definitive ones around which a war is likely to unfold. Indian planners work backwards. They first arrive at the outcome. In the case of China (as also Pakistan), they start with the premise that the Indian military will best the Chinese military in a future armed conflict. Thereafter, they built the process of how this miracle will be

achieved. This is how military analysts have spun concepts like limited war, border war, the weaknesses of the PLAAF, unreliability of Chinese missiles, absence of combat experience, and so on. One such brainstorming session was chaired in December 2020 by the hero of the Balakot air strikes against Pakistan, former CAS Air Chief Marshal B. S. Phanoa ‘The virtual venue (due to the Covid-!S pandemic) was the Military Literature Festival,1 which used to be held in Chandigarh. On the panel were a few other retired IAF officers. The discussion was anchored around three assumptions. • The war between India and China will be intense but limited in time and space. It will be fought in high altitude areas (12,000 to 15,000 feet). • It will be fought in the physical domains of air and land only. • It will take place as force-on-force engagements, meaning the IAF will engage in air battles with the PLAAF, and the army would likewise combat with the PLAs CABs. With these three assumptions, the discussion focused on bean­ counting of critical assets which would be employed in force-on-force engagements. Dhanoa said that the PLAAF has about 1,500 fighter aircraft of which about 800 were fourth generation and a few were fifth generation like J-20 and J-31. The PLAAF has Russian Su-30 aircraft and S-400 air and missile defence units. Its H-6K bombers are armed with six missiles of 1,500 km range. It has converted its Y-20 cargo aircraft into refuellers. It owns large numbers of UAVs including stealth ones. It has, after Russia, the largest force of advanced surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) in the world. It has developed electronic warfare capabilities to match the US military. Unlike Western (and Indian) militaries whose main offensive is centred around their respective air forces, the PLA’s main offensive will be centred around its Rocket Force with ranges that cover all Indian military targets opposite them and in the hinterland. These missiles are supported by over-the -horizon targeting by Yaogan satellites for round-the-clock surveillance and Position, Navigation, and

'The Tribune, ‘LIVE: Military Literature Festival 2.020’, YouTube.

Timing (P N T ) for accuracy by BeiDou satellites. While the PLAAF combat assets looked impressive on paper, argued the panel, using them in high altitude would be a different ball game. There will be significant deleterious effects of terrain (15,000 feet above mean sea level) on aircraft operations, and weapons’ ballistics which will impact target accuracy. Maintenance of equipment will be another problem. The PLAAF will face serious line of sight problems in the Assam valley leading to slow reaction time when the IAF fighters cross the Himalayan range. Moreover, PLAAF fighter bases do not support one another as they are 400 km to 450 km apart. Indian fighter bases, at lower altitudes, have diversionary bases within 100 km to 150 km. Thus, to cater for PLAAF bases getting bombed, their aircraft would need to carry more fuel to land at the nearest base. Carrying just enough fuel would compel PLAAF aircraft to reduce both loiter time (over targets) and radius of attack. Additionally, PLAAF fighter bases are far behind the frontline. They have only five main (dual purpose) airfields in Tibet (Kongka Dzong, Hoping, Pangta, Linzhi, and Gargunsa), and two in Xinjiang (Hotan and Kashgar). While they are building two new fighter bases in Tibet, their overall inadequacy of fighter bases will not be able to support surge operations. Even their airfields have limitations: their fighter aircraft were parked in the open; there were few blast pens and underground concrete shelters. Finally, PLAAF pilots do not have much combat experience. The panel argued that Chinese missiles with finite numbers faced two challenges: a certain (sizeable) number would need to be deployed against Taiwan, and they may not have the accuracy to take out the IA F’s numerous dispersed bases which stretch from Thoise to Leh (in the north) and Chabua to Mohanbari (in the east). While the PLA’s defensive forces guarding strong points along with ammunition, rations, and fuel were dispersed and well dug in, its concentrated offensive forces in the open were lucrative targets. These would come under Indian fire assaults from the ground and air, especially from the air as the IAF is capable of inflicting high attrition. China with its current global image of a big power would be conscious of the fact

that too many casualties on its side will dent that image. Hence, the inability to take large casualties will deter and dissuade China from adventurism in Ladakh. According to the panel, the two armies would fight a war of attrition, and since the Indian Army has more expertise and experience in highaltitude combat, there wouki b ground friction with the PLA, despite its touted tec.hnoiogi*v , ' mg able to move no more than i or 2 km. This is when the IAF, with enough combat experience of high-altitude battlefield, would come in and tilt the game in India’s favour in a short, limited war. Besides, much has been said about the PLA’s capabilities in cyber disruptions, rocket forces, its integrated air and defence systems, and its swarm drones. Most of these are technology demonstrators that are meant for posturing and are not outcome based. It is not even clear how swarm drones would perform at altitudes of 15,000 feet. While the PLAAF has certain capabilities like aerial combat in networked environment, its stand-off precision weapons, attack helicopters, and special forces are not something that the IAF needs to worry about. The IAF should dispel the bogey of the PLA A F’s network centric warfare. While the IAF is moving in that direction by getting communication data links soon, it could adopt innovative tactics and techniques. It could consider a combination of central and diffused networks with certain combat elements being unnetworked to fight in a highly disruptive environment. This would be a game changer. The IAF would have enough time to gauge the PLA A F’s intentions since a war would begin with sabre rattling leading to more border transgressions by the PLA. The IAF should consider going on the offensive first. A first strike on the PLA concentrated in designated areas for battles would bring about heavy attrition of its manpower resulting in an operational stalemate in a limited conflict. This too would be a game changer since the PLA, that is expected to go on the offensive, would be taken by surprise. The IAF needs two things to tip the balance. One, better outer space capabilities to maintain a round-the-clock ‘stare’ on the enemy. At present, the PLAAF has capabilities for persistent ‘stare’, but the

IAF depends on UAVs and fixed winged aircraft for real-time situational awareness. Until the space asymmetry is removed, India could likely depend on friendly nations (such as the US) to provide real-time target detection capabilities. And two, there is need for improved EW, desired fighter aircraft hwe v:ory, multilayered air defence comprising S-400, medium at. a j ?-range surface-to-air missiles, close-in-weaponsystems, ard loitering munitions to take out PLAAF drones. The first forty-eight hours of war would be crucial to determine the outcome. The side that adapts itself to limited conflict in high altitude battlefield would win. Agreeing with the thinking of the IAF, CDS General Bipin Rawat said on 22 May 2021 that, ‘We [IAF] have the upper hand against China due to the altitude at which our air force operates.’2 There is need to question the assumptions made by the panel. Whether the war would be limited or an all-out occupational war would be determined by the war objectives of the stronger side. The second assumption shows a lack of understanding of the PLA war. The PLA’s combat operations in the Himalayas will not be restricted by physical boundaries but would occur simultaneously across outer space, near space, air, land, cyberspace, and electromagnetic domains: this is hyperwar. The third assumption is equally flawed. The IAF and the Indian Army would fight at tactical level with force-on-force engagements which in its wisdom it has elevated to operational war level. The PLA will fight at the operational level, where air would be one of the war domains. The two would fight entirely different wars: the IAF fighting in the air domain versus the PLA fighting a combination of information, informatized, and intelligentized wars. Meanwhile, by June 2021, reports emerged showing satellite imagery that the PLAAF had, at a furtive pace, built new air bases and hardened shelters for fixed wing aircraft, bombers, helicopters, and UAVs both in Xinjiang and TAR. Additional storage facilities with rail and road infrastructure had come up, and more air defence assets were brought into the theatre. As in the South China Sea, the PLA had built an A2/

JShakil, ‘Border Issues Can’t Be Resolved Overnight’.

AD bubble along the entire disputed border covering Xinjiang, Sikkim, and TAR.3 Furthermore, reports said that an ace PLAAF pilot had been defeated by AI in a simulated dogfight. The AI quickly learned fighting skills from the human pilot, improving with each encounter, finally leading to the human pilot conceding defeat. According to PLA commander Du jianfeng, "The AI has shown adept flight control skills and errorless tactical decisions/4 This was in sync with reports that the PLAs j-20 stealth aircraft would be equipped with AI since ‘artificial intelligence is a key field to help pilots process vast information and make decisions in complicated battlefield environmentsD The PLA will use AI in all war domains including air where the PLAAF will combat at stand-off ranges with the Indian military. The PLAAF dogfights or aerial battles at close ranges will be needed with peer adversary where both sides would learn to operate under degraded communications, out-of-line command and control, and reduced situation awareness since neither would exercise control over EMS. The P L A /P L A A F ’s War The PLA will move suddenly across the war and combat zones, much like the 2020 Ladakh stand-off, and hit India with typhonic ferocity. Working at the speed of light, the PLAs cyberwar will grind civilian life to a halt; delay, disrupt, and disorient the IAF and Indian Army’s mobilization; activate malware viruses and worms in military supply chains and weapons’ kill chains; and snap communications of various headquarters, leading to limited communication between field formations and political and military authorities in New Delhi. Depending on the criticality and importance of the targets, the PLA will have collected enough data

3Tyler Rogoway, ‘Tracking China’s Sudden Airpower Expansion On Its Western Border’, V ie D rive, 16 June 2021. 4David Hambling, ‘Chinese AI Learns To Beat Top Fighter Pilot In Simulated Combat’, Forb es , 18 June 2021.

sLiu Xuanzun, ‘Next gen fighter iet forthcoming in great power competition: J-20 chief designer’. Global Times, 27 July 2020.

for cyber war by cyber reconnaissance and battle damage assessments over time. In the combat zone, the PLA will fight a multi-dimensional and multi-domain campaign where it will control the speed and tempo of war (see ‘Introduction) with round-the-clock situation awareness. The PLA will use autonomous robots, LAWs, and loM Tmission sets without worrying about adversarial learning. Since the PLA will be conversant with all aspects of the enemy’s war, it will have no need to write algorithms on the move for autonomous systems. The IoMT mission sets for various mission and roles will be prepared, war-gamed, exercised, and kept ready for combat. While the PLA humans will be ‘in the loop’ in command role, they would be ‘on the ioop’ or ‘out of the loop’ in integrated air and defence systems which would be part of its A2/AD bubble. What US general George Patton said during World War II—‘nobody ever defended any thing successfully, there is only attack and attack and attack some more’—will be true of the PLA war. The PLA war against the IAF will be a big surprise for India. There will be no combat between the PLA A F’s J-20 and J-31 aircraft and the IA F’s Rafale and Su-30. Since there will be no force-on-force engagements or tactical fights, the IAF, operating from lower heights, will have no operational advantage over the PLAAF. The PLA’s winning strategy will be to control information in and out of the battlespace by domination of the EMS. The PLA will integrate cyber, EW, and space capabilities (Strategic Support Force) with firepower strikes to blind the enemy, and physically damage and destroy its combat effectiveness. The PLA’s space war will destroy Indian intelligence, reconnaissance, surveillance, communications, and navigation satellites by groundbased or Direct Ascent Anti Satellite (DA-ASAT) missiles, co-orbital ASAT, satellite jammers, and offensive cyber capabilities. This will be done by SSF’s two deputy theatre command-level departments: the space systems department responsible for military space operations, and the information operations which comprise cyberwar, electronic war, and political war. Since 2019, the SSF has been participating in joint exercises and training throughout China, and with the WTC against India.

In massive pre-emptive attacks with remarkable speed, lethality, and intense salvos, the Rocket Force with advanced and accurate missiles would wipe out the majority of IAF combat aircraft on the ground before they get airborne. The RF inventory comprises surface-to-surface missiles, air-launched b ‘ hstic missiles, subsonic and supersonic missiles, hypersonic . uis :••••• -.i s, hypersonic glide vehicles,- submarine launched ballistic missiles, fractional orbital bombardment system, LAWs or killer robots, and swarm of missiles. The PLA will build its Rocket Force missiles surge needed for India over time. Just as China took three years to prepare for the 1962 war even as its leaders were hoping for peace with India, preparations for large numbers of indigenous missiles will start early. Based on Al-enabied mathematical modelling of identified targets, and with automated production capability, the PLA will calculate the surge requirement for long range rockets, and smart and precision munitions including missiles, and build them. On the Indian side, the IAF inventory will be finite with little possibility of making up attrition rates. The RF focus will be bases with Rafale and Su-30 MKi aircraft. The missiles will crater runways, blow up fuel storage tanks, ammunition underground bunkers, hardened shelters, forward maintenance areas, command and control centres, and forward logistics centres of the IA F’s main and diversionary bases. This would ensure that even if airstrips get repaired, aircraft, in absence of payloads and fuel, will not be able to get airborne. Moreover, units of S-400 air and missile defence system, BrahMos cruise missile, Smerch and Pinaka multi-barrel rocket launchers, radar sites, long-range artillery, and communication nodes would be destroyed. The PLA could use swarms of autonomous long-range missiles, which on reaching its target, say a S-400 unit or regiment, would on its own decide how best to destroy the air defence system in the least amount of time. Or destroy its kill chain by cyberattacks on indigenous Akash surface-to-air missiles which would be integrated with S-400 for broad air defence cover. Moreover, all field headquarters of the IAF and the Indian Army will be flattened by missile rain. There will be no carpet bombing, but accurate targeting with least collateral damages. With an area of 84,000

sq km, Arunachal Pradesh has a population of just 16 lakh concentrated in urban areas. Priority would be accorded to communication towers, power centres, bridges, tunnels, radar sites, air defence systems, and command and cor- ' i hubs. Since most Indian targets will be static, well-mapped, and it will not be difficult for the FLA to hit them with precision. Political (information) warfare will be used to keep the enemy’s cognitive capabilities (decision-making) under pressure. Considering that Rocket Force’s capabilities and employment is well documented and articulated by US and Chinese analysts, it is surprising that the IAF panel at the Military Literature Festival downplayed the fact that missiles will be the first line of attack in the PLA war. In September 2010, a three-star officer at the Eastern Air Command said as much. In an interaction with me at his headquarters in Shillong, he admitted that the IAF had no answer for the PLA’s surface-to-surface missiles.6 A decade later, IAF officials decided to downplay the monstrous missile threat in the absence of a corresponding response. This is what the US military does not do. The US INDOPACOM chief, Admiral Philip Davidson, said in March 2021 that the US will deploy its IndoPacific military presence far and wide rather than keep it concentrated at a handful of bases as it seeks to protect itself from China’s advanced missile capabilities.7 And yet, the former IAF chief Dhanoa thought that closeness of IAF main and diversionary bases would be an asset instead of being lucrative targets for the Chinese missiles. The IAF combat aircraft in the Indian hinterland (allocated for the Pakistani front) which manage to get airborne against China will find it impossible to penetrate the complex and compact A2/AD weapons bubble which will cover the spectrum from space to atmosphere with few gaps. In certain areas, such as some categories of hypersonic, ballistic, and cruise missiles, air defence, electronic warfare, and cyber capabilities, the PLA ranks among the world’s leaders. With ground

hThe Tribune, ‘LTVE: Military Literature Festival 2020’. ?Ryo Nakamura, ‘In Indo-Pacific, US eyes uagi!e” posture to dodge Chinese missiles’, N ik k ei A sia , 3 March 2021.

communications jammed, Indian satellites disabled, destroyed, or thrown out of orbit, these combat aircraft will be blinded. The Indian armed drones and swarm drones that are touted to be game changers by the Indian military will meet a similar fate. The zone of operations of the A2/AD will be expanded by the PLA pushing IAF aircraft far away from the Chinese airspace. y Incidentally, China’s ‘robust ana redundant Integrated Air Defence System over land area and within 300 nautical miles (556 km) of its coast (within the first island chain in South China Sea) relies on an extensive early warning radar network, fighter aircraft, and a variety of surface to air missiles.’8 As mentioned earlier, the PLA had created a similar A2/ AD firewall or counter invention force against India. Asked if it would be possible for Predator, the US drone, to carry out target killing inside Chinese airspace, similar to the killing of Irani general Qasem Soleimani at Baghdad airport in January 2020, Chinese analyst Wei Dongxu said: ‘China has a complete air defence system, making it capable of defending surprise and targeted strikes from drones. Since China operates detection and early warning radars from multiple angles and levels, drones will face China’s aircraft interception network consisting of long, intermediate, and short range, as well as high, mid, and low altitude anti-aircraft missiles and guns. Soft kill is also an available option, which means China can jam enemy drones.’9 Even as the LAF’s combat capabilities will get degraded by PLA missiles and artificial intelligence-enabled invisible war, PLAAF would simultaneously use its inventory of networked bombers and fifth generation aircraft. PLA A F’s medium-range H-6K bombers, each of which can carry six precision guided CJ-20 air-launched land attack cruise missile with a 1,500 km range, would be ideal for hitting major infrastructure, military installations, and high value targets. The H-6K bombers can also fire ALBM.

^Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2020’, p. 75. °Lh.t Xuanzun, ‘China capable of defending against deadly drone attacks: experts’, G lobal T im es , 5 January 2020.

Moreover, work is continuing on the PLA A F’s Xian H-20 subsonic stealth bomber and is expected to get operationalized soon. It is advertised to carry 20 tons payload across 12,000 km without refuelling. The final trials of the H-20 bomber before induction were held in Hotan, close to east Ladakh in June 2021.10*The PL A considers PLAAF a strategic force owing to its varied versions cf ev. Addressing the media on 12 January 2022, army chief General Naravane said ‘additional bridges had been built along the Brahmaputra River’.11 It is known that given the paucity of deployment spaces along the LAC, most of the army’s war withal is kept on the southern side of the Brahmaputra. It will be no big deal for the PLA to blow up all bridges on the Brahmaputra with its accurate missiles at the beginning of the war to deny theatre capabilities to the Indian Army on the front line. Or PLAAF bombers operating out of Yunnan province could interdict the Brahmaputra valley and blow up all bridges on the Brahmaputra. Operating from Kashgar and Hotan in Xinjiang, the bombers could interdict the Indus valley as well. Even as the PLA achieves complete dominance over airspace with its quartet of artificial intelligence enabled invisible war (Strategic Support Force), Rocket Force, networked bombers/fighters, and integrated air defence or the A2/AD system within forty-eight hours, it will unleash the remaining PLAAF inventory on the Indian Army which would have suffered the PLA’s missile onslaught and would have been partially if not totally blinded. Without air cover, the Indian Army cannot escape lethal attacks from a combination of PLA A F’s fifth generation fighter jets, bombers, attack helicopters, rockets, missiles, drones and swarm drones, and ground troops within or outside the IoMT architecture. Before considering how the land war between the Indian Army and PLA will pan out, we need to ask why the LAF did not prioritize its acquisitions to meet the PLA’s quartet challenge.

‘“‘China Tests Its Xian H-20 Strategic Stealth Bombers Opposite Ladakh; Jets Undetectable By Any Radar’, S a m b a d E n g lish , 13 June 2021. “The army chief held a virtual press conference to mark Army Day on 15 January 2022.

The Indian Air F orce In a conversation with me in his office in August 2010, a three-star officer said: ‘The military preparedness of any nation is directly proportionate to us i.emy. Had India seen China as its primary threat all these years, ns .military muscle would have been robust enough to cater not only to the Pakistan threat, but a two-front challenge. Considering that India is seen as a major emerging power a i A s h , a push to India by China would settle matters and announce China as the sole power in Asia. The Chinese have already created good infrastructure to support military operations [in TAR]. What stops them from showcasing their technology at a time of their choosing?'12 The officer, who retired as vice chief of air staff, was right. What he did not discuss was the likely duration of the decisive PLA war: seven to ten days. I had never heard such a candid admission of India's strategic mistake of focusing on Pakistan, and not China, as the primary military threat. Of the eight of twelve chiefs of air staff that I met since 1991, not one deviated from New Delhi’s position that Pakistan was the threat, and China, a long-term challenge. Because they did not identify the right military threat and convey it to the government we now have a dilemma: should the IAF remain a tactical force to fight the PAF? Or should it consider itself a strategic force after it acquired the heavy, all-weather, long-range Russian Su-30 MKI aircraft in 2002? This question exercised some senior officers but did not bother most of them. However, the entire IAF brass, including the then chief of air staff Air Chief Marshal R. K. S. Bhadauria, was up in arms when the CDS General Bipin Rawat, in a television interaction on 2 July 2021, called the air force a ‘supporting arm of the military (army and navy), just as artillery and engineers are supporting arms of the army.’13 While the IAF dislikes being called a tactical force, the reality is that they have given low priority to the capabilities needed to qualify as a strategic air power. The IAF had acquired three squadrons of Canberra bombers from Britain in 1957, which gave a good account of themselves when they ‘‘Snwhney and Wahab, D ra g o n On O u r D o o rstep , p. 97 ‘•’India Today, 'CDS General Bipin Rawat On hue*7,rated Theatre Command System’.

sent up the massive oil refinery in Karachi in flames in the 1971 war. Once they were retired from service in May 2007, air headquarters did not consider them priority until Ladakh happened and a few retired air marshals started writing about the need for bombers. It may surprise many air warriors that whenever I met the Chinese defence advisor in the Delhi embassy in 2 0 13--14 he only had two questions- why is the IAF not getting bombers? And why is there tittle joint training between the IAF and Indian Army? I couldn’t tell him that the Indian military is a reactive not a proactive force. Senior IAF officers were content focusing attention on Pakistan. Given its elongated geography, lack of depth, and PAF’s tasking in support of its army, the IAF brass concluded that bombers and operational data links (ODLs) for network centricity were not a priority. Numbers of combat squadrons for fighting air battles; main and diversionary air bases; a robust air defence system (against Pakistan); and pilot strength and training were. The IA F’s thinking altered (notionally) with a new chief of air staff, Air Chief Marshal S. P. Tyagi, in 2006. He told me that he wanted all air warriors to internalize the idea that the IA F’s role was strategic reach. It was never clarified what this meant, but it sounded good and helped Tyagi revive the long articulated IAF desire of transforming itself into an aerospace power. Tyagi did three things: he said strategic reach would be the identity mantra of the service; he created a new appointment called assistant chief of staff (space operations) at air headquarters to coordinate operations with ISRO responsible for civilian space satellites; and he sought ODLs from Israel and France. Tyagi’s ODL gambit did not work. Since ODLs are best developed within country for fear that a foreign company might insert backdoors and the data will get compromised, the DRDO stepped forward to make them. Nothing more was heard on this from the DRDO, and even the IAF leadership did not give it much push until 2018, when, after having inked the deal with France for thirty-six Rafale aircraft in September 2016, the IAF reached out to the Israeli company, Rafael, to buy 473 software defined radios (SDRs) for a pilot project.14

uToId to me by a vice air marshal posted at Air HQ, New Delhi.

L et’s place ODLs and SDRs into operational perspective. According to the IAF, there are three networks—terrestrial, airborne, and space based—that need integration in real time to provide network centric capability, which in an operationally dynamic battletifLi would assist in four things: situational awareness; command ,=u! control; mission planning; and training and debriefing. Starting in 2010, the terrestrial network called Air Force Network (A FN ET) comprising wired fibreoptic cables and wireless line of sight was laid linking all Integrated Air Command and Control System (IACCS) nodes meant for air defence, as well as Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) and Airborne Early Warning and Control system (AEW &C), which are mobile long-range radar surveillance and control system for air defence. Once done, the airborne AWACS/AEW&C could send data and video to the ground controller sitting in IACCS centres to get a real-time air defence picture. The airborne networks, called ODLs, are meant to connect fighter aircraft, UAVs, ISR systems (including space-based) and surface-based weapon systems with communication and control centres, LAACS, and AWACS/ AEW&C for smooth data transfer and communications. ODLs are like wireless highways on which data moves in the form of radio frequency waveform hosted by SDR devices. The ODLs enable ground to air, air to air, and satellite communication (SATCOM) link. Even within air to air, there could be two ODLs; for example, Rafale and Su-30 MKI on different ODLs would need a gateway node to facilitate communication between them. The waveforms can either be in narrow frequency band to support voice and low data transmission. Or in a wide frequency band to support voice, high data rates, and video communications. Without ODLs which ride on SDRs, while airborne aircraft like Su-30 MKI or Rafale can get data on situation awareness from ground controller which in turn gets feeds from AWACS/AEW&C, the two cannot communicate directly with one another, or with the AWACS/ AEW&C, or even the satellites. Since combat fighters need to fight deep inside enemy territory, it is necessary that all IAF assets on the ground, in the air, and space be able to communicate with one another in real

time. The third space-based network meant for future use is yet to be conceptualized; once this is done, the IAF would qualify as an aerospace power. ODLs and SDRs are critical for airborne operations. The IAF, at the time of writing, did not have either. By way of comparison, the PAF has had the indigenous Operation ' ita Link 17 for a decade and by now should have been uoy.rad- *. ; i combined operations with the P l -AAF. However, this lack of ODLs and SDRs did not bother the IAF much. It relentlessly focused on acquiring more combat aircraft, rather than connectivity for real-time updates in war. Or robust cyber and electronic warfare capabilities to meet the A2/AD challenge. A reason for this perhaps was that few believed that conventional war was a possibility with Pakistan, let alone China. Most felt that visible assets were instruments of power, and roles short of war conferred prestige; the IAF sought both. For example, the IAF made the case for space command in the late 1990s, this became strident once China conducted its anti-satellite test in 2007. ACM Arup Raha, former air chief, argued that, ‘Tri-service space command, led preferably by an air warrior commander, will assist in the air defence tasks, especially against ballistic missiles through the integration of air and space surveillance assets and networks, as also provide the space-based services to the army, navy, and air force/15 Raha also argued for ‘induction of a bomber squadron for the Strategic Command (tri-service organization for administration of nuclear weapons)’.16 The IA F ’s fixation on optics was evident with its largest exercise in recent times called Gagan Shakti in April 2018 under CAS Air Chief Marshal Dhanoa. This was meant to fight a two-front war in a highly congested electronic warfare environment. According to the official press release, the exercise was ‘conducted in two phases, the aim of the exercise was real-time coordination, deployment, and employment of air power in a short and intense battle scenario.... All operations were

l5Lt Geo A. K. Singh and Lt Gen B. S. Nagal (ed.), M ilita ry S tra te g y New Delhi: Knowledge World Publishers, 2019, p. 120. 16lbid., p. 113.

2 1 “ C en tu ry ,

f o r In d ia f o r th e

conducted in a Network Enabled scenario with very high reliability of communications, networked air defence systems employing op enabling software. During the exercise, more than 11000 sorties were flown, which include approximately 9000 sorties by fighter aircraft.’17 Nev .;r mind that without ODLs and SDRs, the 1AF did not have the network centricify it claimed. And the exercise was done in a friendly environment without cyber and EW interferences. Even the lA F’s sorties claim should be taken with a pinch of salt. For one, the rate of sorties matters little against the PLA if the LAF is unable to achieve even localized air superiority. For another, Pakistan has a far better pilot to aircraft ratio and real combat training, which was seen the day after the February 2019 Balakot strikes by the LAF. Against the PAF’s pilot versus aircraft ratio of 2:5, the LAF has a mere 1:5, which means the PAP with fewer aircraft will be able to generate more sorties per day—which matters in the initial period of war. The LAF has no firing range in high altitude to train pilots in large calibre bombs; simulation is not the same as actual firing.18 The exercise as advertised did not depict a simultaneous two-front war scenario but was done in phases for a single front. And, it was a single service exercise, not one done in coordination with the army or the navy. Vice Admiral Bimal Verma, commander in chief, Andaman and Nicobar Command, based in Port Blair, told me on 8 May 2018 that ‘[t]he role of exercise Gagan Shakti was limited to turn round [refuelling] of Su-30 MKI and Jaguar at Car Nicobar air base here/19 Importantly, the exercise was not done in a hostile electronic and cyber environment which would be the case against the Pakistan and Chinese militaries. ’’Ministry of Defence, Government of India, ‘Conclusion of Exercise Gaganshakti-2018’, Press Information Bureau, 24 April 2018, available at . "‘Snehesh Alex Philip, ‘Never mind Baiakot, TAF is worse off than Pakistan Air Force on pilot strength’, The P rin t , 7 May 2019. '■'‘In conversation with commander in chief, Andaman and Nicobar Command, Vice Admiral Bimal Verma’, F O R C E , June 2018, p. 14.

However, with sorties as the benchmark of air power, the IAF issued the global tender for 126 multirole combat aircraft in August 2007. This was cancelled in 2015 since the winner of the tender (French Dassault Aviation) refused to stand warranty for the timeline and quality of aircraft to be manufactured in India by HAL. As an interim measure to arrest dwindling combat aircraft strength, thirty-six Rafale jets (two squadrons) were purchased directly from France in 2016 to be delivered fully by 2022. According to a media report, ‘the IAF is to shortly initiate a case for buying 36 additional Rafale fighter jets. These will add to the 36 Rafales it purchased from France in 2016 and whose deliveries will be completed by June 2022.’20 Meanwhile, to give a push to indigenous production, HAL was paid to build eighty-three light combat aircraft (LCA Mk 1A) in January 2021.21 It was hoped that this indigenous experience and expertise would help in transiting to LCA Mk 2, and eventually to advanced medium combat aircraft, a fifth-generation aircraft, by 2030. Unfortunately, given its tactical mindset, the IAF does not want to be left out of sub-conventional or anti-terror operations. After a demonstration sortie in the archaic MiG-2 1 Type 69 fighter in Srinagar on 27 February 2020 (perhaps as a tribute to Wing Commander Abhinandan), CAS Air Chief Marshal Bhadauria told the media that, ‘Balakot shows there exists a space below the conventional boundary where air power can be used for targeting an enemy and still the situation can be de-escalated through political and diplomatic m eans/22 While articulating the full spectrum war role—from nuclear to sub conventional—the IA F’s top priority in its Vision 2020 document presented to the government in September 2000 was the need for fifty-five combat squadrons. The government sanctioned an increase to forty-two squadrons from the existing strength of 39.5 squadrons (half I0Unnithan, 'Line of No Control’, p. 32. 2l‘Rs. 48,000 Crore Contract for 83 Light Combat Aircraft (L C A ) Tejas handed over to IiA L at the Inaugural Ceremony of Aero India 2021’, PIB, 3 February 2021. 32Kalyan Ray, 'Air-power has its roie in sub-conventional warfare: IAF Chief Marshal R K S Bhadauria’, D e c c a n H e ra ld , 2 8 February 2020.

squadron was for dedicated maritime role) to be raised by the end of the 13th Defence Plan (2022 to 2027).23 At present, the LAF has a total of thirty combat squadrons. Since Vision 2020 will soon lose its applicability and the government had sanctioned a structure well bekr ? the r .commended/desired figure, the IAF finalized its force st' i' -uu . o* Vision 2050. Speaking, to a television channel on 16 November 2020, Bhadauria said that the IAF had finalized its acquisitions plans for the next twenty to thirty years.24 According to him, indigenous sensors, sensors fusion weapons, low-cost weapons, and technologies associated with drones and cyber had been given priority’ alongside traditional platforms like fighters, transport aircraft, AWACS, and radars. He added that in the future the IAF would look at ‘Artificial Intelligence, development of space technologies, UAVs and UCAVs, and sixth generation capabilities including directed energy weapons (lasers and microwave weapons).’25 Bhadauria’s wish list did not address the challenges of the PLA’s invisible war, Rocket Force, and bombers. Moreover, with no credible government policy on AI and disruptive technologies, it is difficult to understand how Bhadauria’s wish list would be met. Even the PA F’s CENTAIC created in August 2020 did not spur the IAF to accord priority to EMS. This, however, has not stopped senior air force officers from saying that the IAF will provide ‘dissuasive deterrence’ and if deterrence fails, ‘denial by punishment’. At the peak of the Ladakh crisis, an air vice marshal at an air headquarters-funded think tank wrote that since the PLA A F was strengthening its air defences for ‘deterrence by denial (by PLA’s defensive integrated air and missile systems)’ strategy, the government’s stance should be focused on ‘deterrence by punishment’

" ‘Government to sanction more fighter aircraft squadrons for IA F’, D N A , 11 February 2011. "India Today, ‘Global Defence Summit: IAF Chief RK.S Bhadauria Talks About New Assets And Capabilities Of Air Force’, YouTube, 2 July 2021, available at < https://www. youtube.com/watch ?v= 7timgL3mEa4 >. " B h a r a t S h a k t i, ‘ T h e N a t u r e o f T h r e a t is D e e p a n d L o n g - T e r m ’ , Y o u T u b e ,

2020,

a v a ila b le

at < h ttp s ://w w w .y o u tu b e .c o m /w a tc h

?v=LMAkFS2nYu$> .

16 N o v e m b e r

by the IAF.26 The Indian Army believes that the IAF will be able to do the heavy lifting in war with the PLA. This will not happen. The Indian Army without air cover and having been rendered blind by the PLASSF, PLARR and PLAAF will be a sitting duck. The Indian A_;ny The Indian Army and the PLA too will light different wars. The Indian Army will replicate the land war with Pakistan against the PLA with emphasis on attrition since manoeuvre is not possible and operations are predictable in high-altitude mountainous terrain. While virtual domains may or may not be available to support the two physical fighting domains, fighting in them is not envisaged. The PLA, well conversant with the combat zone, will plan its multi-domain robotic war in advance. Unmindful of this, the Indian Army believes that everything will be about land war and the soldiers who will fight it. No serving or retired senior army officer believes that territory can be won by the PLA with minimal loss of lives on their side. Or that there could be a repeat of the 1962 war when with the collapse in the chain of command, soldiers may be forced to retreat without a fight. The army leadership does not realize that consequent to a missiles onslaught and being rendered incommunicado with higher headquarters, soldiers conditioned and trained to fight soldiers when confronted by thousands of mini drones, unmanned ground systems (tanks, rockets, guns), and humanoid robots firing intense and accurate salvos might lose their nerve and flee. Indian soldiers losing lives or running away telecast on Chinese television—as part of information war—will demoralize the Indian people and force the government’s hand. The government may then look for means to release pressure on the land either by taking the war to the maritime domain or with the use of nuclear weapons to avoid surrender. While the chances of either are rem ote—since the PLA and Pakistan military will be prepared for such contingencies, it will be catastrophic for India should it come to pass. "AVM Manmohan Bahadur (retd), ‘IAF is key to India’s 'deterrence by punishment’ plan against China. Now to wait for winter’, The P rint, 3 September 2020.

Unaware of such possibilities, the army chief General Naravane confirmed on 20 May 2021 that, ‘The army has an adequate number of troops deployed on eastern Ladakh frontier to tackle any contingency.’27 Thus, the Indian Army, in the winter of 2 0 2 0 -2 1 , moved two additional divisions (each with about 18,000 soldiers) against the PLA in Lsdakh. Since the PLA threat was assessed to be permanent, the army headquarters decided on re-balancing of forces between the two fronts. By January 2021, the media started reporting2* that the Indian Army had cleared the permanent move of certain forces from the west against Pakistan to the east against China. Before the re-balancing, of the Indian Army’s total thirty-eight divisions (each with 18,000 to 20,000 troops), twenty-five were facing Pakistan, twelve China, while two divisions were army headquarters reserves. These divisions made up a total of fourteen corps. The army headquarters had cleared the permanent shifting of 1 Corps from the west to Ladakh. Meant to be a light strike corps with two infantry divisions and one armour division, 1 Corps in its new operational role was to have two divisions in Ladakh, while its armour division was designated as reserve division meant to restore an adverse situation there. Meanwhile, 17 Corps with two divisions was made responsible for Sikkim and the Eastern Sector (Arunachal Pradesh). Incidentally, 17 Corps that was raised specifically for the China front was being used on both fronts. This would stop now. Thus, besides the forces already holding the LAC, two additional divisions for Ladakh, and two divisions from 17 Corps for the Eastern Sector, were earmarked as theatre reserves to provide ‘credible deterrence’ for the PLA, and if needed, to strike at Chinese vulnerabilities mostly in the western sector (Ladakh). There would eventually be sixteen divisions against China, twenty-two divisions against Pakistan, and two divisions as army headquarters reserves. Once the re-baiancing was done, it was reported that the Indian Army had 200,000 troops on the LAC against China.29

i7