Kamal Ghorui
NEW DELHI: Army chief General Upendra Dwivedi on Thursday said Operation Sindoor demonstrated India’s progression towards “domain jointness” and called the military offensive carried out inside Pakistani territory a “defining case study” of operational significance of integration.Addressing ‘Ran Samvad’ in Bengaluru, he highlighted the creation of an information warfare organisation and a psychological defence division following the 2025 operation. He said that “15% of our effort was on managing the disinformation campaign”. He, however, cautioned that key challenges remain, particularly in synchronising operations across strategic, operational and tactical levels as well as addressing the growing prevalence of hybrid or grey-zone warfare.Characterising the modern era as a “dispersed, undeclared world war”, Gen Dwivedi emphasised that the battlefield is no longer a map, but a layered, complex adaptive system. He highlighted the reality of a “permanent conflict” world, how a land force commander must read the battle across domains, how different domains interact in operations and how the Army is transforming multi-domain operations (MDO) from a concept into capability. He said that MDO is not of six domains operating in parallel, but in constant dynamic interaction where the weight shifts and the lead changes. He further emphasised that the Army is accelerating Integration, Informatisation and Intelligentisation to ensure that the force moves beyond “domain purity” toward “total domain fusion”.“Challenge remains to progressively integrate and synchronise military operations across different domains (land, air, sea, cyber, cognitive and space) and overcome the inherent disharmony between different levels of war (strategic, operational and tactical) as all domains comprehend levels of war differently or a miss out a level completely. MDO concepts need to be developed to synchronise actions both horizontally across domains and vertically across levels of war,” he said.Gen Dwivedi shared that the Army has operationalised integrated battle groups (IBGs), Divyastra drone batteries and command cyber operations wings. He called for a new command culture where leaders “command technology rather than merely operate it” to ensure decision advantage. He further noted that while Operation Sindoor proved India’s jointness, the ultimate goal remains a seamless “whole of nation” architecture where the seams between domains disappear entirely.In his address at the event, Navy chief Admiral Dinesh K Tripathi said it was “too early” to distil definitive lessons from what he described as a still-evolving conflict in the Gulf. “It is too early to draw definitive lessons. The war is still going on. We are monitoring what is happening, what is working, what is not working, and learning the correct lessons,” he said.Admiral Tripathi further noted that carrier battle groups continue to remain central to maritime power projection, demonstrating their operational effectiveness even in contested environments, while their vulnerability depends on the adversary’s capabilities and the balance of offensive and defensive systems. The Navy chief said the services are analysing the conflict “on a near 24×7 basis” and will incorporate lessons at an appropriate time, stressing that modern warfare now demands constant adaptation to rapidly evolving technological and operational realities.“Today, there is no fixed system of war, no rigid doctrine that we can blindly rely upon,” Admiral Tripathi said. The Navy chief noted that ongoing instability in India’s extended neighbourhood, particularly tensions in West Asia and disruptions to maritime traffic, underline the interconnected nature of modern security.He said distance no longer insulates nations from consequences, while technological advances are compressing decision-making timelines and merging operational domains. Drawing from India’s civilisational strategic thought, he said MDOs are not entirely new, citing Kautilya’s concept of integrating diplomacy, deception and force.Admiral Tirpathi said the Indian Navy is firmly on course towards being a 200-plus ship Navy by 2035 with each new induction increasingly focused on modularity and technological evolution. At the same time, the Navy is pursuing augmentation of fleet capabilities with uncrewed and autonomous solutions across the domains, in accordance with the Indian Navy vision for unmanned systems 2022-30, he added.
