China Posing Challenge In Space: IAF Chief
New Delhi, Feb 24: China’s latest demonstration of physically moving one of its disabled satellites into the graveyard orbit is bringing in newer threats in the race to weaponise the space domain, hitherto considered relatively safe, Air Chief Marshal V R Chaudhary said on Thursday.
The IAF chief’s comment came at the inaugural address at Jumbo Majumdar International Seminar organised by the Centre for Air Power Studies (CAPS) on “Aerospace Power: Future Challenges”.
Talking about the challenges in modern warfare, he said, “Today, a seemingly innocuous e-mail or a PDF attachment has the capability to wipe out entire databases or corrupt systems creating widespread chaos and confusion.”
The first and the foremost challenge that “we face is of technology and keeping pace with it”, he said. “No other field has seen such a rapid transformation in technology as air power has seen in the last 120 years of its existence.”
“Targeting critical information infrastructure and distributed denial of services have changed the way wars would manifest… While traditional land, sea and aerial warfare will always take place, unconventional and hybrid means to disrupt conventional capability will need to be countered,” he said.
He said the spectrum one was looking at stretched from kinetic to non-kinetic, lethal to non-lethal and from small drones to hypersonic ballistic missiles.
“There is a need for doctrines to be contemporary because if the fundamental guiding principles are dated, our war fighting will also be dated. Our training philosophy will need to be modern, flexible and adaptive, with a heavy dose of jointness.”
The Army, Navy and the Air Force will need to work on a common network for better coordination and control. In the future, there would be teaming of manned and unmanned combat systems, he said.
