![](https://bharatshakti.in/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/LT-BSI-Defence.gif")
As the character of warfare keeps changing, armed by rapid technological upgrades, armed forces need to keep pace. Military modernisation is not new but with new technology appearing on the horizon at rapid speed, it makes the task challenging. How prepared is India?
“Earlier, modernisation was taken as procurement of equipment and inducting new platforms. Today, it entails a change in mindset,” says Central Army Commander Lt Gen. Anindya Sengupta. We want to change procurement processes, look at how technology has evolved, and want to work with the academia and the industry on how to become modern, he told Bharat Shakti Editor-in-Chief Nitin A. Gokhale in a panel discussion. The change in mindset on our side has to be reciprocated by others as well. There’s a need to work as a team, a whole-of-nation approach, he added.
“Rapid advancement of technology manifests itself on today’s battlefields, be it in Iran or Ukraine. And being in the business of warfare, we should be able to predict the threat”.
Lt Gen. Raj Shukla (Retd), Former Commander, Army Training Command, pointed to the speed at which the ‘future is becoming the present’. “Five or six months back, if I talked about AI, military autonomy and algorithmic warfare, one would say these are comfortably in the future. Now, the trio has already been sent into combat. If, as soldiers, we are not adequately investing in it, we are missing out.” It’s not just a national security imperative but a business opportunity for India as well, he added.
Another panellist on the show, senior journalist Anil Padmanabhan, pointed to de-risking as the biggest motivator for defence businesses. “Any entrepreneur will look to mitigate risk when they get into any business, all the more in defence because it is such a closely guarded territory.” He also pointed to how Operation Sindoor changed the calculus, when the demand for homegrown systems grew.
With geopolitics undergoing a sea change and international relationships becoming more transactional, former diplomat Yash Sinha underscored the need for the foreign service and the defence forces to work much more closely. And also greater involvement of the private sector.
