![](https://bharatshakti.in/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/LT-BSI-Defence.gif")
As Indian and Chinese forces continue to face off along a heavily militarised Line of Actual Control (LAC), Beijing is closely tracking New Delhi’s steady movement towards precision warfare and multi-domain operations, even as the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) pursues its own ambitious vision of “Intelligent Guided Multi-Domain Operations” (IMDOs).
This was the broad assessment that emerged from a recent dialogue hosted by the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), where Indian military veterans and China specialists examined how far the PLA has progressed in turning its theory of intelligent warfare into practical combat power, and where the gaps remain.
At stake is not just tactical advantage on the Himalayan frontier, but the longer-term question of whether China can truly integrate land, air, maritime, space, cyber and electromagnetic domains into a single, AI-enabled warfighting system capable of delivering decision dominance in protracted conflict.
From Western MDO to China’s ‘Intelligent Guided’ Model
Setting the analytical frame, Professor Srikanth Kondapalli of Jawaharlal Nehru University drew a clear distinction between Western concepts of Multi-Domain Operations (MDO) and the PLA’s evolving approach.
Western MDO, he argued, largely focuses on coordinating operations across domains at the operational and tactical levels. China’s thinking, by contrast, goes a layer deeper, treating war as a competition between entire systems rather than forces or platforms alone.
In Beijing’s conception, IMDOs fuse systems analysis, cognition and decision-making with military power. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) seeks to align not only the armed forces but also legal frameworks, information space, public opinion, industry and technology behind its warfighting objectives.
“This is not just about defeating an adversary on the battlefield,” Kondapalli noted. “It is about keeping China’s own political and social system tightly synchronised during prolonged conflict.”
Artificial intelligence, in this framework, is less a battlefield gadget and more a tool for sustaining decision advantage across a continuous spectrum of conflict, one in which the boundary between peace and war is deliberately blurred.
From Mechanised War to Intelligentised Conflict
Kondapalli traced PLA thinking on warfare through three overlapping phases. The first is mechanised warfare, dominated by tanks, ships and massed firepower. The second is informatized warfare, where sensors, networks and data links bind forces together into a connected whole.
The third and still emerging phase is intelligentised warfare, where machines communicate with machines, algorithms compress decision cycles, and commanders rely heavily on AI-enabled systems for sensing, planning and targeting, even as humans retain formal control.
This evolution has driven PLA reforms since the mid-1980s. Traditional infantry formations have been pared down, while the Navy, Air Force and Rocket Force have expanded as key instruments of power projection. The PLA Army, now around 900,000 strong, has been reorganised into combined-arms brigades designed for joint, multi-domain operations.
A central pillar of this “intelligent” shift is the PLA’s emphasis on AI-enabled swarm warfare, large numbers of networked drones, unmanned surface and underwater vessels, and robotic ground platforms operating cooperatively rather than as standalone systems. The objective is to saturate defences, complicate enemy targeting and preserve overall system effectiveness even when individual platforms are lost.
Precision Warfare as a Systems Contest
Rear Admiral Sudarshan Shrikhande (Retd) underscored that Chinese military writings increasingly describe future conflict as “multi-domain precision warfare”, a clash between integrated systems rather than individual services.
In this model, the PLA seeks to fuse C4ISR networks across domains to rapidly identify vulnerabilities and deliver precision strikes across land, sea, air, space, cyber and the electromagnetic spectrum. The PLA Navy, he noted, already aligns well with this systems-of-systems approach, backed by sustained doctrinal development and extensive wargaming.
Importantly, this intellectual effort is not abstract. Beijing has invested heavily in translating theory into operational concepts, testing intelligent multi-domain ideas through exercises and simulations designed to shorten the path from doctrine to combat capability.
The Information Domain and PLA Reorganisation
Anushka Saxena of the Takshashila Institution focused on the information dimension of China’s approach. For the PLA, she argued, information operations go far beyond messaging or propaganda. They involve large-scale data acquisition, processing and exploitation to generate systemic advantages at both tactical and operational levels.
She linked this to the PLA’s April 2024 restructuring of the Strategic Support Force into three new entities, the Aerospace Force, Cyberspace Force and Information Support Force, all under the Central Military Commission. Alongside the Joint Logistics Support Force, these now constitute the PLA’s four major “arms”.
Information support brigades embedded down to group army level aim to create truly network-centric units. The PLA, Saxena noted, has also been experimenting with Trojan-style cyber tools, off-network defensive systems and camouflage techniques influenced by lessons from the Russia–Ukraine war, reflecting an iterative process of learning and adaptation.
India, the LAC and Beijing’s Calculus
Against this backdrop, the LAC remains a critical testing ground for Chinese assessments of Indian military capability. Kondapalli observed that while China has partially disengaged from some friction points such as Depsang and Demchok in eastern Ladakh, large force deployments persist and several flashpoints remain unresolved.
These steps, he suggested, may represent tentative confidence-building measures rather than a fundamental shift in posture. The frontier continues to be heavily militarised, and Beijing is carefully watching India’s progress in precision strike capabilities, jointness and multi-domain integration.
Despite the PLA’s ambitious push towards intelligentised operations, Kondapalli cautioned that China’s transformation is still incomplete. Integration across domains, organisational friction and the challenge of translating theory into seamless battlefield execution remain significant hurdles.
For India, the implication is clear: while the PLA’s rhetoric on intelligent warfare is formidable, the contest along the LAC and beyond will hinge on how effectively each side converts concepts into resilient, real-world military power.
Resham Bhambani
