Need punch to offensive poise, says army chief amid 'newer threats'

Army chief Manoj Mukund Naravane also spotlighted the hard realities of legacy challenges.

Taking note of the “real and present dangers” on the country’s active borders, army chief General Manoj Mukund Naravane on Thursday spoke of the “newer threats” ahead and the need to add punch to India’s offensive poise.

Indian army chief General Manoj Mukund Naravane. (PTI photo)

The comment comes on the day defence minister Rajnath Singh told Parliament that the Indian and Chinese armies were implementing a disengagement plan on the north and south banks of Pangong Tso to reduce military tensions in eastern Ladakh.

“Ongoing developments along our northern borders should cause us to ponder over… the nature of our unsettled borders and consequent challenges with regard to the preservation of our territorial integrity and sovereignty. Without doubt there are newer threats on the horizon, but the hard reality is that the legacy challenges have not quite gone away,” Naravane said in his inaugural address at a seminar on Multi-Domain Operations: Future of Conflicts, organised by the Centre for Land Warfare Studies.

The army chief said the challenges had only grown in scale and intensity.

He said platforms such as tanks, fighter jets and surface combatants, which were once the mainstay of 20th century battlefield, were rendered relatively less significant in the face of emerging battlefield challenges in newer domains.

“We have seen how the very imaginative and offensive use of drones in Idlib and then in Armenia-Azerbaijan challenged the traditional prima donnas: the tanks, the artillery and the dug in infantry,” the army chief said.

“We have also seen how disruptive technologies are now driving doctrinal cycles like never before. It may not be inaccurate to infer that technology itself is steadily emerging as a core combat capability,” he added.