Balakot Ops showed air power can be used in no-war, no-peace situation under nuclear overhang: IAF Chief

New Delhi [India], April 18 : IAF chief Air Chief Marshal V R Chaudhari on Tuesday said that operations like Balakot have demonstrated that given the political will, aerospace power can be effectively used in a no-war, no-peace situation, under a nuclear overhang without escalating into a full-blown conflict.

"This is very important, given the nature of our adversaries. The response options available to the leadership have suddenly increased and increasingly, air power has become an option of choice due to inherent flexibility and unmatched precision strike capability," the IAF chief said.

Air Chief Marshal Chaudhari was speaking at the Marshal of the Air Force Arjan Singh Memorial Seminar 'Aerospace power: Pivot to future battlespace operations'.

The Balakot airstrikes were carried out in February 2019 by Indian Air Force after the Pulwama terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir.

The IAF chief said that the foremost lesson that can be drawn from the twentieth century and indeed the early twenty-first century is that no war can be successfully prosecuted without aerospace power.

He cited the words of Field Marshal Montgomery, 'If we lose war in the air, we lose the war and lose it quickly'.

"There are a few very pertinent words in the theme of the seminar which need a bit more study. The first being 'Pivot'. Pivot translates to Fulcrum, which is defined as a thing that plays a central or essential role in an activity, event or situation. The other words that need more study are 'Future Battlespace Operations'.

"Over the last few decades, the understanding of a military operational environment has significantly transformed from primarily a force, time and space-driven linear battlefield to a system of systems capable of simultaneous, parallel and independent operations across multiple domains," the IAF chief said.

He said the traditional battlefield has long left the lexicon of modern strategists and what is increasingly being used is battlespace in the land, sea, air, cyber and space domains.

"When we bring all these words together, it broadly gives a contour of things to come in the next few decades. Call it a reveille bugle or a heralding trumpet, we must acknowledge that the wars of the future will be fought differently. Adversaries will use lethal as well as non-lethal weapons, wars will be fought across multiple domains and will not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants," he said.

The IAF chief said the future battlespace will be increasingly complex characterised by heavy dependence on technology, asymmetric nature of threats, increased fog and friction, expanded battlespaces, high tempo of operations, enhanced lethality, compressed sensor to shooter cycles and media scrutiny.

"So, what does aerospace power bring to the table in order to be labelled as a Pivot? Attributes of high speed, reduced response time, long reach, increased mobility, technological intensity, precision firepower, shock effect, ability to operate across domains and network centric operations have made aerospace power a formidable component of our nation's military might," he said.

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