Atmanirbharta in Critical and Emerging Defence Technologies
The Russia–Ukraine war is now in its third year, and it has already been an year since the Israel–Hamas conflict started. Both have seen bloody spurts of high-level violence between malignant long pauses with no end in sight. One thing is certain. The battlespace has changed in nature and character. Two Generals were interviewed by The Washington Post1—one Russian and the other Ukrainian. As per them, ‘tanks, manned aircraft and traditional manoeuvre forces are sitting ducks, while advanced drones and digital battle-management systems can have a decisive impact in the current battlespaces’.2 Their discussion indicates that wars will be driven by algorithms where battlefield transparency has cleared the fog of war. They go on to say that air defences have triumphed over conventional military aviation and that superior artillery is a priority requirement with a radical rearmament. An important point they make is that the best weapons are small and cheap.
