My Op-Ed published in Eurasian Times states that "Modern airpower has transformed the ability to find, identify and destroy targets. Precision-guided weapons, real-time intelligence, persistent surveillance, networked command systems, data analytics and increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence have compressed the time between detection and destruction."
A networked battlefield is a concept that needs a visual 3-D representation to make sense of every node that forms a part of the network. The network is multi-domain and comprises assets that can perform the needed functions to complete all the tasks from sensing, command & conrol, to destroying the identified target, including damage assessment. The assets are owned by individual service but jointly operated under centralised command, disaggregated distributed control and decentralised execution to achieve the optimum offensive or defensive combat effectiveness, most efficiently.
Image Created by ChatGPT translating a Concept into a Pictorial Representaion
Disaggregation is often misunderstood as merely dispersing platforms across the battlespace. Its real purpose is to distribute the functions of airpower while preserving the ability to concentrate effects at the decisive point. For a country like India, with finite aerospace resources, disaggregation must never become fragmentation.
The organising principle is centralised command, distributed control and decentralised execution.
Centralised command ensures unity of political and military purpose and allows scarce, high-value capabilities to be concentrated wherever the campaign demands. Distributed control enables sensors, aircraft, drones, missiles and electronic warfare assets to be coordinated across a wide and contested battlespace through resilient networks. Decentralised execution gives commanders and platforms the freedom to act rapidly within the commander's intent, even when communications are disrupted or degraded.
The objective is simple: distribute capability, not authority; disperse assets, not purpose. No single sensor, platform or command node should become indispensable. The force should remain capable of generating concentrated combat power whenever required. In intelligent warfare, resilience comes not from a few powerful nodes, but from a network that continues to sense, decide and act even after parts of it have been attacked.
Jointness, interoperability, common secure digital databus, resilient architecture are the pre requisites to harness the combat capabilities of the three services and capabilities of other organisations, public and private in a networked battlefield.
To be Continued...
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