Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs
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Ex-Generals call for indigenisation
Lieutenant-General Vijay Oberoi (Retd.) said on Saturday that despite major advancements in the field, India was still banking on imported information warfare techniques, which could be fatal. He was speaking at a discussion on “Information warfare: the new face of war” at the Military Literature Festival 2018 here. Lt. Gen. Oberoi said the GPRS technology belonging to the U.S. did not perform as expected during the Kargil War. “At a time when all forms of weapons, whether nuclear, conventional or sub-conventional, were being managed by computers, it was not good that we were still banking on equipment made by others,” he said. Lt. Gen. R.S. Panwar (Retd.) said that while the U.S., China and Russia had already taken concrete steps to strengthen their information warfare techniques, India was yet to take an appropriate call on it. According to Lt. Gen. S.P. Kochar, information warfare must be seen as an enabler to support the Commander during war operations. “A lot still needs to be done in the field of information warfare,” he said, adding that that every jawan’ who entered the training centre should be IT-qualified.
Level playing field?
Another session saw experts advocate a level playing field for private entrepreneurs for boosting defence production in the country in order to make the country self-reliant in military hardware. During the discussion on “Military industrial base and Make in India”, former Chief of the Army Staff, General V.P. Malik, said that India was importing 14% of the total arms and ammunition globally, which was more than what China and Pakistan imported collectively. In 1992, the Defence Research and Development Organisation had chalked out a 10-year plan under which the then trend of 80% import of weapons and 20% export was to be reversed. However, in 2005 it was found that exports had increased to just 30%.
