On April 18, 2023, Air Chief Marshal Vivek Ram Chaudhari said that the Balakot Strikes of 2019 demonstrated that if the political will is present, then aerospace power can be effectively used in a ‘no war, no peace’ scenario under a nuclear overhang, without allowing the situation to escalate into a full-blown conflict.
At the inaugural address at the Marshal of Air Force Arjan Singh Memorial seminar on Aerospace Power, Pivot to Future Battlespace Operations, the IAF chief said- “This is very important given the nature of India’s adversaries.
The response options present before the leadership have suddenly increased, and increasingly air power has become an option of choice due to inherent flexibility and unmatched precision capabilities.”
India’s security concerns require that it puts in place adequate military power to achieve deterrence, ensure information dominance, coerce when needed and provide multiple response options, he said.
“Attributes of Aerospace power enable the leadership to formulate an appropriate strategy with due cognisance given to the desired end state, conflict termination criteria and escalators matrix,” he added.
He also explained in detail that high speed, reduced response time, long reach, increased mobility and technological intensity, precision firepower, shock effect, ability to operate across all domains, and network-centric operations had made aerospace power a formidable component of India’s Military might.
Considering the advantage of aerospace power, aerospace control and dominance will become a crucial factor in future battlefield operations, the IAF chief said.
The IAF Chief said that the foremost lesson that can be learnt from the developments of the 20th and 21st centuries is that no war can be successfully prosecuted without the use of air power; he quoted the British Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, who said if we lose the battle in the air, we lose the war and lose it quickly.
The traditional battlefield has long vanished from the lexicon of modern strategists. He said what is increasingly used in battlespace in the land, sea, air, cyber and space domains.
“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,” the IAF chief said.
He said the future battlespace will be increasingly complex and characterised by heavy dependence on technology, asymmetric nature of threats, expanded battlespaces, high tempo of operations, enhanced lethality, compressed sensor-to-shooter cycles, and media scrutiny.
“To see first and see clearly, to reach first and farthest and to strike first and strike with precision will be the mantra for fighting modern wars,” he said.
The Balakot air strikes against the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) were India’s response to the Pulwama suicide car bomb attack in which 40 brave CRPF personnel (Central Reserve Security Force) were martyred on February 14, 2019.
Twelve days later, the IAF Mirage fighter jets hit three targets in Balakot with five Israeli-origin Spice 2000 bombs with penetrator warheads that allowed them to pierce through rooftops before exploding inside to cause maximum damage.
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