Lt Gen Harinder Singh, Retd, is Former DGMI and Commandant IMA. He has tenanted several important command and staff assignments in the Indian Army. The author can be contacted at harinder41[at]gmail.com
Policy-makers need to recalibrate modernisation programmes from the earlier focus on traditional military capability needs to a mix of kinetic and non-kinetic hybrid war-fighting capabilities.
To fight hybrid wars, militaries would have to themselves hybridize, through public-private partnerships, and field required hybrid war-fighting capabilities and competencies.
The Ukraine War demonstrates that future wars between unmatched military rivals might not just require a ‘whole of government’ approach, but perhaps a ‘whole of people’s’ approach to achieve favourable outcomes in conflict.
The power of crowdsourcing budgetary support, technology, training, and logistic wherewithal, while at war, has emerged as an important lesson in the Ukraine war.
Military readiness is perhaps one of the least studied and understood concepts in the field of strategic studies. In the absence of any significant literature in the public domain, defence policy makers and practitioners worldwide tend to define military readiness in several different ways.
Human resources will remain a critical element to any professional military education system and this entails careful selection of the senior leadership, faculty, and managerial staff.
Given the fragility of ISAF’s southern lines of communication passing through Pakistan, India could consider offering a passage through its territory as a meaningful alternative.
Hybridity in Warfare: A Compelling Dimension in Modern Wars
Policy-makers need to recalibrate modernisation programmes from the earlier focus on traditional military capability needs to a mix of kinetic and non-kinetic hybrid war-fighting capabilities.