CDS Gen Anil Chauhan Releases Joint Doctrine For Cyberspace Operations

CDS Gen Anil Chauhan unveiled a joint doctrine for conducting cyberspace operations by the three services, in a significant move aimed at streamlining operations in the key domain.

CDS Gen Anil Chauhan Releases Joint Doctrine For Cyberspace Operations

CDS Gen Anil Chauhan unveiled a joint doctrine for conducting cyberspace operations by the three services, in a significant move aimed at streamlining operations in the key domain. The doctrine lays emphasis on understanding military aspects of cyberspace operations and provides conceptual guidance to the military in planning and achieving desired objectives in the domain.

The release of the key document came as the government looked at rolling out theatre commands to bolster India’s military might. The defence ministry said operations in cyberspace need to be “dovetailed” into the national security fabric, to evolve the ‘ends’, ‘ways’ and ‘means’ to “create advantage and influence events in all other operational environments and across all instruments of power”.

“In addition to the traditional domains of warfare including land, sea, and air; cyberspace has emerged as a crucial and challenging domain in modern warfare. Unlike territorial limits in the domains of land, sea, and air, cyberspace is a global common…Hostile actions in cyberspace can impact the nation’s economy, cohesion, political decision making, and its ability to defend itself,” it said.

Theatre Commands will not be an end state but the beginning of the next set of reforms, Chauhan earlier said. These, he said, included single to multi-domain operations, fusing space and cyberspace into traditional domains, and digitisation of battlefield information and visualisation. In May, Chauhan said jointness and integration among the three services were pre-requisite to the creation of functional integrated theatre commands, a long-standing and crucial reform for the best use of the military’s resources to fight future wars.

Also in May, the government notified the Inter-Services Organisations (Command, Control and Discipline) Act, with the law aimed at pushing jointness among the three services.