New Delhi. Winning and dominating the information battle space has become the most critical aspect of warfare and all military organisations are paying heed to this aspect with alacrity. The lessons of the Gulf War and the war in Iraq and Afghanistan are relevant.

The task is uphill as it requires a very high standard of knowledge of the state-of-the art Information Technology tools (IT) to succeed and to manage the complex military operations and to ensure conflicts are resolved between the demands of spectrum and bandwidth at lowest costs, and the needs of the battlefield commanders and the soldier who serves at the last mile, and does the fighting, and hits the ground running.

It is axiomatic that the challenges that the military faces are also the same challenges that various commercial enterprises face today, as both are information and intelligence driven in various spheres of activities. Both need the associated hardware and software built in to their systems, which are no more in stand alone mode.

The speed of warfare needs to have ‘decision assist’ built in to a system, with a proviso that the OODA (Observe, Orient, Decide and Act) loop is reduced which is the basis of what is now called Net Centric Warfare (NCW).

Today the military can take advantage of the powerful IT tools available in the market and apply them to their military needs in battlefield operations, logistics, peace time training for war, simulation, virtual gaming, human resource development and administration.

The Indian Navy has taken a lead in this by connecting its hubs and designed a Link II system to transfer analogue and digital data to ships at sea by HF/VHF and INMARSAT, with software provided by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and equipment manufactured by Bharat Electronics Ltd.

It has also set up war gaming simulators.

The Indian Air Force has set up the AFNET network protocol which rides on the AICCS, and with the arrival of the Phalcon AWACS, the IAF will have a command centre in the air with a satellite terminal to transfer data by Ku/Ka band. These are large steps towards NCW and the Indian Army has ensured it does not lag behind and has tendered for Battle Management Systems (BMS).

Industry from abroad is showing great interest, and companies from Europe, US, Israel and Russia took part in the seminar.

The Indian Navy is poised to select a vendor for designing and integrating its NCW systems in to a net centric mode.

With the aim to collaborate with industry and to explain the Army user perspective and to appreciate what technologies the industry can offer, the Indian Army under the aegis of the Signal Officer-in- Chief Lt Gen P Mohapatra and his organisation at the Integrated HQ of MOD (Army) has annually taken up the challenge to organise a twoday conference in partnership with Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) called DEFCOM.

It was held on May 27-28, and the theme this year was Informatics for Defence Force Transformation and Technology Development in the Information Age, and 41 large and medium sized companies including nine from abroad displayed their products and systems.

Four exhibitors had live internet or landline feeds for real time displays of BMS and security. The Army had taken a node on loan from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on the INSAT series of satellites, and therefore the C4ISR challenges could be witnessed in real time where space, fiber optics and microwave means of transferring data and internet protocols and modems for inter connectivity play a large and critical role, atop the battlefield systems and weapons.

The conference was inaugurated by Defence Minister A K Antony, who used the theme of Achieving Self Reliance Through Public Private Partnership (PPP) to state that India’s image as a global leader in IT should also be reflected in the national defence domain. He asked the Indian IT sector to develop futuristic products for the military and also mark a global impression by exporting such capabilities, mentioning also that there should be synergy between the private and state-run companies.

As for the foreign industry, the Minister reiterated what he had said at the Berlin Air Show last year: that the days of only ‘Buy’ for the Indian armed forces are over, and that there has to be a mix o “Buy and Make’ to prop indigenous production in India.

Mr Antony said that the Government was offering full support for the transformation of defence services.

In the context of present military scenario, transformation required developing parallel capacities; evolution of new products; audit and analysis of systems, capability achievements by developing new hardware and software as well as other equipment for the defence sector.

The conference saw the participation of over 400 delegates from the Army and industry.

Army Chief General Deepak Kapoor said in his opening remarks that transformation in generic terms seeks to sustain purposeful change to operate and function, for competitive advantage, advancement in communications and IT.

He pointed out that the dimension of war has changed from platform to net connectivity specific, and that this called for the armed forces to operate with a strong information grid, enhanced capabilities of situational awareness, fail-proof communications network, and the likes with synergy.

Gen Kapoor called upon the industry to come forward to develop innovative solutions at affordable cost.

Lt Gen P Mohapatra, Signal Officer in Chief and Sr. Colonel Commandant, Integrated HQ of MoD (Army), stated that the defence sector has to now move from the industrial age to information age.

The concepts of precision and battlefield transparency should be supported by synchronised army information infrastructure. The gap of a robust backbone of the communications network in defence has to be put together at the earliest.

The ICT development canvass in the defence sector is very large, supplemented with manifold issues like information sharing, security concerns, pan-India presence, standards and framework. The foremost step is to identify and select appropriate technology, backed by in-house introspections and simplicity in operation and maintenance with the aim to achieve self-reliance in defence production, echoing what the Defence Minister has in mind.

In his welcome address, Mr Hari S Bhartia, Vice President, CII & Joint Chairman and MD, Jubiliant Organsys Limited, stressed the need for synergy between the armed forces and civil information technology sector as an imperative.

The private sector he said needs to be encouraged to enter the defence business, as the public sector alone cannot absorb the huge amount of offsets to be generated due to massive acquisitions in the coming years.

Mr Bhartia conceded that the policy makers in the defence communication domain had been active and alive to this, which had been reflected by the continued revision of Defence Procurement Procedure. His message was that the entry of the private sector thus was supportive and not a threat to the public sector.

Delivering the vote of thanks, M. Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General CII said that the industry had an urgent need to define and refine the concepts of defence industry’s communication needs. CII had taken up this collaboration as an apt format to appraise the industry about a futuristic outlook on military’s communications technology.

The Conference was broken in to six sessions and as was appropriate, the first session on Informatics For Defence Force Transformation: User Perspective was chaired by the SO-in-C Lt Gen Mohapatra himself.

Serving officers presented their viewpoints. Lt Gen J P Singh DCDIS (PP & FD) bared the overall service needs and aspirations for transformation.

It was abundantly clear that the task for the one million strong Indian Army was challenging and would need a test bed to validate any design in a calibrated manner. Presentations from the Air Force and Navy and one on user needs for jointness requirements showed where the Indian Armed Forces stood.

It was observed that real time, secure and reliable communication was the backbone of the three Services, and in time, their networks would be integrated for optimum utilisation and operation of assets towards victory in a threat environment.

The second session was eye opening. It was the Industry perspective chaired by Lt Gen P P S Bhandari (Retd), President Rolta India Ltd.

Other speakers included Maj Gen Rajesh Pant, ADG Information Systems, Mr Ashok Kanodia of Precision Electronics which has a tie-up with Raytheon, and Mr Rahul Chaudhry of Tata Power which is already executing orders for the Army, including the Pinaka Multi Barrel Rocket Launhcers (MBRLs).

According to Mr Chaundhry, his company has provided appreciable input in optimising the Pinaka, originally a product of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).

The third session was entirely devoted to the vital subject of Transformation of Battlefield Communications where the Army is lagging and is still to set up its own mobile network. Lt Gen T K Sapru, GOG-In-C Western Command, in the chair emphasised the need for urgent changes as ‘a hands-on commander’.

Speakers from Selex, Bharat Electronics Ltd., Wipro, General Dynamics and Precision Electronics Ltd showed how Software SDR radios and satellite dishes and terminals have improved to give provide communications and digital data on the move.

The second day saw a session on Info Assurance and Security for Transformation and included the vital subject of cyber security. Lt Gen B S Jaiswal, GOC-In-C Army Training Command (ARTRAC) chaired the session which evinced a lot of questions.

Microsoft, Bharti Airtel Ltd, Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Bangalore and Tata Consultancy brought home the new advances, implying that open architecture would play a significant role in connectivity.

Lt Gen P C Katoch DG (IS) chaired the session on Data Centre Virtualisation which actually turned out to be in the realm of ‘Star Wars’, with speakers from the giants CISCO, Microsoft, IBM, Raytheon and Sun Microsystems speaking about virtualisation of almost any activity with cloud computing and data centres with intelligence feeds and the such in the realm of imagination.

The last session chaired by Lt Gen Narendra Kumar (Retd), CEO Tata Advanced Systems Ltd, who is a former SO-In-C Signals, was a mixed bag with lessons of the Jan 2009 Gaza War.

The valedictory function was presided over by Lt Gen Nobel Thamburaj, Vice Chief of Army Staff, who assured that the Army would expedite its requirements speedily.

It was brought out during the conference that the procedure for placing orders and acquisition of EW and Communications is dilatory and by the time a system is offered, selected, tried, tendered and supplied, it is out of date. In the fast-changing environment, technology also has to be timely.

The conference was rich in content and well organised.