Pak will continue to acquire technologies: Maj Gen Anand (Retd) on why India needs to maintain tech edge

Pakistan is likely to sharpen its military capabilities by learning from Operation Sindoor and acquiring technologies with support from China and Turkey, Maj Gen Pawan Anand (Retd) said. He stressed that India must maintain its tech edge through AI, high-compute capabilities and digital engineering.

Pakistan is likely to draw lessons from Operation Sindoor and continue acquiring advanced military technologies, including with support from China and Turkey, making it important for India to sustain and widen its technological edge, according to Maj Gen Pawan Anand (Retd), Director, Centre for Emerging Technologies for AtmaNirbhar Bharat (CETANB), United Service Institution of India (USI).

"Pakistan would have also learned lessons and will continue to acquire technologies. The support it has received from China and other developed countries, including Turkey, means that its technological capabilities could also become sharper. That is why we need to maintain our own technological edge," Anand told LiveMint on the sidelines of the Defence Tech Summit, on 29 September in New Delhi.

Anand said Operation Sindoor demonstrated how advances in technology can provide an operational advantage, and India now needs to build on those gains by accelerating the development and deployment of emerging technologies.

"Operation Sindoor demonstrated how better levels of technology can provide us with an operational advantage. The natural now is to take that forward, maintain the edge and ensure that we move faster than the pace of technological development and faster than what our adversaries can throw at us," he said.

Anand said the push will require the armed forces to make greater use of technologies such as artificial intelligence and digital engineering.

"The Army has moved into AI and is working with a huge amount of data. It is classifying that data and putting it into the right training sets so that it can feed its algorithms and use the right models for field deployment," Anand said.

"There are three pillars of AI: compute, connectivity and data," he said.

"We have redundancy in connectivity, and well-classified data and training sets are almost in place. All we need now is high-compute capability. Coupled with our humungous talent base, we will be on our way to becoming a global leader in AI in the military as well," he said.

Anand also pointed to gaps in semiconductor capacity as an area requiring greater attention as India seeks to build indigenous high-performance computing and AI capabilities.

"Digital engineering helps us create virtual models of the equipment we want to induct into the military. We can put the physics into these virtual models and test them in a simulated battlefield environment," he said.

Such virtual testing can help identify design issues earlier and ensure that physical prototypes are more refined when they are built, he added.

"Digital engineering enables faster ideation, faster development and faster fielding of equipment into the field army. This is essential if we want to keep pace with rapidly changing technologies and maintain an advantage over our adversaries," Anand said.

"Our aim is to move the entire acquisition process into a much faster plane and ensure that we keep pace with technology," he added.

The Indian Navy has already begun adopting digital engineering in some projects, although these efforts remain relatively isolated, Anand said.

"The next step is to take these efforts to a much wider level across the armed forces," he added.