The Indian Air Force (IAF) that turns 82 on October 8 this year has grown from a small flight of Wapitis to the fourth largest air force in the world. During its early formative years, it had a comparatively insignificant role, but today the IAF is poised to take on the responsibility for the defence of an area stretching from the Western edge of the Arabian Sea to the Strait of Malacca in the East. The IAF has been called upon to defuse many crises in the past and has always risen to the occasion to render yeoman service without fail. The nation expects the same in the future.

Early Use of Aircraft in Military Roles

Military historians claim that aircraft was employed in combat for the first time by the Italian Army Air Force to attack a Turkish camp during the Libyan Campaign of 1911. However, air warfare came into prominence during World War I with British, French and German pilots battling in the skies over Europe. The strategic and tactical doctrines for the employment of air power have been shaped by the events of the last 100 years and in the pre-World War II era, the early proponents of air power, Douhet, Mitchell, Trenchard, etc, advocated air power as the predominant tool to dominate and destroy the enemy. In the post-World War II era, during the Korean war, the Vietnam war, the Arab-Israeli wars, the Gulf wars and the Indo-Pak wars, the roles assigned to the air force were clearly defined and the importance of air power remained paramount.

In the last 25 years, a slow shift in strategy is emerging. The armed forces which used to battle one another in conventional warfare are no longer the primary agents of war. Increasingly wars are being fought between armed forces and small dispersed sub-national groups targeting the morale of the armed forces. There is a school of thought which advocates “conventional warfare between nations is in a state of hibernation” but military planners are also aware that the situation could change if the equilibrium is disturbed. Today air forces all over the world are debating how air power will be used during the next war and how they should equip themselves to meet the challenges of the future but more importantly, how to train for the next war.

The Changing Role of Air Power

In the recent past, air power is increasingly being used in asymmetric warfare where the enemy has no air force worth the name. This was witnessed in the wars in Kosovo, Libya, Afghanistan or recently in Syria and Iraq against the Islamic State. Post-Independence, the IAF trained combat and support forces to counter perceived threats and the last time the IAF fought a war was with Pakistan in 1971. At that time China did not pose a major aerial threat in the Eastern Sector. However, the situation has changed dramatically since then. Today, a conventional full-scale war with a nuclear armed Pakistan appears remote, as also a 1962-type of war with China, but the IAF must not let its guard down.

Training Philosophy of the IAF

Traditionally, the IAF’s training philosophy has been based on its wartime objectives of achieving air superiority and providing protection to ground forces from enemy air attacks in the tactical battle area. In war and peace, the IAF is committed to deliver men and material wherever required and also ensure the air defence of national assets, airbases, vital areas and vital points. However, in the last 40 years, the security environment and the way the air war is waged, has changed; but is the IAF’s operational training geared for these changes?

The IAF has to train to win the next war but for that it must have a clear assessment of who the adversary is likely to be and how the future war is to be fought. If pointers are to be taken from the last three decades, the armed forces of most developed nations, including India, will face fourth-generation warfare. The first generation of modern warfare was characterised by lines and columns of troops fighting with guns and rifles. World War I was second-generation warfare involving indirect fire by artillery and massed movements of troops. The third-generation is the classic mobile warfare of World War II with rapidly moving armour and troops supported by withering fire from the air and ground. The liberation of Bangladesh during the 1971 Indo-Pak war and the Arab-Israeli war of 1967 are examples of third generation warfare.

Fourth-generation warfare is war carried out by non-state actors using small decentralised units and individuals to strike at enemy forces and create political support among the population. A prime example of this would be the attacks carried out by Palestinians against Israeli defence forces with weapons as diverse as stone throwing to kidnapping to suicide bombers and rocket attacks. Militarily the Palestinians will not be able to defeat the Israeli defence forces but neither will the Israeli army and air force be able to subdue the Palestinians. As long as the Palestinians are willing to support their fourth-generation fighters financially and with an unending supply of politically motivated suicide bombers they will extract a heavy price from Israel. The battle then becomes one of morale rather than capturing territory or material. The highly sophisticated Western coalitions in Afghanistan and Iraq faced a similar situation of fighting an unwinnable war.

Fourth-generation warfare is not new and has always existed. Kautilya makes mention of it in ancient texts and even the mighty Russian army with the full range of air assets was defeated in Afghanistan by fourth-generation warfare. In the recent past many military installations have been attacked worldwide by militants, for example, the Nigerian airbase at Maidugiri was attacked by hundreds of militants and government troops have battled with heavily armed opposition in Sri Lanka, Colombia, Ecuador, Philippines and Thailand. Closer home, Pakistan Air Force (PAF) base Kamrain Attock, Samungli airbase and Khalid Army Aviation base in Quetta and the Pakistan GHQ in Rawalpindi were all targeted by militants. Terrorists also attacked Karachi’s high-security area which houses the PAF Southern Air Command, Air War College and museum and the Pakistan Naval base PNS Mehran. If the attackers had captured these installations they would have found no operational use for them other than to dent the morale of the Pakistani Air Force and the Pakistan Navy.

The terrorist attacks on the Indian Parliament and in Mumbai are stark reminders that India is not insulated from this threat and it is only to be expected that terrorists or disgruntled elements of society could draw inspiration from the events in Pakistan.

In fourth-generation warfare the state becomes a victim of war and the IAF’s primary mission would be to identify the enemy, separate them from the civil population and destroy them surgically. Psychologically the enemy wins every time an attack hits civilian population even if the enemy is destroyed. The key to success lies in obtaining accurate intelligence and striking when the enemy is away from non-combatants. In this type of warfare, command of the air and air superiority would be obtained even before a single mission is flown by the IAFs strike and interceptor force and they would be rendered irrelevant as the opposition has no air force of its own.

New Dimensions in Warfare

In 1944, Clarence Johnson, the legendary founder of Lockheed’s Skunk works and the designer of the SR-71 and U-2 reconnaissance planes predicted that the future of aviation would belong to the UAV. The last decade has shown that UAVs hold the key to defeating the non-state adversary and a technologically superior air force with appropriate UAV’s and weapons can neutralise the threat. Should the IAF expand the capabilities of its UAVs to engage in fourth-generation warfare and concurrently re-evaluate its requirement of strike and interceptor aircraft for the future?

Cyber warfare is another dimension of fourth-generation warfare and the IAF could find itself pitted against a faceless enemy in the future. A handful of miscreants located in a far away country can cripple vital command, control, communications and computer systems which are the backbone of modern warfare. Cyber warfare comes under the category of ambiguous warfare with an enemy whose nationality and location could be uncertain or even unknown. Response to this threat by conventional weapons is not an option and future confrontations are likely to start with cyber attacks and covert action to stir up militants, separatists or minorities. The present situation in Kashmir and other troubled areas provide a fertile testing ground for such an eventuality.

Could the IAF be forced to engage in fourth-generation warfare and should it train to counter such threats? To summarily dismiss this threat may be foolhardy, to give it disproportionate importance would be even worse. Many air forces are grappling with this dilemma.

Addressing Future Challenges

The IAF sees itself as an international player and over the last 20 years has successfully tested its core competencies in joint exercises with the air forces of France, United States, South Africa, Singapore, Russia and the United Kingdom. During peacetime the IAF remains the mainstay of aerial search, rescue and relief work during natural calamities as seen in Uttarkhand and Kashmir. The air defence of India’s airspace is an ongoing 24 x 7 activity done efficiently, silently and without any fanfare by the IAF. However, all these competencies relate to the classical roles of conventional air warfare similar to the IAF’s tasks during the last war in 1971. Today the IAF is faced with threats that are different to those of the latter half of the last century.

The classic charge against military leadership is that they always prepare to fight the last war. The IAF fought its last war with conventional weapons but the next war may be against an adversary who has the ability to escalate the conflict to a nuclear engagement or against an armed adversary who has no air force. In future, the IAF could even find itself pitched into combat against a handful of faceless cyber warriors sitting on a different continent.

The uncertain security environment ahead demands that the air force’s senior leadership constantly evaluate new threats and structure the IAF’s training to win the wars of the future. The operational preparedness of the IAF must be relevant to the challenges of tomorrow.