New Delhi: CDS General Anil Chauhan speaking at the Air Force capstone seminar on June 25, which marked the culmination of the third Warfare & Aerospace Strategy Program (WASP) course, emphasised that the cost of future wars would be “enormous”. He stressed on the need to optimise resources and manpower and bring in efficiencies to afford weapons and systems of the future.
“Before talks of fusion between civil and military resources, there should be fusion within the Army, Navy and Air Force,” he said. “We have taken that up (service integration) and at last count, we had almost 170-odd initiatives where the three services can work together in an integrated manner. In these processes, we will be able to optimise time, resources, processes, infrastructure and manpower.”
A strategic education programme of 15 weeks, WASP was started in 2022 to provide participants with a deep understanding of geopolitics, grand strategy and comprehensive national power, and is conducted by the IAF along with College of Air Warfare and Centre for Air Power Studies.
“After integration within the three services, the logical step would be to take the approach forward to other services. For instance, the Navy and Coast Guard can get the inventories and maintenance, repair and overhaul together. The Armed forces can also involve the Central Armed Police Forces into whatever logistics and infrastructure (that are) created,” General Chauhan added.
Pointing out that there are “hundreds of things where we can actually help the government to reduce costs”, General Chauhan said, “Because the cost of future wars is enormous, weapon systems and platforms are going to be very costly.”
He asked if expanding civil aviation could have a military payoff. “We need to think on alternate ways of doings things. It has to be very practical and time bound,” he added.
