Lessons from Iran and Ukraine: Low-tech also works. Why India must rethink defence doctrine

Two recent wars, the one going on between Ukraine and Russia, and the other between Israel-US and Iran, will force all defence doctrines and military strategies to be re-examined everywhere. In both war, two defenders, Iran and Ukraine, were dwarfed by the firepower of the adversary, but neither has caved in, much less been defeated.

What has differentiated these two wars from the ones that happened before them are the following:

One, low-tech and low-cost defence and offence equipment like drones and missiles are able to counter much stronger air and sea power of the adversary. Air and sea power, in which the US and Israel have had an overwhelming advantage, has not been able to quell the resistance from Iran. Far from it, the latter has been able to take the war – at least in terms of drones and missiles unleashed – to its opponents’ (even bystanders’) territory, causing economic damage to energy and other infrastructure. Ukrainian drones have caused enough damage to Russian refineries for the latter to start worrying about energy security, when Russia is one of the world’s largest reservoirs of oil and gas.

Two, future wars – as the ongoing ones demonstrate - will be about causing economic, political and social damage to the opponent, so that the enemy will start facing domestic resistance to the war which causes so much hardship to ordinary people. Apart from destroying infrastructure, cyber attacks and information wars will be unleashed to sap the will of the enemy to fight. A war to ensure regime change in Iran may, through its recoil effects, may paradoxically end up ensuring regime change in the US and Israel, where both Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump face headwinds in elections due later this year.

Three, and this point has been well noted by many military experts, most of the wars will be conducted without crossing borders. We saw this in Operation Sindoor, and we are seeing this again in Iran and Ukraine, the Gulf, Israel and Russia too. While Israel and the US do cross the Iranian borders at will, but that is from a few miles up in the sky. And this too because Iran has no air force or navy worth talking about. Air and sea power can reduce an enemy’s cities and infrastructure to rubble, but they cannot decisively ensure a positive outcome in the war.

Four, geopolitical realities will make most future wars world wars, but without active participation by other powers. Ukraine is fighting with the military might and technology of Nato behind it. Iran is fighting with the logistical and intelligence support of both China and Russia. The US was the sole sucker to be drawn into a local conflict between Iran and Israel, a mistake it will hopefully correct sooner than later in order the spare the world a huge and prolonged energy shock. But in the new geopolitics, no large country can really hope to over-run another large country on its own. It needs a larger support base from countries that may have a stake in its survival. America has Israel’s back, and China has Iran’s.

Five, it may become easy to start wars, but more difficult to end them as too many players get involved, and national honour makes it difficult to exit quickly. For example, Iran has found an answer to the US-Israel strategy of decapitating its leadership. Long before the war, it had already planned for a distributed command structure, where strategic units in different parts of the country could autonomously continue to wage war. But this leaves us with a different problem: how do you get the multiple commanders to agree on one policy?

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corp, the core force holding the regime together, has 31 regional commands and one in Teheran, each with an independent ability to make war. To get agreement on any peace deal, you have to get 31-plus powerful commanders to agree, something not easy when they may all fear to assemble in one place for fear of Israeli strikes. Peace is not going to be decided by Whatsapp communications. The Ukraine war cannot end easily because core European Union leaders do not have a unified stand on how much to concede to Russia in order to work out a durable peace. They are all talking at cross purposes, while Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky is on his own trip.

These challenges give India both the opportunity and the focus needed to redraw its doctrines and war-fighting strategies in place quickly. For we have to contend with a Pakistan than wants to do us damage, and a China that wants to contain us and slow down our rise.

Here are some questions to examine.

#1: What is the utility of a very large air force, which is costly to buy and maintain, and also of doubtful utility in a battlefield defined by drones and missiles? This is not to suggest that we don’t need an air force, but even replacing the existing squadrons is a challenge. We are now down to 29, and this could deplete further even if we assume that Tejas deliveries will speed up, and we choose to buy more Rafales and/or Su57s from France and Russia. None of these will add to squadron strengths before the early 2030s, and our own AMCA (Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft) is yet to be prototyped, developed and put into production. Most probably AMCAs will not arrive on the scene before the second half of the 2030s. Our adversaries are not going to wait for that long.

The problem can be converted into a strength if, in the short term, the big bulk of our defence spending is shifted to drones, missiles and building defence shields to neutralise the projectiles used against us. We must do this in scale, like ordering (say) 100,000 drones and an equal number of missiles with various ranges, which can be launched from air, sea and land (artillery and tanks).  These can provide effective deterrence both against Pakistan and China even as we wait for new and modern stealth squadrons to arrive.

#2: Theatre commands; Some progress has been made in this area, and there seems to be a broad consensus on how these commands will be set up. According to news reports, the Western Command, whose job it will be to defend against Pakistan, will be headed by an Air Force person, and the northern command, which will have to deter China, by the army. The southern command, which will need to police the Indian ocean and protect maritime trade, will be headed by a naval commander. Large parts of the coast guard will probably come under it. While this sounds like a good compromise, the missing element is probably an eastern command, focused on the Bangladesh border, the Chicken’s neck, the north-east, and the Myanmar border, where the challenges are as much internal as external. We cannot leave this challenge to be dealt with by the northern command, which faces a much more capable enemy than Pakistan. Each theatre must not only be self-sufficient in terms of all the equipment it needs, but must also be able to help the other commands if needed.

#3: An equally important challenge will come from the 0.5 front, internal enemies and sleeper cells. While this is largely the job of the police and the national security establishment, the easy availability of lethal drones and missiles and hand-held weaponry could well see us fighting a half-war with anti-India forces. These forces may rear their ugly heads just when we need to concentrate on the external enemy. We may thus need a unified internal theatre command of civil forces.

India has a lot of rethinking to do. It has to get that done this year. There is not much time to lose.