‘Lethal, Resolute & United’: Army Chief Gen Upendra Dwivedi Says Indian Military Ready For The Era of Constant Conflict

New Delhi: Declaring that the global security order today is locked in “an era of profound flux”, Chief of Army Staff Gen Upendra Dwivedi, addressing the Forces First Conclave at the Manekshaw Centre in Delhi on Saturday, said interstate competition, contestation and conflict have become the defining features of major power relations.

“Ongoing conflicts report fresh strikes every day and that’s not just kinetic, but sometimes in cyberspace and the rest of the times in narratives,” he said.

Calling today’s era an age of constant conflicts, if not wars, Gen Dwivedi said 56 conflicts were raging on across the world today with nearly 90 nations directly or indirectly involved. “And this keeps increasing, not decreasing by any chance,” he said.

He outlined his address around four interlinked sub-themes: “How future wars are unfolding before us; what we achieved and learnt through Operation Sindoor; how multi-domain operations are emerging as the new reality of warfare; and how these shifts are shaping our immediate neighbourhood.”

He outlined four distinct trends in modern warfare:

1. Comprehensive Conflict: He said in today’s world, the “limited war” concept had transformed into an “age of comprehensive conflict”. Citing the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, he said, “These are the wars that mobilised entire nations, where societies, industries and technologies are all drawn into the fight. Operation Sindoor, too, reflected this transformation, where diplomacy, deterrence and decisive force fused into a single expression of national resolve.”
2. Cycle of Adaptation: Invoking JFC Fuller’s insight of “the constant tactical factor”, Gen Dwivedi said, “As wars expand in scale and complexity, they reaffirm the fact that every improvement in weapons soon meets a counter-improvement that renders the first obsolete.” Using recent examples — precision-guided munitions blunted by deep electronic-warfare in Ukraine; the race between unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and counter-UAS — he noted that in India’s context “the first and the fifth generations of warfare, i.e. trench warfare to AI and quantum, co-exist. That’s a compulsion for us by virtue of our long land borders”.
3. Convergence of Capability: Gen Dwivedi said the constant race of innovation had levelled the landscape of war. Emphasising that geographical advantage was being eroded by technology, he said, “Technology is leap-frogging beyond the speed of Moore’s Law and has become the great battle-space equaliser transcending through various domains.”
4. Composition of Conflict: “The face of war itself has changed as much as its form,” Gen Dwivedi said. “Wars today are not just waged by soldiers but also terrorist groups, militias like the Wagner Group, citizen-soldiers like the Ukrainians and, of course, the narrative which is in the mind whether you are one or not.” He again brought in Operation Sindoor as an example of how the composition of conflict has shifted beyond traditional state-on‐state battles.

Key Takeaways for India’s Defence Posture

From the latest trends, he distilled five priority lessons for India:

1. Land remains the currency of victory: Drawing on Mark Twain’s quip “buy land, they aren’t making it anymore,” he reminded that in land warfare, destruction is not enough — you must evict, occupy and psychologically dominate.
2. The fallacy of short wars: He warned that no modern conflict can be assumed to run four days or four months. It could well run four years.
3. Military-civil fusion & conventional capability: While emerging domains matter, conventional forces remain essential. Self-reliant defence industrial capability, he said, is no longer optional but foundational. “If you are aatmanirbhar, you have the flexibility to change the tenor and pace of the war through modification, adaptation and implementation of the latest technology,” he said.
4. The calculus of interdependence: “Strategic autonomy may no longer mean always going it alone. It may evolve into strategic hedging — partnerships shaped by convenience, cooperation and realism,” he said.
5. Multi-domain wars need multi-capable forces: “While future conflicts will span multiple domains, they will only succeed if backed by potent, precise and punitive conventional forces,” he said.

Operation Sindoor: A Case Study in Future War

Putting on record that it was for the first time that the government had the clarity and the confidence in the Defence Forces, giving them 100% freedom, Gen Dwivedi said, “It is this kind of synergy and politico-military fusion that makes India such a great country today. So, as nations confront today’s shifting landscape, the real test lies not just in capability but in clarity: How we think about the war itself.”

Gen Dwivedi said Operation Sindoor illustrated “every facet of modern warfare we discussed… it was like a rhythmic orchestra where all sounds played together in various decibels: riflemen to Rashtra, jawaan to jahaan, worked in harmony.” He said in “just 88 hours, a new chapter was written in the history of warfare”, compelling Pakistan to seek a cessation of hostilities by having its illusion of impunity “shattered… struck deep into its heartland, including Punjab and Rawalpindi, … and punctured the nuclear bogey that had long constrained conventional response.”

He underscored that this wasn’t just a coincidence but “deliberate design driven by foresight, preparation, organisational transformation and the tri-service synergy that became the strongest point and shook others”. Hailing the tri-service synergy as phenomenal, Gen Dwivedi said, “It was because of this coordination that gave us the exceptional results.”

He traced the Indian Army’s transformation journey, which commenced in 2023 under former Army Chief General Manoj Pande’s leadership with alignment of its structures, doctrines and mindset with the evolving warfare. “2024 and 2025 were declared as the years of technology absorption and 2025 was designated as the year of reforms, affirming that transformation is not an event but a continuum,” he said.

Naming some known transformation structures such as “Rudra, Bhairav”, he said, “We have a number of new transformation structures in the making.”

He said Operation Sindoor also revealed a deeper truth about the changing character of war that modern conflicts can no longer be confined to single domains. “The same integration of land, air, cyber, space, information, electronic spectrum and even the academia and industry and on special request now the narrative management system (the media) that defined Operation Sindoor now points to the future of warfare, which is multi-domain operations,” he said.

He said multi-domain operations was about creating simultaneity of effects, combining fires, influence and information faster than adversary can react, also called as OODA loop. “We have been working on it for over a year now. We have had apex-level discussions on multi-domain operations in war games. So, we were mentally prepared during Operation Sindoor and it gave us great dividends towards cross-domain application,” he said.

Highlighting one fact as the most important of all, Gen Dwivedi said, “The traditional land domain now integrates and projects across every dimension of technology and terrain. This terrain includes the low altitude aerial battle space over the battlefield, sometimes called the air littoral. With the air littoral being saturated by the unmanned aerial system and counter-unmanned aerial systems, including the electromagnetic spectrum, the land forces need to find solutions to fully dominate it.”

Turmoil In Neighbourhood & India’s Strategic Outlook

Amid hostility in the immediate neighbourhood, Gen Dwivedi said India is guided by its civilisational vision of Vishwabandhu and Vishwamitra — seeking peace through equilibrium, friendship through strength and inclusivity through preparedness.

However, he noted turbulence persists. “From Myanmar to Bangladesh, from Gen-Z activism in Nepal to strategic recalibrations in Sri Lanka and Maldives — traditional rivalries, new alignments, internal transitions, everything is ongoing across South Asia,” he said, asserting that in any contingency India may face officially one adversary, but “our resource and cognitive stretch would have to be applied in multiple directions.

He pointed out that the Indian Army is engaged in strategic communication with all its neighbours through trustful, reassuring dialogue. He also referenced this week’s hosting of the first-ever Conclave of Army Chiefs of UN troop-contributing countries (32 nations) in India — evidence of India’s growing role as a “significant debt-security provider” in its neighbourhood.

Task At Hand — Be Prepared, Purposeful & Ahead

General Dwivedi said: “We live in an age of constant conflict and change. Our task is clear — to stay prepared, to stay purposeful and stay ahead in the evolution of warfare. The Indian military stands ready — lethal in capability, resolute in character and united in cause.”

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