Author: Air Vice Marshal Prashant Mohan VM (Retd), Additional Director General, CAPSS

Keywords: Conventional War, Air Power, Drone Warfare, New Normal, AI-Fused Targeting

Since February 2026, the United States, Israel and Iran have fought what most call a “war”. This label is nothing else but a conflict fought without any formal declaration. Shifting American goals. This paper resists that habit. It asks two narrower questions before drawing any lesson. Does it meet the standard tests of “conventional war”? Does its air campaign meet the standard tests of “conventional air warfare”? The answer to both, this paper argues, is qualified. The conflict sits close enough to the conventional category on some counts, and far enough from it on others. What follows tests that claim, then draws out what are the departures, the “new normal” it previews, and what it means for India.

Testing the Conflict Against the Definition

Conventional war has been defined as organized, armed conflict between political entities such as states. Two features stand out: organization and political purpose. War is not a random brawl or a spontaneous act of violence. It is deliberate, planned, and directed toward achieving specific goals. Emphasis on organization is important which separates war from a riot, or ordinary criminal violence. A war requires structured groups with leadership, resources, and the capacity to sustain conflict over time. In another place it is described as state-on-state conflict between organized, uniformed, professional military forces using massed firepower in open space away from civilians with the aim of destroying each other to gain and hold ground. Irregular war, by contrast, is fought by non-state or hybrid actors below that threshold.

The current understanding of irregular and conventional warfare envisions them as two distinct, mutually exclusive categories. Measured against that continuum, this conflict sits closer to the conventional end than an insurgency or a proxy war would, but well short of a textbook state-on-state war.

The conflict began on 28 February 2026, when Israel and the United States launched air-strikes against Iranian military and nuclear-infrastructure sites, without any preceding declaration of war. Direct combatants eventually included Israel, the United States, and Iran, along with non-state actors like those in Lebanon and Yemen, a structure not clearly a bounded state Iranian army. A ceasefire was announced in June 2026; Washington declared the conflict over in July; but the endpoint remained contested. A diffuse start, a mixed coalition and an ambiguous end. The conflict’s own factual record supports a mixed verdict.

The Case For

The conflict looks recognisably conventional in several respects. Two sovereign states, Israel and Iran, deployed regular armed forces against each other’s territory, with the United States joining as a third state actor rather than an irregular partner. The stated objectives were conventional in nature: destruction of Iran’s nuclear-enrichment capacity and its ballistic-missile and air-defence infrastructure. The weapons employed were conventional in class too. Israeli tempo of 2,500 sorties delivering more than 6,000 munitions against Iranian targets within days, is consistent with a state air force fighting a state adversary. Iran responded with large-scale ballistic-missile and drone salvoes. CENTCOM’s own description of the resulting air situation, citing air dominance and near “impunity” over Iranian airspace, is itself the language of a conventional air campaign.

The Case Against

The case against is at least as strong. No formal declaration opened the conflict, and no treaty has formally closed it; a June ceasefire and a July American declaration that the war had ended did not stop intermittent strikes afterward. That ambiguity is not cosmetic. Can one say that a state of war exists- really confusing.

The coalition structure is equally asymmetric. Israel and the United States fought as a combined partners. Iran fought largely alone, reinforced by non-state partners and by alleged big power support. A conventional war, in the textbook sense, assumes two sides of broadly comparable organisational character, even where capabilities differ. This conflict paired a formal alliance against a single state leaning on informal, deniable support.

Non-kinetic and covert tools did at least as much work as declared strikes. Israeli operations reportedly combined HUMINT penetration, sabotage by smuggled precision munitions with air strikes well before the declared opening of hostilities. A covert campaign already under way and a war said to have started in February. It is fighting one hybrid war that includes conventional elements.

Conventional War Assumptions Busted

Several assumptions long treated as settled did not survive this conflict. The first is that escalation, once begun, follows a roughly predictable ladder that combatants and observers can track and manage. Instead, strikes, ceasefires and renewed incidents overlapped in a pattern closer to a fluctuating pressure gauge.

The second is that proportionality can be judged by territory changing hands, the traditional yardstick of a conventional war’s scale. Much of this conflict’s effect was instead measured in degraded capability: roughly eighty per cent of Iran’s air defences destroyed, and a ninety per cent fall in Iran’s ballistic-missile attack rate over the campaign, figures describing capacity destroyed rather than ground taken.

The third is that troop numbers and force ratios remain the primary predictor of outcome. Precision-strike capacity, and the intelligence architecture cueing it, did far more explanatory work here than raw force size on either side.

The fourth, and most consequential for how future conflicts get named, is that a “war” is a discrete event distinguishable from a “: sustained strike campaign.” This conflict was, for long stretches, indistinguishable from the latter: rolling strikes without a fixed order of battle, punctuated by ceasefires that did not hold.

The Air Campaign: How Far from Conventional

The air campaign is where the conflict departs furthest from a conventional model. From Israeli and US side manned aircraft, not drones, still carried the overwhelming majority of ordnance. What changed was not who flew the aircraft but what fed them target data, and how fast.

Target identification and battle-damage assessment leaned heavily on artificial-intelligence fusion tools layered over traditional sources and open-source reporting into a single picture at a pace not matched earlier. Israeli and US reportedly used AI to compress a targeting cycle, and a continuously updated picture.

Independent open-source researchers, drawing on commercially available imagery, published battle-damage assessments and order-of-battle updates on a timeframe comparable to official military releases, and in some cases ahead of them, running a parallel, unclassified verification loop alongside the campaign. Iran, for its part, drew on satellite support attributed to China to offset its own reconnaissance deficit.

Loitering munitions and low-cost drones employed by both sides, operated at a scale a conventional air order of battle rarely accounted. Blurring what had been a reasonably clean line between an air force’s crewed order of battle and an irregular actor’s improvised arsenal. None of this required a genuinely novel weapon. It required the fusion of AI processing, commercial space access and low-cost strike platforms once available almost exclusively to states with large defence-industrial bases.

Conventional Air-War Assumptions Busted, and Why

Four specific assumptions about conventional air warfare did not hold, each tracing to the same driver: the low-cost availability of artificial intelligence, commercial space imagery and drone technology to actors who previously could not have fielded them.

The first is manned-aircraft primacy as the organising assumption of an air campaign’s centre of gravity. Aircraft still flew the missions, but the campaign’s tempo was set by AI-fused targeting pipeline, not by cockpit availability.

The second is that ISR in a modern air campaign remains a state-monopolised function. Commercial satellite operators and open-source researchers ran a verification loop in near-real time alongside the official one. Commercial space assets partially substituted for a weaker state’s own reconnaissance shortfall. The same category of artificial-intelligence vendor underpinning military targeting pipelines has itself become an object of state supply-chain risk assessment.

The third is that strike economics remain roughly cost-proportionate, expensive interceptors matched against expensive threats. Iran’s asymmetric playbook, reportedly sharpened by its own use of AI to optimise drone and missile employment against Israeli and allied defences, exploited exactly the inverse economics: cheap mass against expensive point-defence.

The fourth is that an air campaign has a definable front line in the way a ground campaign does. Strikes, sabotage and drone incursions occurred against targets scattered across Iranian, Israeli and regional territory without a contiguous air-defence boundary either side could treat as settled, a pattern closer to the diffuse geography of a cyber campaign than a conventional air war’s bounded contest for defined airspace.

The New Normal in Air Warfare

The four claims motivating this question, that speed is displacing stealth, that layered air defence is proving a myth, that air superiority is no longer a panacea, and that a static target will eventually be found, are thanks to this conflict’s record. Coverage of Iran’s Kheibar-class missiles in this conflict makes the same point in reverse: the edge lies less in raw velocity, since conventional ballistic missiles already exceed Mach 5, than in sustained terminal maneuvering that compresses an interceptor’s reaction time. As one assessment put it, Iran’s approach is “not about raw speed… and more about sustained maneuvering,” which turns every engagement into “a moving-target problem at extreme speed”. By late March 2026, Israel had begun rationing its top-tier Arrow interceptors and pushing lower-tier David’s Sling and Iron Dome batteries to engage threats they were not designed for, after Iran launched more than 400 missiles and hundreds of drones over four weeks. The system, built for flexibility rather than sustained high-volume warfare, saw direct hits on Dimona and Arad after intercepts failed. Even as Israel claimed air dominance over Iranian skies, an F-35 reportedly took a hit from an Iranian strike on 23 March 2026. The International Crisis Group’s Ali Vaez drew the wider lesson: “even an F-35 is not invulnerable in a dense, adaptive air-defence environment,” while cautioning that no credible evidence yet shows a basic surface-to-air system achieved it alone. Taleghan 2, a known nuclear-linked site struck once in 2024, was reinforced with additional concrete and soil. It was struck again on 11 March 2026, with satellite imagery showing three precisely placed bunker-buster penetration holes despite the hardening.

Three further shifts sit beside these four. Mass built from attritable, networked systems is displacing the assumption that fewer, exquisite platforms win by quality alone. The electromagnetic spectrum is now as decisive as kinetic strikes. And transparency is double-edged: flooding a command chain with sensor feeds does not automatically yield faster decisions, and can slow them, since reconciling contradictory inputs takes time a compressed targeting cycle no longer allows.

Learnings for India

None of these findings depend on how the conflict is ultimately labelled. The democratisation of AI-fused targeting, commercial-satellite ISR and low-cost drone technology is now a planning fact for India regardless of the conflict’s final classification.

The clearest lesson concerns procurement balance. India’s own commentary on this conflict has already flagged that exquisite, expensive platform when faced with mass, cheap, AI-cued strike systems, may not be true battle winners. High-end platforms require a parallel, lower-cost counter-mass and strike capacity.

The second lesson concerns institutional capacity to absorb AI and cyber tools at speed. Standing service cadres alone may not be the answer. A dedicated national cyber reserve force, drawing on private-sector and reservist technical talent could be what India needs. Prepare against a conflict’s actual character, not its label.

The third lesson concerns the open-source ecosystem itself. As adversarial use of AI for ISR and espionage grows more sophisticated, India’s cybersecurity and counter-ISR posture needs to evolve at a comparable pace, treating commercial-satellite and open-source monitoring as a contested domain rather than a benign civilian sideline.

A fourth lesson is organisational. A targeting cycle compressed from days to hours only pays off if the force around it can decide at the same pace. A responsive command architecture is the precondition for absorbing the fast-cycle campaign this conflict has previewed.

Conclusion

The U.S.-Israel-Iran conflict is not, a conventional war in the fullest sense, nor is its air campaign a conventional air campaign in that sense. It resembles both closely enough. It also diverges from both sharply enough making the comparison qualified. The findings should focus the conditions that produced its departures from the conventional model, and the wider air-warfare “new normal”: AI-fused targeting, commercial-satellite ISR and low-cost, high-speed strike technology, now available to actors well beyond those with large defence-industrial bases. India’s planners should take the conflict less as a template to replicate and more as an early demonstration of that shift. The next conflict India fights is unlikely to resemble this one in detail. It is likely to share its defining feature: a fight decided as much by who fuses information fastest as by who fields the larger force.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Centre for Aerospace Power and Strategic Studies [CAPSS])

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Author: Gp Capt RK Kashyap, Senior Fellow, CAPSS

Keywords: Operation Epic Fury, GCC, Aerial Policing, Air Control, Richard Armitage

The stated aims of the United States of America (USA) for action on Iran, as defined by its Secretary of War, Peter Hagseth, were: “The mission of Operation Epic Fury is to destroy Iranian offensive missiles, Iranian missile production, destroy their navy and other security infrastructure, and (ensure) they will never have nuclear weapons.” The effect so far has been to neutralise Iran’s Navy and security infrastructure, as well as eliminate air opposition to US forces, which are operating with effective impunity in Iranian airspace. The US Air Force has lost only two manned aircraft due to hostile ground fire in the air, with another eight heavy and transport aircraft damaged or lost on the ground due to missile attacks. The entire stated loss of unmanned aircraft has been 24 MQ-9 Reaper Drones and one MQ-4C Triton long-endurance maritime surveillance drone. These multi-mission surveillance and strike drones have borne the brunt of the losses to the integrated Iranian air defence systems. The Iranian’s have launched approximately 4,500 one-way attack drones and missiles at US forces and its regional allies since the onset of the conflict in late February 2026. The vast majority of these launches (roughly 83 per cent to 90 per cent) targeted Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states, and some hit US military installations in Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar. It has also damaged international shipping in the Gulf of Hormuz.

Looking back in history at a paper by Admiral Edmond Slade on the Petroleum Situation in the British Empire, one finds it illustrative of the entire Western thought on this subject even today, recalling then Imperial Britain’s wartime aims to obtain possession of all the oil-bearing regions in Mesopotamia and Southern Persia. After World War I, the League of Nations mandate over Iraq was assumed by colonial Britain and its occupation was devoted to harvesting the newly found oil through conscription and heavy taxation, which led to a unified Sunni-Shia uprising sometime in May 1920. As tribal militias besieged British garrisons, even destroying a column near the town of Hilla, Britain responded with overwhelming force. The Royal Air Force (RAF) conducted relentless bombing and machine-gunning of insurgent positions and urban centres, causing approximately 6,000 Iraqi deaths and ultimately quelling the rebellion by late 1920 through Aerial Policing and Chemical Weapons. Despite this, the British found the occupation too costly to sustain, even as it was being funded by revenues drained from colonised India.

At the 1921 Cairo Conference, Winston Churchill, then the United Kingdom’s (UK) Secretary of State for the Colonies, devised a strategy of “Air control.” Under the RAF Iraq Command, the military substituted large ground garrisons with airplanes. Whenever a tribe refused to pay taxes or rebelled against the authorities, aircraft were dispatched to bomb and strafe their encampments and livestock. Historian David Omissi documents that honourable British commanders, including a young Arthur “Bomber” Harris (who would later lead World War II’s Bomber Command), regularly deployed delayed-action bombs and even considered the use of mustard gas to subdue resisting populations.

The world, since then, has moved towards the necessity of avoiding civilian deaths in armed conflicts. The rise of civil media and the spread of representative governments have also given rise to the belief that most democracies do not have the stomach for body bags. In light of this, Western interventions in Asia and Africa in pursuit of their peaceful interests have also, post-World War II, led to the coalescing of European interests in applying the US military sword arm against the so-called recalcitrant unfortunate nation. The US logic “If you are not with us, then you are against us” applies conversely too: when no nation opposes US military actions, it also shows acquiescence to US actions. It is under such circumstances that the ability of the US military power to force this subjugation of Iran has become tottered.

The commentariat is also favourable to the modern David, i.e., Iran, treating any launch of drones and missiles, however minimal the damage to US forces, as a victory against the modern Goliath. The regime change in Iran was never the stated aim of the US (it may have hoped for regime folding like Venezuela), though most of Iran’s military hierarchy along with its political leadership was neutralised in the initial days of war. The American hope has been that the replacement Iranian leadership will be amenable to a grand bargain with the US government and a nuclear-defanged Iran, like a neutered bullock, will be gradually allowed its sovereignty under guardianship with the old game of harvesting its vast oil reserves. This task is ongoing and may still come through with the supine brokership of cohorts like Asim Munir. Munir is the perfect candidate, as some 20 years ago, Richard Armitage had delivered the “Bomb back to stone age” ultimatum to another military ruler of his country and who else can teach the Persians the folly of thinking otherwise, especially after the second and threatened further rounds of kinetic punishment through air targeting of infrastructure and whatever is left there to target in Iran.

Pacification through air is what will happen in further rounds of air strikes on Iran, and more may follow before the recalcitrant behaviour is modified to everyone’s satisfaction. When the founding Supreme Leader of Iran decrees that removing Israel is a religious necessity, then a nuclear Iran is not in the world’s interest of peace. While what is being witnessed is not pleasant, this is how the conduct of warfare has evolved from outright occupation, which has proved to be a costly affair for the occupier in terms of boots on the ground (and associated casualties), against the groundswell of opposition in a dogmatic society where a white man’s burden holds no charm or applause. US has probably learnt from its experience in Iraq, and old friend Britain notwithstanding, what others may pretend to know about it. Meanwhile, more strikes are available at short notice in Trump’s World.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Centre for Aerospace Power and Strategic Studies [CAPSS])

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Author: Dr Shrawani Shagun, Research Fellow, CAPSS

Keywords: Climate Change, Himalayan Security, Military Readiness, Earth Observation, Environmental Intelligence

Introduction

On September 04, 2026, India placed EOS-05 (Earth Observation Satellite) into orbit, adding another important capability to its Earth observation capabilities.¹ Designed for near-continuous imaging from geosynchronous orbit, the satellite has applications in disaster monitoring, weather analysis and environmental observation.² But its significance for national security extends beyond what the satellite itself is designed to do.

The military operates in the physical environment that such systems observe. Roads disappear under landslides, runways become unusable, rivers alter routes, communications infrastructure fails, and weather can constrain movement and resupply. The question, therefore, is not simply whether India can see a changing climate. It is whether that information becomes part of how the military prepares to operate in it.

The Bhote Koshi flash flood in Nepal on August 26, 2026 offered a stark illustration. When a cascading Himalayan hazard damaged critical infrastructure, the problem was not only humanitarian.³ It was also operational: establishing what had happened, identifying viable routes, locating affected populations, and moving relief when the authorities required it had themselves been disrupted. The episode raises a larger question for India: can its military remain operational when the physical environment on which its mobility, logistics, and communications depend becomes increasingly unpredictable?

Climate as an Operating Condition

Nepal does not establish a simple causal relationship between climate change and any one disaster. The immediate trigger of the Bhote Koshi event remained under investigation, with official and scientific accounts considering snow-and-rock landslides, ice collapse, and upstream water impoundment mechanisms.⁴ Yet the episode demonstrates why Himalayan hazard chains matter for military planners: they can rapidly destroy infrastructure, cross administrative boundaries, and create immediate demand for high-end state capability.

The Himalayan military climatic concerns combine glacier instability, permafrost degradation, landslides, avalanches, flash floods, and glacial lake outburst risks. India, Nepal and China are linked by mountain systems, river basins, roads, border infrastructure and ecological processes; a hazard can create downstream or cross-border effects. India is also expanding strategic roads, bridges, airfields, and connectivity in difficult terrain. A Himalayan hazard can set off a recognisable sequence: infrastructure disruption generates humanitarian and disaster-response demand; that demand absorbs airlift, engineering, medical, communications, and logistics capacity; and diverting those finite assets can pressure conventional readiness.

While rapid air mobility and advanced technology offer unprecedented speed, they cannot rewrite the rugged terrain. The facts of physical geography will remain critically significant in shaping distinctive strategies for the armed services.⁵ Although modern warfare is increasingly joint in some technical respects, physical geography is not; military forces are structurally obliged to tailor their technical and tactical approaches to function within highly distinctive geophysical environments.⁶ In the high-altitude Himalayan theatre, this physical grammar is unyielding. Planners cannot treat the mountain landscape as a passive backdrop to be bypassed by orbital sensors or aircraft; they must respect and adapt their operational designs to a changing geophysical reality in which melting permafrost and shifting slopes dictate what is physically possible on the ground.

Flooding, slope failure, severe weather, or heat can shut down bases and infrastructure: runways, roads, bridges, storage sites, power supplies, and communications nodes. Forward positions often depend on a limited number of routes. Disruption creates problems of redundancy, stockpiling, alternative access, and repair capacity. High-altitude and heat-exposed forces confront physiological strain, acclimatisation demands, water stress and more difficult evacuation or resupply conditions. Temperature, humidity, precipitation, dust, ground instability and power loss can affect platform performance, maintenance and network availability. Disaster response uses many of the same scarce assets—airlift, engineers, medics, helicopters, logistics and communications—that may be required for conventional missions.

Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) preparedness is not the same as preparing the military to operate in a climate-altered environment. The former treats disruption as an episodic emergency the force responds to. In contrast, the latter treats it as a persistent operating condition around which forces, infrastructure, logistics and information systems must be designed.

From Earth Observation to Military Readiness

Once infrastructure is disrupted, information becomes the first operational requirement. Commanders and civil authorities need to know where the water has gone, which roads remain usable, which bridges and structures are stable, where personnel or civilians are stranded, how terrain has changed and whether the hazard is still evolving. That requirement applies during disaster response, but it also applies to ordinary military mobility, infrastructure protection, route planning, logistics and operational awareness.

India already has an Earth observation ecosystem that meets this requirement. Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) Earth observation programme supports environmental monitoring, agriculture, water resources, forestry, ocean observation, urban planning, and disaster management.⁷ The National Remote Sensing Centre’s Disaster Management Support programme provides satellite-based inputs on hazards, including floods, cyclones, landslides, earthquakes, and forest fires.⁸ EOS-05 should be situated within this wider ecosystem: it is a reminder that the capacity to observe a changing physical environment is becoming a very important national asset.

The military question is not whether India needs Earth observation for climate and disaster applications. It is whether environmental intelligence enters the operational picture through which the armed forces plan, move and sustain themselves. The same data that identify a flooded corridor, unstable slope, damaged runway or disrupted power line can support route selection, logistics planning, base protection, engineering priorities and the allocation of scarce airlift and rescue assets.

This is where EOS should be considered alongside India’s emerging defence-oriented surveillance architecture. Public reporting describes Space-Based Surveillance Phase III, or SBS-III, as a 52-satellite programme intended to strengthen persistent surveillance, intelligence, and reconnaissance, as well as secure communications and land- and maritime domain awareness.⁹ EOS and SBS-III should not be misconstrued as a single system: the former is a national environmental information infrastructure with broad civilian uses. At the same time, the latter is a defence-oriented architecture. But a climate-ready force increasingly needs both pictures at once—the physical-environment picture and the adversary or domain-awareness picture.

This dual requirement demonstrates the precise utility of space power within what Bleddyn Bowen conceptualises as the ‘cosmic coastline.’ Earth orbit is not an isolated high-ground sanctuary, but an adjunct and a flanking environment defined entirely by its proximity and usefulness to Earth.¹⁰ Satellites and their communication streams are strategic ‘tethers of modernity’ that have no intrinsic value; they are only as valuable as the state’s capacity to exploit them to shape political and physical outcomes on the ground. Integrating EOS-05’s environmental data with SBS-III’s threat-tracking capabilities is the logical operationalisation of Bowen’s thesis that outer space must be treated as an information layer designed to enable physical and operational survival on the terrestrial shoreline.¹¹

Integration means a common operational picture combining environmental, meteorological, terrain and threat information; data products designed for route viability, infrastructure condition, flooding, slope risk, weather windows and logistics prioritisation—not only post-disaster mapping; procedures and command arrangements that allow relevant civilian, military and commercial data to move quickly into operational planning; and training that treats environmental intelligence as routine operational input, alongside conventional intelligence.

Space is therefore not the sole basis of climate resilience. It is an information layer that increasingly enables other forms of resilience. Without timely, reliable awareness of terrain, weather, and infrastructure conditions, even well-provisioned forces may struggle to move, communicate, or concentrate capability when it matters most.

Strategic Autonomy and Information Dependence

But an information architecture is only as resilient as its sources, ground infrastructure, communications links, processing systems and contractual access. EOS provides existing domestic environmental information capacity, including civilian and disaster management uses. SBS-III adds a growing defence-oriented surveillance and communications architecture. Commercial systems add capacity, revisit rates, analytics, connectivity, and innovation, but also potentially entail greater contractual, technological, and geopolitical exposure.

This exposure is fundamentally a hardware reality. Critical information infrastructures have become strategic assets in a global contest for technological dominance.¹² Even technologically advanced militaries remain vulnerable to concentrated semiconductor supply chains.¹³ For India, the lesson extends beyond satellite design and launch: space systems depend on specialised processors, sensors, radiation-hardened electronics and other components whose supply chains can remain globally concentrated even when the satellite itself is domestically designed or assembled. Strategic autonomy therefore cannot stop at the satellite bus; it must extend to the critical technologies and supply chains that sustain the orbital information architecture.

The more military readiness depends on persistent information, the more the resilience of that information architecture becomes a component of strategic autonomy. A force may have access to excellent commercial imagery or communications in peacetime but face different conditions when a disaster, conflict, network disruption or geopolitical dispute produces simultaneous demand and restricted access.

Regulatory continuity is not the same as contractual priority; contractual priority is not the same as operational assurance. Indian Space Policy 2023 and the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre’s (IN-SPACe) implementation framework provide authorisation, supervision and government emergency-control mechanisms for non-government space activities.¹⁴ Specific defence contracts can define what access, data delivery, service continuity, surge capacity, redundancy and priority use a provider owes when demand spikes. Even a strong contract cannot overcome a disabled ground station, a damaged fibre link, a cyber-incident, an inaccessible foreign component, unavailable launch or replenishment capacity, or an overwhelmed data-processing node.

Commercial Earth Observation (EO) and communications can add redundancy and capacity. The relevant strategic question is whether the state has designed the contracts, ground infrastructure, data arrangements and contingency plans needed to convert commercial capacity into assured availability during a combined environmental and geopolitical crisis. Strategic autonomy is therefore more than owning satellites or manufacturing hardware domestically. It is the ability to preserve critical information flows and use them operationally when physical, technological and geopolitical systems are under simultaneous pressure.

Five Changes India Should Make

India is not starting from zero. It has established procurement processes, climate and environmental testing capacity, an Earth-observation ecosystem, a growing defence-space architecture, and an expanding commercial space sector. The gap is not the absence of relevant institutions; it is the absence, in the public record, of a systematic mechanism linking climate projections to force design, acquisition, infrastructure, exercises and space-enabled information. This resembles what Anit Mukherjee describes more broadly as an “absent dialogue” among India’s political, bureaucratic and military institutions—a useful lens for understanding the coordination challenge between civilian space organisations and military planners.¹⁵ The published membership of the Space Commission includes senior civilian, national-security and space officials, including the National Security Adviser and the IN-SPACe chair. Still, it does not list a standing Defence Space Agency or Ministry of Defence representative. It is argued that defence stakeholders should receive more formal representation in India’s space-governance structure.¹⁶

This does not necessarily mean the Space Commission must be reconstituted immediately. A more modest first step would be to establish a standing Defence Space Agency or a Ministry of Defence representative, observer, or formal liaison mechanism for matters involving military space services, environmental intelligence, and continuity of critical infrastructure. The aim would be to create a continuous civil–military dialogue without creating another large bureaucracy.

1. Test equipment against projected conditions, not only historical conditions

India’s defence-quality system already uses climatic and environmental-testing standards, including the Quadripartite Standardisation Agreement (QSTAG) 360 and the Military Handbook (MIL-HDBK) 310.¹⁷ The objective should be to incorporate forward-looking regional climate projections into the operating-environment assumptions used for long-life platforms, supply-line roads and high-altitude infrastructure. Procurement should account for higher thermal thresholds, altered precipitation, permafrost degradation, slope instability, and changes in water availability over an asset’s expected service life. This does not require a new testing bureaucracy; it requires updating the risk baseline within existing requirements, trials and life-cycle planning. The Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP) and existing quality-assurance system provide an administrative route to do so, but the public record does not show that projected climate conditions are already being applied systematically.

2. Integrate environmental intelligence into existing space architecture

India does not need a separate climate-satellite constellation to improve military resilience. It needs environmental intelligence to become an operational complement to the space architecture it is already building. Public reporting describes SBS-III as a 52-satellite programme intended to strengthen persistent surveillance, intelligence, reconnaissance, secure communications and land-and-maritime domain awareness.¹⁸ EOS and SBS-III should not be treated as interchangeable systems: EOS represents national environmental-information infrastructure with broad civilian and disaster-management uses, while SBS-III is a defence-oriented surveillance architecture. The objective should therefore be a controlled, tiered information interface, not unrestricted fusion of civilian and classified data. Environmental products such as route-viability assessments, flood overlays, slope-risk maps, runway-condition reports and weather windows could be made available at the appropriate classification level to engineers, logistics planners and operational commanders, while sensitive threat data remain compartmented. Antariksha Abhyas 2024 offers an existing institutional precedent: the DSA conducted the exercise with the armed services, ISRO, Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and other security organisations to examine operational dependence on space services and vulnerabilities caused by disruption or denial.¹⁹

3. Climate-stress conventional exercises and wargames

Environmental hazards should become active operational variables rather than remaining administrative HADR afterthoughts. Joint exercises should test a conventional border crisis occurring simultaneously with a glacial-lake outburst, landslide, flood or extreme-heat episode that destroys a supply bridge, degrades communications and generates an urgent civilian disaster-response demand. Such scenarios would test redundancy, decentralised mission command, alternative routes, logistics prioritisation and the ability to maintain the command cycle under physical disruption. India’s Joint Doctrine for Multi-Domain Operations provides a useful framework because it calls for coordinated employment of military and non-military capabilities across land, sea, air, space, cyber and cognitive domains through a Whole-of-Nation Approach.²⁰ No comparable public evidence was located of Indian conventional wargames systematically combining these climate-stress variables. That is an observation about the public record, not proof that such planning does not occur.

4. Guarantee continuity of commercial space services

India’s general civilian space-regulatory framework is not a substitute for defence-specific service assurance. IN-SPACe’s authorisation framework permits the government to impose controls on satellite, payload and ground-station operations during conflict, natural disasters or declared emergencies.²¹ That is an emergency-control power; it is not the same as guaranteeing military priority access, uninterrupted data delivery or surge capacity. Defence contracts for commercial Earth observation, satellite communications, data processing and geospatial analytics should therefore specify crisis priority, data control, surge capacity, redundancy, alternate ground stations, delivery timelines and continuity of service. The objective is to convert commercial capacity into operationally assured capability, rather than assuming that commercial availability in peacetime will automatically translate into access during conflict or disaster.

5. Secure the microelectronics supply chain for orbital hardware

Strategic autonomy in space and climate resilience is incomplete if the processors running India’s orbital and ground-control systems depend on a concentrated global fabrication base. ISRO has already begun addressing this: in February 2026, it announced plans to produce space-grade semiconductors domestically within four years through its Semiconductor Laboratory in Chandigarh, which has already developed the space-qualified Vikram 32-bit processor.²² This effort sits within the government’s broader SEMICON India Mission, which has committed roughly INR 76,000 crore to reducing import dependence on chips.²³ The relevant policy task is not to invent a new procurement mechanism inside DAP—India’s Buy (Indian-IDDM) category sets indigenous-content thresholds, not production-quantity guarantees, and does not currently establish any equivalent for semiconductor manufacturing runs.²⁴ The task is instead to ensure that SCL Chandigarh’s space-grade output, and any future defence-relevant fabrication capacity built under SEMICON India, is scaled and funded to the specific volumes SBS-III, EOS follow-on missions, and secure ground infrastructure will require—rather than leaving that demand signal implicit.

Conclusion

The Bhote Koshi disaster was a reminder of how quickly a Himalayan hazard can turn infrastructure failure into an operational problem. It did not prove that every such event is caused by climate change. It showed instead why a military cannot assume that roads, bridges, airfields, communications networks and information systems will remain available when they are most needed. The issue is not whether climate change is an environmental concern for the armed forces. It is whether India’s forces can remain operational when the physical environment in which they are based, move and communicate becomes less predictable. A climate-ready military is therefore not simply one that can respond to disasters. It is one designed to remain operational in the environment those disasters help reshape.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Centre for Aerospace Power and Strategic Studies [CAPSS])

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Author: Air Vice Marshal GK Mohan, AVSM (Retd)

Keywords: Drone Warfare, Air-Mindedness, Distributed Air Power, Joint Doctrine, Integrated Air Defence

Introduction

A cheap, expendable aircraft is no longer a contradiction in terms. In February 2024, six small Ukrainian uncrewed surface vessels sank the Russian missile corvette Ivanovets in the Black Sea.¹ No sailor risked capture. No pilot risked a shoot-down. A platform costing a fraction of its target achieved an effect once reserved for a submarine or an air strike. This is not an isolated curiosity. It is the leading edge of a broader shift: drones are becoming, in effect, Special Forces industrialised, and every service that owns one is quietly acquiring a sliver of air power, whether it says so or not.

That claim needs unpacking before it can be tested. It is not an argument that drones have replaced Special Forces, or that they have replaced manned aircraft. It is narrower and more useful: a drone that infiltrates contested space, observes, deceives, or strikes is performing a Special Forces-type mission using an air-power toolkit, at industrial rather than boutique scale. Understanding that toolkit, not simply buying the airframe, is what decides whether the mission succeeds.

The Special Forces Analogy, Tested

Special Forces earn their reputation through scarcity: exceptional selection, years of training, and a readiness to accept extreme personal risk for a disproportionate effect. Drones borrow the effect without the scarcity. In the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, Azerbaijan’s Bayraktar TB2 drones and Israeli-made loitering munitions destroyed more than one hundred Armenian main battle tanks, degraded Armenian air defences, and fed live imagery into unguided artillery fire, on a defence budget under two billion dollars.² No Special Forces operation in that conflict produced comparable effect, at that price, without a single soldier crossing the line of contact.

The Russia-Ukraine war has pushed the logic further. Ukraine manufactured an estimated 1.2 million first-person-view drones in 2024 alone, at a unit cost as low as a few hundred dollars, against artillery and armoured systems worth millions.³ Independent analysis attributes roughly two-thirds of destroyed or damaged Russian equipment to drone strikes rather than conventional artillery or armour.⁴ Production has climbed further since, with think-tank estimates suggesting Ukrainian output could approach five million drones in 2025.⁵ That is not a boutique capability. It is an industrial one, and it behaves like one: attritable, replaceable, improvable between production batches rather than between generations.

Two features distinguish this from ordinary attrition. First, ambiguity: a drone lost over contested territory rarely triggers the diplomatic and domestic costs of a captured or killed operator. Second, reach across every domain at once. Houthi forces in the Red Sea have deployed aerial, surface and, since February 2024, underwater drones against shipping and naval escorts, forcing navies to defend against a threat that can approach from above, alongside and beneath the waterline simultaneously.⁶ A Special Forces team cannot occupy three domains at once. A distributed drone force, in principle, can.

A System, Not a Gadget

None of this works if a drone is treated as an isolated object. Its intelligence, target data, navigation, communications, and electronic-warfare support all come from somewhere else, and that somewhere else is the wider air-power architecture: sensors, networks, mission planning, manufacturing and, increasingly, software updates pushed to platforms already in the field. Strip that architecture away and a drone reverts to what critics have long feared it would become: expensive, disconnected flying artillery.

The United States Air Force’s Skyborg programme made this logic explicit. Rather than build an exquisite platform meant to last decades, it designed uncrewed aircraft with lifespans measured in months, deliberately accepting attrition in exchange for lower cost and faster iteration, feeding directly into the Collaborative Combat Aircraft programme, which now targets more than a thousand such aircraft.⁷ The value was never the airframe. It was the willingness to lose the airframe without losing the capability it represented.⁸

Air power has a cultural habit that reinforces this logic, and it predates drones by decades: the debrief. After every mission, fighter pilots gather to interrogate what happened, why it happened and how to fix it, holding themselves to what one former fighter pilot has called “tenacious honesty, not against each other, but against themselves.”⁹ Ukraine’s drone units have, in effect, industrialised that habit, iterating designs and tactics between production batches faster than an adversary can adapt to any single version. Loss becomes data, not merely damage.

The Doctrinal Test: Air-Mindedness

Buying an airframe is easy. Employing it as part of a system is not. Analysts tracking India’s own drone build-up have flagged exactly this gap: fragmented command arrangements across services, and the absence of a single, unified doctrine for how uncrewed systems should be fought rather than merely fielded.¹⁰ A tri-service issue brief published in early 2026 went further, recommending a dedicated joint procurement and doctrine authority, precisely because current arrangements risk duplicated effort alongside genuine gaps in coordination.¹¹

The risk is not hypothetical. A drone employed without reference to a wider air picture can wander into another formation’s engagement zone, trigger a friendly air-defence system, or duplicate an asset already tasked against the same target. None of these is drone problems as such. They are coordination problems that happen to involve drones, and no amount of platform ownership resolves them on its own.

For India, geography sharpens the stakes. A force that must plan simultaneously against Pakistan and China cannot afford three services independently rediscovering the same coordination failures on two active fronts. A drone doctrine written once and applied consistently across both is cheaper than relearning the lesson under fire on the second front after already paying for it on the first.

India’s Working Precedent

India already has a partial answer, tested under fire rather than worked out in a seminar room. During Operation Sindoor in May 2025, the Indian Air Force’s Integrated Air Command and Control System, the Army’s Akashteer network and the Navy’s Trigun system operated together as, in the government’s own description, “a joint operational backbone,” producing a unified, real-time operational picture that let commanders act quickly while reducing the risk of fratricide.¹² The Integrated Air Command and Control System (IACCS) itself fused radar, airborne early-warning and ground-sensor data to track incoming threats and assign them to the appropriate interceptor, compressing a decision cycle that would otherwise have depended on manual coordination between services.¹³ Akashteer performed the equivalent function for Army air-defence units, integrating radars and weapon systems that had previously operated on separate, slower loops.¹⁴

This arrangement worked not because one service subordinated its assets to another. Ownership stayed where it belonged. What changed was that the picture, and the coordination built on top of it, became genuinely shared.¹⁵ That distinction, between owning a platform and controlling a campaign, is the one a drone doctrine needs to preserve.

A Tiered Framework for Ownership

Extending that precedent to drones argues for a framework built on three tiers rather than one blanket rule. Tactical drones used for reconnaissance, local protection or immediate precision effects can remain organic to the formation that owns them, so long as their effects stay local and their flight paths stay clear of wider air operations. Missions that cross formation boundaries, enter contested or shared airspace, or need electronic-warfare or suppression support should shift to coordinated employment, in which the owning service still tasks the mission. Still, the air component deconflicts it against everything else flying in that space. Missions whose purpose is air superiority, deep strike, or suppression of an integrated air-defence system belong under aerospace-led employment, where campaign authority, not merely airspace management, sits with the service equipped to orchestrate it.

This is not a hierarchy of prestige. It is a hierarchy of risk and dependency. A quadcopter watching the next ridge line creates almost no risk to anyone else’s operations. A strike package penetrating a defended air corridor creates a great deal, and needs the intelligence, jamming and suppression machinery that only a genuine air campaign can supply.

The Bespoke Exception

Every framework needs room for the operation that breaks its own rules. On June 01, 2025, Ukraine smuggled 117 small drones into Russia concealed inside truck-mounted containers, then launched them near airbases thousands of kilometres from the front line, destroying roughly a third of Russia’s strategic bomber fleet in a single coordinated strike.¹⁶ No formation owned that mission in any conventional sense. It was planned, rehearsed and executed as a single bespoke event, exploiting a route and a vulnerability that would not survive a second use.

That is precisely the exception a rigid ownership framework must accommodate, and precisely why it cannot become the template. Once exposed, the smuggling method, the control links and the target set are studied and defended against; Russia has since dispersed and sheltered aircraft that were previously left exposed on open aprons.¹⁷ Repeating the effect will require the intelligence, deception and suppression machinery of a sustained campaign, not another improvised route across a border. A tiered doctrine should therefore protect the bespoke raid as a rare instrument of surprise, available to whichever service finds the opportunity, while resisting the temptation to generalise a single success into a standing method of employment.

Escalation Control and Its Limits

Proponents of distributed drone ownership sometimes argue that smaller, cheaper platforms make escalation easier to manage: a lost drone costs less, politically and materially, than a lost pilot so that leaders can act and de-escalate at lower risk. There is real substance to this. Classic analysis of coercive air power identifies the ability to raise costs on an adversary while retaining the ability to pause, calibrate or stand down as central to why air power succeeds as an instrument of pressure rather than blunt destruction.¹⁸ A genuinely attritable platform extends that logic further down the escalation ladder than a manned strike aircraft ever could.

The same feature cuts the other way. A lower political cost of employment can also lower the threshold for employment, and an adversary facing swarms of ambiguous, hard-to-attribute drones may find a calibrated response harder, not easier, to judge correctly. Operation Spiderweb illustrates both sides of that coin at once: it demonstrated exceptional control over escalation, since Ukraine chose precisely which aircraft to strike and when, but it also demonstrated to Moscow that no airbase, however distant, could any longer be treated as sanctuary, a lesson that itself invites a harder-to-predict response.¹⁹ Nagorno-Karabakh and the Red Sea add further evidence of decisive tactical effect; none of the three cases shows that cheaper platforms make escalation management easier by default. What determines the outcome is still the doctrine governing when, and under whose authority, those platforms are used, not the platforms themselves.

Conclusion

Drones have not displaced air power. They have distributed it, stripped of some of its cost and scarcity while keeping its essential character: reach, precision, networked effect and the ability to concentrate force without staying concentrated. That is a genuine democratisation, and every service is right to want a share.

What determines whether that share becomes a strategic asset or an expensive liability is not who owns the airframe. It is whether the owning service has absorbed the air-mindedness that turns an isolated platform into part of a system: a shared picture, a coordinated airspace, and a doctrine that knows when to hold a drone close and when to hand its employment to the component built to orchestrate an entire campaign. India’s own experience during Operation Sindoor shows this is achievable without collapsing service identity into a single uniform. It has not yet been written into a standing tri-service doctrine for drones specifically, and that, more than any acquisition decision, is the gap that now matters most.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Centre for Aerospace Power and Strategic Studies [CAPSS])

Author Biography:

AVM GK Mohan AVSM (Retd) was commissioned into the fighter stream of IAF in June 1989. He is a Qualified Flying Instructor, and an alumnus of College of Defence Management and NDC Bangladesh. In a career spanning 37 years, he commanded two fighter airbases and one ADDC. His last assignment before hanging up the uniform was as the ADG Acq Tech (Air) in the Acquisition Wing, Ministry of Defence.

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Author: Gp Capt RK Kashyap, Senior Fellow, CAPSS

Keywords: Kusha, XRSAM, Sudarshan Chakra, THAAD, IACCS

Project Kusha is derived from the Sanskrit word ‘Kush’, which means ‘scared grass’. It is the acronym given to the Extended Range Air Defence System (ERADS) programme. This project was conceptualised and initiated on the requirement of the Indian Air Force (IAF). As per details available in the open forum, the XRSAM-IAF (eXtra Long-Range Surface-to-Air Missile) is being developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and is referred to as the XRSAM. The planned induction of the missile system, which will consist of three interceptor variants, is expected between 2028 and 2030. It will supplement the Barak 8 Medium-Range Surface-to-Air Missile (MR-SAM) system, the Russian S-400 and the Indian Ballistic Missile Defence Programme. Once inducted, it will form the Indian core element in Mission Sudarshan Chakra.

The XRSAM surface-to-air missile weapon system is expected to meet the requirement of neutralising Aircraft at Extended Ranges of 250 km, sea-skimming anti-ship missiles, Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) at ranges of 350 km, stealth fighters and ballistic missiles in the terminal stage. The weapon system will be a canister-based, transportable truck-based launcher system, as mobility is a necessary prerequisite for its survivability. The missile will be integrated with a ground-based long-range detection and tracking radar system and will have the autonomous capability for ‘terminal guidance’ in the last 30 to 40 km.

Development

The project was cleared for development by the Cabinet Committee on Security in May 2022, and was granted Acceptance of Necessity (AoN) by the Ministry of Defence in September 2023 for procuring five squadrons for the IAF for INR 21,700 crore. This system will provide the area defence range between the MR-SAM (80 km) and S-400 (400 km) systems. The naval version of these missile systems may supplement the LR-SAM missile in the Indian Navy.

The missile system has three variants of interceptor missiles designated as M1, M2, and M3, with ranges of 150 km (93 mi), 250 km (160 mi), and 350 to 400 km (220 to 250 mi), respectively. While all the variants will share the same kill vehicle, they will have different boosters to meet different ranges. This system will also have advanced long-range surveillance and fire-control radars to detect and destroy enemy air assets like cruise missiles, stealth fighter jets, and drones. The design is modelled on the Russian S-400 system, which also has different interceptor missiles for various ranges.

In August 2024, DRDO initiated the fabrication process of 5 M1 missiles (range of 150 km) by placing an order for 20 sets of airframes, 20 sets of rocket motors, 50 sets of kill vehicles (warheads), on-board and ground transceivers for telemetry. In May 2025, Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) commenced manufacturing the missile system prototype (to be completed in 18 months), followed by user trials for around 36 months. Finally, the first launch took place on July 23, 2026, against the planned timeline of early 2025. The launch details have been cryptic and do not specify operational data other than successfully confirming the test.

The first trial for the M1 missile has been done, and more will be in the pipeline; the trials of the missiles M2 and M3 may happen in 2027 and 2028, respectively. The phased induction of all three missiles may likely happen by 2030, keeping in mind the testing delays, even though DRDO has been requested by the IAF, post Operation Sindoor, to fast-track the development of this missile system.

Project Kusha is India’s attempt to build an indigenous air defence system which is comparable to the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), Russian S-400 Triumf, and the Chinese HQ-9 system. The Russian and US systems have matured over 30 to 40 years and are designed to protect critical assets over an area from aircraft, missiles, and drones, while the HQ-9 is a successful Chinese copy of the Russian S-300 system with similar performance. Their development origins, operational philosophy, design level, and usage have matured over time. The Indian Kusha system aims to replicate the S-400 system, with an inventory of three classes of interceptor missiles. The Kusha radar surveillance and guidance system will also enable the Kusha missile batteries to “interact” and cooperate with the Integrated Air Command and Control System (IACCS) operated by the Indian Air Force.

Path Ahead

The first trial has initiated the development and consolidation phase, with more tests of the M1 missile and trials of the other M2 and M3 interceptor missiles over the next 3 to 4 years. The priority will be to complete development by 2030 and commence induction. The timelines are delayed, but if it holds true even with a delay of 2 to 3 years, then it has the potential to fructify as the backbone of India’s air defence architecture well into the 2030s. Further, it will mark the entry of an indigenous, Indian-designed integrated area defence system and an important milestone in India’s journey towards self-reliance in high-end defence systems. As aerial threats evolve, from stealth aircraft and drones to hypersonic missiles to swarm drones, the effectiveness of the Kusha system will depend not only on the ability of the interceptor missile to kinetically intercept under battle conditions but also on the robustness of the integrated radars and the air defence shield it will aim to provide. In that sense, the Kusha is much more than the interceptor missile programme; it is a small step to test India’s ability to design, integrate, and operationalise an indigenous air defence ecosystem which is comparable to its peers around the world.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Centre for Aerospace Power and Strategic Studies [CAPSS])

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Author: Gp Capt RK Kashyap, Senior Fellow, CAPSS

Keywords: Orbital Weapons, Outer Space Treaty, China, Russia

Bible: 1 John 3:8: “… The devil has sinned from the beginning”

The United States of America (USA) Air Force Secretary, Troy Meink, in an address at the Annual Air, Space and Cyber Conference, Maryland, on September 14, 2026, announced that the United States has deployed “Orbital weapons in Space to defend joint forces against hostile adversary actions.” No further technical specifics were shared either on the deployment date or on the systems’ kinetic or non-kinetic capabilities. This announcement marks the first official acknowledgement by a senior functionary of the US government confirming active weapon systems in Earth’s orbit. What was left unsaid was who are/is the threat? The reaction from (threats) Russia and China was to strongly condemn the US statement, and China further stated that the US must halt its military build-up that will accelerate the arms race in outer space.

It is a 1957 Sputnik moment for the rest of the world not aligned with US-led Western civilisation. The history of four non-armament treaties in force under the UN Charter is interesting to understand, as these early ones were agreed to at the height of the Cold War and subsequently will be quoted by future articles on the subject ad nauseam. The Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) was signed between the USA, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the United Kingdom (UK) and formally went into effect on October 10, 1963, since the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) could not be agreed to at that time. This was followed by the Outer Space Treaty in 1967, the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1970 with its indefinite extension in 1995 and finally the CTBT adopted on September 10, 1996. While PTBT, NPT, and CTBT deal with nuclear proliferation over time, the Outer Space Treaty, while prohibiting any use of nuclear weapons, is silent on the use of conventional weapons in space. At the time it was signed, space was a new frontier, and the USSR, along with the USA, were the only two spacefaring nations in the 1960s, besides being nuclear behemoths of their era. The chips, computers, semiconductors and internet of the future were still to be designed.

The reaction of the Chinese to the American announcement is both interesting and instructive: It sounds the same as it did when it denounced PTBT, NPT and CTBT, i.e., till it got itself in possession of nuclear weapons and became part of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). Today, the US perceives a threat from China more than from the Russians, and when it will turn existential is anyone’s guess. Therefore, the timing of the announcement is a complete surprise.

Let’s analyse the likely Star Wars, as it will shape human space history in this century and beyond. It is akin to Christopher Columbus sailing west in the vast ocean and beyond in search of the new world with weapons to defend himself, but conquer he did! The US has, by this decision, announced its dominance in Outer Space and also its intent to “defend’’ and keep it that way for the foreseeable future.

Nuclear weapons are banned under Article I of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which specifically bans stationing weapons of mass destruction in Earth orbit, on the Moon, or any other celestial body or otherwise stationing them in outer space, while Article IV further prohibits testing nuclear weapons, establishing military posts/bases installations, fortifications and conducting military manoeuvres of any kind. These terms of reference duplicate early colonial European establishments of military outposts in frontier land or islands and in colonies. It was for the reason of ‘fortification’ that the Battle of Plassey was fought in 1757, or Harrods Temple was demolished; the legacy of its Western wall in Jerusalem lies to this day. In fact, Space Laws draw heavily from Maritime laws of the 15^th-17^th centuries, and it is today the final frontier for humanity to get out of the solar system. But before we can go out to space and the solar system, we must save it for ourselves by ourselves.

There are primarily three orbits defined in space, which are mentioned in Table 1 below: –

Table 1

Source: Compiled by the author

One can assume that the US orbital weapons mean manoeuvrable satellites that have sufficient fuel to raise their orbit on Earth command. This specific satellite carries kinetic weapons like directed drones, which spray pellets at victim satellites, employs fusion(like) laser bursts to burn the targeted parts of the satellite, and may employ limited EMP to disable satellites of inimical nations in low Earth orbit or higher orbits. Since most satellites have dual use, wherein the difference between pure civilian and military purpose of the satellite payload is not feasible, it is assumed that any satellite deemed hostile can be neutralised in the event of specific requirement by stating that its employment is military or dual purpose should the need arise.

The vacuum in space requires kinetic weapons to have an inbuilt oxidation process. Kinetic weapons of choice will use thrust vectoring, targeted laser, EMP, directed pellet drones or simply suicidal collision amongst the options to neutralise any hostile satellite. Additionally, targeting LEO orbit satellites will require residual/spare launch capability and several launch sites on Earth itself for redundancy. Here, the US Space Command has stated its ability to perform complex Apollo manoeuvring, docking and extraction, possibly to neutralise rogue satellites. This is also backed up with robust Space Situational Awareness (SSA) radars, telescopes and satellites which can track around 2 to 4 lakh objects of 10 cm diameter continuously.

China or Russia’s ability to counter the USA’s worldwide satellite/object tracking capability is presently limited. However, amongst the two, if coordinated, China will possess the ability to counter US Space forces as a credible deterrence in around 40 years’ time. Hence, much will depend on the economic power trajectory and their ability to fund this space race before it becomes a space war. As a brighter reasoning, if there are aliens more technologically advanced than humans in our galaxy or universe, then humanity’s survival will ultimately depend on its ability to arm and protect itself through these initial small steps in the weaponisation of near-Earth space. This need for protection arises even when these steps are primarily focused on controlling the behaviour of other humans.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Centre for Aerospace Power and Strategic Studies [CAPSS])

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The post Star Wars: An American Initiative appeared first on CAPSS India.

Author: Dr Shrawani Shagun, Visiting Research Fellow, CAPSS

Keywords: Dual-Use, Dual-Use Space Systems, Assured Access, Commercial Space Services, Dependency Risk, International Humanitarian Law

Introduction

In 2022, SpaceX declined to activate requested Starlink coverage near Sevastopol, Crimea, after Ukrainian forces sought connectivity for an anticipated strike on the Russian Black Sea Fleet.¹ In March 2025, the United States temporarily suspended Ukraine’s access to the Global Enhanced GEOINT Delivery (G-EGD) system, cutting off United States (US) government-mediated commercial satellite imagery that Ukrainian forces had built operational plans around.² A military commander made neither decision, nor was it subject to any legal review process available to the dependent State. Both were unilateral commercial or executive decisions, made by the provider or the provider’s home government, for reasons entirely outside the dependent State’s own assessment of military necessity.

These episodes are not distant case studies. They describe a structural vulnerability that applies equally to any State, including India, that relies on foreign-owned, commercially operated space systems for military and civilian functions. This article argues that India’s growing dependence on dual-use commercial space services creates a single point of failure that current acquisition, targeting, and licensing processes are ill-equipped to address. Space technology carries an inescapable ‘original sin’³—it was forged by military-industrial complexes for warfighting and intelligence, with commercial and civilian applications evolving subsequently. Modern satellite networks have consequently become the ‘tethers of modernity,’ where civil infrastructure and warfighting capabilities are inextricably entangled. Assessing a dual-use space asset solely as a static physical object overlooks the proprietary, contractual, and geopolitical networks that determine who actually controls the capability in a crisis.⁴ It proposes three institutionally grounded reforms, extending weapons review, embedding dependency mapping into targeting doctrine, and building continuity safeguards into commercial space licensing, each calibrated to close this gap without slowing acquisition timelines or diffusing operational authority.

The Problem: Foreign Commercial Control as a Single Point of Failure?

India’s expanding use of commercial and foreign-government-mediated space services, satellite communications, high-resolution imagery, positioning augmentation, weather and disaster data, has created a dependency structure that remains largely invisible to standard acquisition and targeting processes. The risk is concrete, not theoretical. India’s institutional response to GPS reliability concerns, reflected in the development of Navigation of Indian Constellation (NavIC) and indigenous Satellite Communication (SATCOM) capacity, already recognises this vulnerability in the positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) domain. That same logic has not yet been systematically extended to commercial imagery, broadband satellite communications, or weather and disaster-data dependencies, where India’s exposure to foreign commercial decision-making remains substantial and largely unassessed.

The underlying legal architecture compounds the problem. Access to space-based services is governed not primarily by international humanitarian law but by a dense web of intellectual property protections, export-control measures, and commercial contracts that allocate proprietary rights and determine who may use, modify, withhold, or interrupt services once a crisis begins.⁵ A dependent State’s forces may have full legal authority to conduct an operation and still find the underlying capability unavailable, because a foreign provider or its home government has exercised a contractual or policy discretion unrelated to that State’s own assessment of the situation.

Extending Weapons Review to Capture Dependency Risk

Weapons and capability review under Article 36 of Additional Protocol I (AP I) of the Geneva Conventions and equivalent internal legal review processes typically assess technical performance, accuracy, effects, and reliability, without examining the ownership, licensing, and supply chain structure through which a dual-use space capability is accessed.⁶ A satellite-denial capability, a leased satellite communications channel, or a licensed imagery feed can pass technical review while carrying an unassessed dependency risk: who owns the platform, who can suspend the service, and what happens operationally if they do. This institutional blind spot reflects what Anit Mukherjee diagnoses in The Absent Dialogue as the systemic isolation of military planning from civilian bureaucratic and technical expertise. When capability reviews occur in institutional silos, they evaluate technical accuracy while missing foreign licensing restrictions, commercial kill-switches, and single-provider dependencies.⁷ As Colin Gray emphasises in The Strategy Bridge, strategy must bridge tactical military means to desired political ends. Expanding Article 36 review panels to include structured, time-bound input from civilian ministries (such as Agriculture, Telecom, and External Affairs) repairs this bridge, ensuring that peacetime acquisition audits identify commercial dependency risks before a capability is integrated into operational plans.⁸

This gap is not, at bottom, a question of formal ownership. A reviewing State typically retains nominal contracting authority over the systems it fields. The more consequential gap lies in positive and procedural control: the capacity to track the source, supply chain, and operational capability of a dual-use asset, to guard against both misuse and unanticipated loss of access.⁹ Closing this gap does not require a new standing review board or public disclosure of sensitive ownership details, either of which would create delay or expose the reviewed system to additional risk. It requires extending existing review processes to include a dependency-risk checklist at the acquisition or licensing stage, covering ownership and licensing structure; contractual suspension or geofencing powers held by the provider or its home government; the availability of domestic or allied redundancy; and supply-chain traceability consistent with existing export-control practice. Civilian-ministry input, where a capability has documented large-scale civilian dependency, should be sought as a time-bound advisory input rather than a co-equal sign-off, preserving the pace of existing acquisition decisions.

Dependency Mapping as a Targeting Doctrine Reform

Targeting doctrine assesses whether an object is a legitimate military objective by reference to its nature, location, purpose, or use, and applies proportionality and precaution analysis based on the information available to the targeting cell.¹⁰ For dual-use space objects, the relevant civilian dependency is frequently extraterritorial and diffuse. Standard collateral-damage estimation, built around physical proximity to the target, largely misses this. A satellite disruption may cause negligible harm near a ground station while disabling disaster warning, agricultural data, or medical logistics for a population thousands of kilometres away—harm that proximity-based estimation has no established method of capturing.

Structured dependency mapping addresses this gap directly. Before approving interference with a dual-use space system, planners should identify categories of civilian users dependent on the affected service, including users outside the immediate area of operations, and assess whether redundant or alternative options exist for those users. Where dependency data is incomplete, doctrine should favour reversible, localised, non-kinetic degradation, cyber, spoofing, or temporary interference over destructive kinetic options, wherever such non-kinetic means are operationally feasible and achieve a comparable military effect. This doctrinal preference is grounded in operational reversibility and reduced escalation risk; it does not convert Article 57’s precaution obligation into a categorical requirement to use non-kinetic means irrespective of feasibility, which remains a commander’s judgment based on the capability actually available at the time.¹¹

This doctrinal preference operationalises Article 57 of Additional Protocol I through Emile Simpson’s targeting framework in War from the Ground Up: moving from ‘Can I?’ (the legal threshold under Article 52(2)) to ‘Should I?’ (strategic alignment) and ‘Must I?’ (the obligation of precaution). A co-opted dual-use satellite meets the ‘Can I?’ test as a legitimate military objective.¹²

Article 57’s precaution principle obligates planners to assess diffuse, downstream civilian impacts thousands of kilometres away. In space, where physical destruction creates irreversible orbital debris and widespread collateral disruption, non-kinetic interference (cyber, jamming, or laser dazzling) functions as a pure denial strategy—as conceptualised by Robert Pape in Bombing to Win and John Klein in Space Warfare. It blocks the adversary’s Celestial Line of Communication (CLOC) without inflicting indiscriminate societal punishment or violating the 1972 Liability Convention.¹³

Continuity Safeguards in Commercial Space Licensing

India’s commercial space sector and its reliance on foreign commercial providers currently operate without standard contractual protections against arbitrary service suspension during a crisis. Standard commercial contracts typically include broad limitation-of-liability clauses and unilateral suspension rights that leave dependent users, including government and critical-infrastructure users, with no recourse if a provider or its home government withdraws access.

Baseline continuity clauses in licensing conditions would close this gap without new legislation. These should define a protected category of continuity services- disaster warning, emergency communications, and critical infrastructure timing support- that retain at least minimum functional access even when other services are restricted, require advance notice of major service interruption, and create a procurement preference for providers offering such guarantees. This positions India as a rule-setter rather than a rule-taker in the commercial space era, a stance justified first by India’s own strategic interest in assured access, with the broader benefit to other dependent States, particularly in the Global South, following as a secondary and welcome consequence rather than the primary rationale.

Mandating continuity clauses and liability indemnification in commercial space contracts represents an essential evolution in ‘Social Technologies’—the institutional structures, laws, and contracts that must keep pace with advancing physical hardware.¹⁴ As private mega-constellations dominate Low Earth Orbit, relying on unexamined commercial end-user license agreements (EULAs) leaves state security at the mercy of private corporate discretion. Standardising humanitarian continuity safeguards in domestic licensing rules ensures that India’s legal architecture evolves in step with its space hardware.

Conclusion

The vulnerability exposed by the Starlink and G-EGD episodes is structural, not incidental. Any State that depends on foreign-owned, commercially governed space systems for military and civilian functions is exposed to decisions made by providers and their home governments for reasons unrelated to that State’s own operational requirements. The reforms proposed here dependency-risk review at the acquisition stage, structured dependency mapping in targeting doctrine, and continuity safeguards in commercial licensing—are designed to close this gap while preserving the speed and operational authority required by acquisition and targeting processes. None of these measures depends on new legislation, additional bureaucratic layers, or public disclosure of sensitive information. They require only that India apply, to its wider portfolio of dual-use space dependencies, the same institutional foresight already reflected in its investment in NavIC and indigenous satellite communications: closing a demonstrated vulnerability before, not after, a crisis exposes it.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Centre for Aerospace Power and Strategic Studies [CAPSS])

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The post Assured Access: Closing India’s Dual-Use Space Dependency Gap appeared first on CAPSS India.

Author: Air Vice Marshal Prashant Mohan VM (Retd), Additional Director General, CAPSS

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT), AI-Enabled Targeting, Iran–Israel Conflict, Indian Defence Modernisation.

Israel and the United States fought two Iran wars within the span of a year, and both were shaped by the same underlying factor: open-source intelligence, fused with artificial intelligence, turned into operational effect. The first, in June 2025, was Israel’s Operation Rising Lion and America’s Operation Midnight Hammer, a twelve-day campaign against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and military leadership that ended in a ceasefire around June 24-25.¹ The second, Operation Epic Fury for Washington and Operation Roaring Lion for Tel Aviv —began on February 28, 2026 and has continued to shape the region in particular and the world in general.² Together, these two campaigns describe one continuous arc of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) preparation, execution, and retaliation, rather than two unrelated events joined only by geography. For India, this fusion of open-source collection and artificial intelligence offers considerably more instruction than either war would on its own.

Where AI-Enabled OSINT Fits into the Targeting Effort

Israeli intelligence officers have described, on the record, how AI shaped the June 2025 campaign’s targeting. One officer explained that AI was used to “sift through troves of data” collected over years, sorting potential targets into leadership, military, civilian, and infrastructure categories, then filtering for individuals closely tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).³ That sorting function is what earlier generations of analysts did by hand, slowly, and often only for the handful of targets that mattered most. AI allowed the same discipline to be applied across a far larger dataset without a proportional increase in analyst hours. Human intelligence supplied the raw material; AI then organised it. Mossad’s former research director has described agents compiling dossiers on Iranian commanders that included where they worked and where they spent their free time, and stationing weapons near Iranian air-defence sites years in advance.⁴ That fusion of pattern-of-life detail and machine sorting is what let Israel strike Revolutionary Guard commander Hossein Salami, armed forces chief Mohammad Bagheri, and eight Guard members in a single bunker within the campaign’s opening hours.⁵

By the 2026 phase, the same logic operated at greater speed and scale. The AI fused drone footage, satellite passes, and telemetry into targeting packages, enabling more than 1,000 discrete strikes inside Iran within Epic Fury’s opening 24 hours.⁶ Within days, an independent technologist had reconstructed a minute-by-minute replay of the campaign using AI agents to scrape open-source signals before they could be purged from digital caches, built entirely from public data—a civilian demonstration of the exact fusion the military had just carried out at classified scale.⁷ Intelligence gathering, pattern-making and strike execution had become stages of one continuous, AI-mediated pipeline, rather than separate functions handed off between agencies with the delays that handoff usually implies.

A Long-Drawn Effort, not a Single Campaign

Neither strike came out of nowhere, and treating either as a discrete, fast-moving event misreads how it was actually built. Israeli officials have described the June 2025 operation as “the culmination of years of work,” built on roughly three years of dossier compilation, infiltration and pre-positioning of smuggled drones and weapons inside Iranian territory.⁸ That preparation defined three distinguishable operational pillars, each running on its own timeline. Sustained human and technical collection came first and should be measured in years, not months. Forward pre-positioning by special operations followed, embedding the physical means to strike quickly once collection matured. Only at the final stage did AI-assisted integration turn the accumulated material into an executable targeting picture, and that stage was by far the fastest of the three.

The 2026 phase did not repeat this process from zero. It drew on the same intelligence base, redirected toward a renewed campaign once the 2025 ceasefire broke down. AI proportionally did more work in the fusion the second time round. The AI stage was the fastest part of the process and also the smallest, sitting atop years of unglamorous collection that no algorithm replaced or compressed. Speed at the point of decision should not be mistaken for speed across the whole effort. Technology procurement is the easy part on any realistic timeline, and the multi-year human-collection base underneath it is the part that actually determines whether the technology has anything useful to fuse.

What This Should Interest India About

An Indian defence commentator has already drawn out the operational implications directly from the June 2025 campaign, arguing that India should deepen intelligence-military synergy and move toward “actively employing assets for preemptive disruption” rather than treating intelligence gathering and strike planning as separate functions handled by separate institutions on separate timelines.⁹ He also stresses accelerating indigenous drone and AI development, and recommends a unified Special Operations Command to coordinate covert intelligence with conventional forces, mirroring the IDF-Mossad relationship that made Rising Lion possible.¹⁰ Both recommendations follow directly from the operational pillars described above. The capability that mattered most across both Iran campaigns was not any single AI tool, but the standing organisational bridge between collectors, analysts, and shooters that let AI’s contribution reach the battlefield quickly when needed. India’s own Operation Sindoor experience in May 2025 offers a partial domestic parallel worth weighing against this.

A second, less comfortable lesson concerns vendor dependence. Days after Claude’s integration into Maven had reportedly helped enable the Epic Fury strikes, the Pentagon formally designated Anthropic a “supply chain risk,” after the company declined to remove safeguards against mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons use.¹¹ A federal judge later ruled that designation unlawful.¹² Whatever the merits of that specific dispute, it demonstrates something India should take seriously on its own account. A state’s AI-OSINT capability can be only as reliable as its relationship with the company that built the underlying model, and that relationship can turn adversarial for reasons that have nothing to do with battlefield performance. India should weigh that dependency carefully.

Iran’s Riposte and How Much of It Was OSINT

Iran’s retaliatory missile and drone campaign, styled Operation True Promise IV, generated its own substantial open-source footprint. An independently maintained OSINT dataset has tracked the campaign in close to real time, logging waves against Israeli and coalition targets across a dozen countries, built entirely from open-source reporting rather than classified feeds.¹³ That dataset says as much about the transparency of this particular war as about Iran’s own tradecraft. It was built by an outside analyst observing Iran, not by Iran itself, and its existence shows how thoroughly this conflict has been documented by parties with no operational stake in either side. Iran’s own use of OSINT was narrower and more targeted than the wide, crowd-verified tracking effort aimed at it.

It centred on monitoring US and allied force positions across the Gulf using commercially available satellite imagery, reportedly supplied in part by the Chinese firm Chang Guang Satellite Technology, which a Western think-tank report describes as collecting and supplying Iran with imagery of US and allied military facilities.¹⁴ Iranian ground-based jamming and spoofing of GNSS signals across the Strait of Hormuz was a related but analytically distinct capability, electronic warfare rather than open-source collection. The two should not be conflated in any serious accounting even though both degraded the information environment for the other side simultaneously.¹⁵ Iran-aligned regional partners added a further, less formal layer to this picture. Militia and proxy networks across the region have long supplied low-cost human observation of shipping and troop movements that supplements, and sometimes substitutes for, the satellite and signals collection a better-resourced state would otherwise need to build on its own. None of this amounted to an OSINT capability comparable in scale to what tracked Iran from the outside. It was narrower, more improvised, and built substantially on imported rather than indigenous tools, a pattern that recurs throughout Iran’s information effort in this conflict.

Force Multiplier, Not Frontier Capability

Iran’s own AI use, according to a detailed threat-intelligence assessment published in mid-2026, was real but modest in ambition, and the distinction matters for how the whole episode should be read. AI, the assessment concludes, “very likely accelerated existing Iranian capabilities across cyber, influence, military and domestic repression domains, rather than creating new ones.”¹⁶ The clearest documented examples were generative, not analytical. One Iran-aligned propaganda outlet used AI to produce a finished two-minute video, complete with an AI-generated rap song, in about 24 hours.¹⁷ Iranian malware researchers appear to have used generative AI to help write code for at least one documented backdoor, leaving telltale artefacts, such as emoji embedded inside debug strings, that are rarely found in work written entirely by hand.¹⁸ Iran’s own claims of AI-enhanced drone guidance have not been independently confirmed during the conflict. The confirmed AI-enabled hardware, Nvidia-based modules recovered from Iranian-designed drones, had actually been documented in Russian use over Ukraine rather than over Iran, a detail that complicates any straightforward claim about Iranian AI-drone capability.¹⁹

Iran leaned heavily on outside supply to compensate for what it evidently could not build domestically. Russia reportedly agreed to supply AI-enabled drone hardware during the conflict itself, and Chinese surveillance technology, including deep-packet-inspection tools and camera systems from established Chinese vendors, underpinned Iran’s domestic monitoring capability throughout.²⁰ Where India might reasonably expect a peer adversary to eventually field frontier AI of its own, Iran instead demonstrated what a well-resourced but heavily sanctioned state can still achieve by applying comparatively modest AI gains to tools and to external partnerships it already had in place.

What India Should Take from Iran’s Experience

The Iranian case offers a more encouraging lesson than the Israeli one, precisely because it required less to produce a real effect. A state does not need frontier AI to gain meaningful advantage. Applying AI as a force multiplier to existing malware, propaganda and drone programmes produced measurable operational and information effect even under sustained sanctions and export controls.²¹ That is a realistic, resource-conscious target for India’s own capability-building, distinct from and considerably more achievable than chasing Maven-scale ambition outright in the near term. The second lesson is more concrete and immediate, and it is already being made by Indian commentators rather than only inferred from abroad. India’s own analysis of this conflict has flagged a specific navigational vulnerability. Barely three of India’s eleven Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC) satellites are said to be fulfilling their core purpose, with at least one past its expected service life, even as Iranian jamming showed how quickly GNSS-dependent operations can be degraded by a determined, resource-limited adversary.²² The same analysis recommends India develop encrypted, anti-jam, military-grade navigation signals and expand NavIC into a genuinely independent constellation. This, alongside domestic “drone farms” capable of producing the volumes of low-cost systems that Iran’s own missile-and-drone campaign demonstrated still matter against far more expensive interceptor missiles.²³ Mass and resilience, in other words, remain as strategically relevant as sophistication. A third, quieter lesson follows from Iran’s reliance on Chinese and Russian technology rather than domestic development. India’s own neighbourhood already features exactly this kind of collusive technology transfer, and an adversary short on frontier capability but well supplied by a capable partner should be treated as a serious planning assumption, not a lesser threat simply because the underlying AI is borrowed rather than built at home.

Building India’s Own AI-OSINT Capability

Four facets of this conflict deserve to shape how India builds its own capability. The first is organisational, not technical – the standing bridge between human collectors, open-source analysts and operational planners that both the Israeli and Iranian efforts depended on more than any single algorithm.²⁴ Quality control matters here as much as speed. A well-built OSINT-AI cell needs disciplined human-machine teaming and verification tradecraft precisely because AI can fuse bad data into a confident-looking picture just as fast as it can fuse good data. The cost of that error only shows up after a decision has already been made.

The second facet is sovereignty over the AI layer itself. The Anthropic-Pentagon dispute shows that dependence on a foreign AI vendor is not a hypothetical risk confined to trade policy; it is a live operational one, capable of disrupting a capability at precisely the moment it matters most, for reasons entirely outside the user’s control.²⁵ India’s own commentators have already argued for reducing dependence on foreign AI vendors for both threat detection and verification tooling, a recommendation that applies with equal force to offensive OSINT-AI fusion and not only to defensive cybersecurity.²⁶

The third facet is realistic scoping of ambition. Iran’s experience shows that AI applied to existing tools, malware, propaganda, and geolocation can produce real effect without frontier capability or unrestricted compute access.²⁷ India does not need to match Maven’s scale to gain meaningful advantage from this technology; it needs disciplined, well-resourced application of what it already has, which is a considerably more achievable near-term target than trying to out-compute far better-resourced states from a standing start.

The fourth facet is technical and specific rather than doctrinal: navigation resilience. An AI-OSINT capability that depends on GNSS-linked platforms, as most modern collection and strike systems now do, is only as strong as the signal underneath it. Iranian jamming over the Strait of Hormuz demonstrated how quickly that layer can be contested even by an adversary without a frontier AI programme of its own.²⁸ Hardening NavIC, and building the indigenous drone-production base to match it, are concrete, fundable engineering steps rather than open-ended aspirations, and both can proceed in parallel with the slower organisational and sovereignty work described above.

Institutional proposals already under discussion in India, including a hybrid civilian-military reserve force intended to provide surge capacity during a crisis, point toward the kind of standing capacity this fusion ultimately requires if it is to be more than a peacetime demonstration project.²⁹ None of these four facets is exotic, and none depends on a technological breakthrough India does not already have some purchase on. Each is a deliberate answer to something this particular conflict actually demonstrated, rather than a general aspiration to “have AI” in the abstract, and that distinction is the one India’s own capability-building effort cannot afford to lose sight of as it moves from scoping to execution.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Centre for Aerospace Power and Strategic Studies [CAPSS])

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Notes:

The post AI at War: What OSINT, AI, and the Iran Conflict Teach India appeared first on CAPSS India.

Author: Gp Capt Akash Godbole, Senior Fellow, CAPSS

Keywords: National Security, Civil-Military Coordination, Apex-Level Decision-Making, Cabinet Committee on Security, Raksha Mantri, Whole-of-Nation Approach, India

Introduction

Modern conflicts have compressed decision timelines. This can expose institutional gaps before anyone has time to close them. The Galwan clash of June 2020 escalated from a patrol-level incident to a bilateral military standoff within hours. Operation Sindoor saw simultaneous action across military, diplomatic, information, and narrative domains. The window for action was so narrow that there was hardly any time for inter-ministerial consultation. These events have indicated that India’s instruments of national power can operate in isolation, but have never been required to work in coordination, especially under pressure. No mechanism exists to rehearse that coordination before a crisis demands it.

This article proposes a biennial national security exercise akin to a wargame. It is proposed to be structured in three sequential stages: the service level, the ministerial level, and the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) level. Conducting this exercise requires no legislation, no new institution, and no reorganisation of mandates. The Raksha Mantri (RM) will initiate the exercise, and the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) will execute it. It is to be conducted confidentially, so that frank institutional assessment carries no political risk.

The Structural Gap

India’s higher defence architecture has been substantially reformed since the Kargil conflict. The creation of the CDS,¹ the Department of Military Affairs, the Defence Intelligence Agency, and ongoing theaterisation efforts have all improved coordination within the military system. However, the problem these reforms do not address is the one that matters most in a modern contingency—simultaneity. Modern warfare requires precise alignment of diplomatic signalling, information management, cyber response, industrial mobilisation, and economic measures with military action towards a common strategic objective.

The Government of India’s Allocation of Business (AoB) Rules assign each domain to a separate ministry. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) handles diplomacy; the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) covers internal security; the Ministry of Defence (MoD) is responsible for external security; the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) handles information and cyber. It is an administrative design for peacetime governance. In a crisis, however, this system produces a sequential response when the situation demands a convergent one. Each ministry responds within its mandate. The cross-domain consequences are handled separately, and mostly later.

The Doklam standoff (2017) illustrated this precisely. Diplomatic and military options were managed largely in parallel, with informal coordination that was dependent on individuals rather than institutional mechanisms.² The CCS sits at the apex of the system and holds responsibility for major security decisions.³ Below the CCS, however, no standing institution exists with the authority to integrate all instruments of national power into a single campaign design, in peacetime or in war.

There is a further gap. Currently, no legal framework can accommodate private-sector capabilities like technology firms, logistics companies, and communications infrastructure in a crisis response. Their participation in any contingency would be improvised. A structured exercise is the only mechanism that can identify, in advance, what is needed and on what terms. India’s armed forces test their operational plans through rigorous exercises. The question is how the national response architecture, which encompasses far more than the military, can be subjected to the same discipline and scrutiny.

How is this different?

The integration problems identified above are not newly discovered. The Kargil Review Committee (KRC)⁴ in 2000 identified intelligence coordination failures that triggered a Group of Ministers (GoM) review. That review recommended sweeping reforms, including creating the CDS. The CCS formally accepted the GoM report in May 2001, but held the CDS recommendation specifically in abeyance, pending cross-party consultations that were never concluded. The recommendation remained deferred for eighteen years, through multiple governments. The Naresh Chandra Task Force revisited civil-military integration at the apex level in 2012. Its recommendations have largely remained on paper. Every major change requires a legal arrangement, budget support, and political backing across multiple governments.

This proposal requires none of that. It just requires an RM directive and a CDS mandate. It works within the existing institutional framework. Its value is not only the preparedness it builds, but also the body of evidence it creates. It would stress-test the national response architecture and highlight potential breakdowns. Hence, it would justify any structural reform as politically inevitable rather than theoretically desirable.

Stakeholder Engagement

The exercise’s success is dependent upon each institution’s understanding of what it gains and not merely what it contributes. The following makes the case for each stakeholder directly.

1. The Raksha Mantri: The RM bears constitutional responsibility for national defence. In a modern contingency, that responsibility extends well beyond operational control of the armed forces. Actions in diplomacy, economy, industrial mobilisation, and information operations all affect conflict outcomes. The RM is ultimately accountable for these outcomes, yet none of these factors is under the MoD’s direct authority. A national security exercise, initiated by the RM and debriefed to the RM, is a management audit of national security preparedness that no other instrument currently provides. It gives the RM an honest, pre-crisis assessment of whether the institutional apparatus can perform under pressure. It is to be conducted as a closed-door, confidential engagement. This would allow stakeholders to actively engage without reservations. The chain of authority established above gives the exercise institutional weight. This way, it would not remain just a staff-level activity.

2.  The Chief of Defence Staff: The exercise directly serves the CDS’s mandate for jointness in training and inter-service coordination. A simulation that reveals where civilian support in fields of cyber, logistics, information management, and industrial supply is unavailable or uncoordinated is precisely the evidence needed to make a credible, documented case for structural investment. Exercise findings become the authoritative basis for capability requirements, displacing planning assumptions that can currently be contested in budget negotiations without a factual counter. The CDS executes the exercise on the RM’s mandate, building on existing joint training and inter-service coordination responsibilities.

3. Civilian Ministries: Any civilian ministry would protect its institutional autonomy. An exercise that has the potential to expose interdepartmental gaps in coordination would threaten that autonomy. Three points make participation in their interest. First, the exercise is confidential, and findings are not publicly released. Second, any gaps observed during the exercise can be filled before an actual crisis. Third, the exercise provides them a forum to raise all performance constraints on record. That is a constructive outcome for any institution with serious responsibilities.

4. The Prime Minister’s Office: CCS participation does not translate to the Prime Minister’s (PM) mandatory attendance. The standard format is the delegated model. The National Security Advisor (NSA) or Cabinet Secretary distil exercise findings into a brief and a set of response options for the PM’s review. The PM may participate directly in major planned iterations, when the evidence base warrants apex engagement. The CCS is not being asked to conduct warfighting. It is being asked to verify that its national security response decision can actually be implemented. It is a question of decision quality, not an operational one.

A Phased Approach

The exercise is structured in three phases. Each phase’s lessons are incorporated as settings for the next phase.

Table 1: Phased Exercise Structure and Whole-of-Nation Gains

Source: Author’s Conceptualisation

The history of Indian defence reform suggests that exercises without consequences become performances. The following mechanisms give this exercise institutional weight:

(a) Exercise Reports: A timeline would be set for submitting an immediate exercise report to the RM and the NSA. This ensures that this report does not get buried under bureaucratic cholesterol. Additionally, with them reviewing these reports, the follow-up action would be firm and lasting.

(b) Budget: The body of evidence that this exercise generates provides respective ministries with a better card during budget negotiation. This gives ministries a direct incentive to engage seriously. The gaps they identify become their claims; gaps exposed by the exercise become their liabilities.

(c) Cadre: Cadre review and revision can serve as an institutional mechanism for linking senior participation in national security exercises to the professional assessment cycle. This mechanism already exists within the military and can be extended to civilian ministry executives through the RM’s office without statutory change.

(d) Repetition: It is expected that successive iterations would transform this exercise into a sought-after event. It would become an organisational culture to identify gaps in a controlled environment.

An exercise conducted every two years, with formal oversight, would become part of the national security calendar. Over successive iterations, the institutional culture would shift accordingly.

One further distinction matters. This proposal will not be deferred as the CDS recommendation was, because it does not require the same kind of political consensus. The CDS required a Cabinet decision on a new post, cross-party consultation, and inter-service agreement. An RM directive for a biennial exercise requires none of these. It is an executive decision within the RM’s existing authority.

Conclusion

India does not lack national power. It lacks a tested architecture for deploying that power in a coordinated manner at the pace modern conflict demands. Phase One can be initiated within eighteen months of an RM directive, using existing infrastructure.

The proposal here is not a reform. It is an exercise. The institutional learning accumulated through each cycle will eventually produce the kind of structural reform recommended since Kargil but never adequately implemented. This is not because the recommendations were wrong, but because no body of evidence was compelling enough to override institutional inertia. This exercise creates that body of evidence.

None of this is going to be simple. It would require sustained political commitment and disciplined follow-up action to bring about institutional change. The cost of that commitment is low relative to what it produces. The cost of discovering coordination failures during an actual crisis, at the pace Galwan or Operation Sindoor demonstrated, is considerably higher.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Centre for Aerospace Power and Strategic Studies [CAPSS])

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Note
The exercise design is addressed in a separate document intended for the exercise planners. It would cover aspects related to scenario, rules of engagement, phases, participants and their roles, debrief, and follow-up. The present article confines itself to the institutional case for the exercise and the governance architecture within which it operates.

Notes:-

The post Before The Next Crisis: The Case for Apex-Level National Security Exercises in India appeared first on CAPSS India.

Author: Air Vice Marshal Prashant Mohan VM (Retd), Additional Director General, CAPSS

Keywords: Air Denial, Mosaic Defence, Operation True Promise IV, Goal-Setting And Victory Conditions, Asymmetric Cost Imposition

Introduction

Operations Epic Fury and Roaring Lion began on February 28, 2026. Their opening wave struck roughly 500 targets in Iran within twenty-four hours. By United States Central Command’s (CENTCOM) own account, the campaign eventually struck upward of 11,000 targets across roughly 13,000 combat sorties.¹ The Israeli Air Force separately logged over 10,800 strikes across 8,500 operational sorties.² Judged by sorties flown and targets serviced, this was among the most intensive air campaigns of the past half-century. Judged by its own declared political ends, it was far less conclusive. By mid-August, six months in, Iran’s enrichment stockpile remained intact and inaccessible to inspectors. The Strait of Hormuz remained closed to ordinary commerce. Washington’s own senior officials had narrowed the definition of success. In Vice President J.D. Vance’s own words, the goal was now “cheap oil and gas for Americans.”³

That gap between effort and outcome is not, by itself, proof that Iran executed a deliberate strategy. Overwhelming force can fail to convert into political victory even against an adversary that is merely resilient, lucky, or aided by circumstance. This paper asks a narrower question: did Iran’s conduct under Operation True Promise IV amount to a coherent strategy? If so, do the concepts most often used to describe it—air denial and mosaic defence—actually fit the record? Are they distinct and sometimes contradictory propositions, or retrospective labels applied to improvisation? The paper closes on India. A materially dominant coalition could not convert tactical execution into strategic closure. A materially inferior adversary inflicted sustained cost regardless. What should that teach Indian planners about setting goals, defining victory, and choosing ways and means against a comparably resilient adversary?

US-Israeli Goals, Ways, and Means: What Was Set and What Changed

The stated objectives of Epic Fury and Roaring Lion were plural from the outset, and imperfectly reconciled. President Donald Trump’s senior administration officials offered what Hudson Institute analysts called “divergent and at times contradictory answers” on war aims.⁴ The President invoked terms approaching unconditional surrender.⁵ Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke of “the systematic degradation of Iran’s ability to project military power and the permanent elimination of its nuclear capabilities.”⁶ Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s own framing leaned toward regime change. A companion Centre for Aerospace Power and Strategic Studies (CAPSS) assessment of the campaign’s opening phase found that “goalposts have continually been changing.”⁷ It judged the later shift from counter-force to counter-value targeting “a reactive strategy not quite anticipated by planners,” rather than a sequenced plan.

The ways and means committed were, on paper, formidable. The US Department of Defense fact sheets record more than 6,500 manned combat flights in the campaign’s first weeks. They record over 7,000 targets struck in that same period.⁸ Twenty-eight distinct platform types took part, from B-2 and B-52 bombers to carrier strike groups. CENTCOM’s later tallies put total sorties above 13,000. The Israeli Air Force reported over 800 strike sorties and roughly 16,000 munitions in its first weeks alone. That rose to more than 18,000 munitions and 10,800 strikes in later phases.⁹ Yet the CAPSS assessment records that by day thirteen, precision stand-off munitions had fallen to roughly one per cent of weapons expended. At the same time, the target list swelled past 15,000.¹⁰ That magazine-depth problem pushed planners toward less discriminate weapons. It pushed them, with those weapons, toward the counter-value shift Iran’s own messaging was able to exploit. Six months on, the coalition had degraded Iranian capability in absolute terms. It had not secured the sequential outcomes—denuclearisation first, then economic normalisation—originally promised.

Operation True Promise IV: Iran’s Demonstrated Effects on the United States, Israel, and the GCC

Iran’s retaliation was not negligible. Tehran’s declared inventory going into the conflict comprised more than 3,000 ballistic missiles across fourteen types.¹¹ It also included six land-attack and at least three anti-ship cruise missile variants, and five families of long-range one-way attack drones. Iran typically opened with a tranche of drones meant to saturate and expose air-defence radars. Faster ballistic and cruise missiles then struck the gaps that saturation created. A congressional assessment reported in May 2026 put US aircraft losses and damage at 42 airframes over the course of the campaign.¹² These losses came from a mix of hostile fire, fratricide, and accidents in increasingly congested airspace. Independent post-strike assessment concluded that roughly half of Iran’s missile launchers remained intact months into the campaign. Thousands of missiles and drones reportedly remained in inventory as well.¹³ If accurate, that finding undercuts any reading of the campaign as having attrited Iran’s strike capacity to exhaustion.

Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz using mining, seizures of merchant shipping, and swarm-boat harassment. It proved more durable than either side’s opening assumptions anticipated. By mid-August, daily transits through the strait averaged roughly thirteen vessels, against a pre-war norm of 130 to 140.¹⁴ That reduction held for five months; it did not merely spike and fade. The International Energy Agency (IEA) described Hormuz closure as actively squeezing the global economy through accelerated demand destruction.¹⁵ India felt this directly. It depends on the strait for a large majority of its crude and the great bulk of its liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) imports. Brent crude rose from roughly USD 80 to USD 120 a barrel within the campaign’s first two weeks. Domestic cooking-gas prices climbed sharply. By May, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was publicly urging citizens to conserve fuel and defer gold purchases.¹⁶ None of this alone proves doctrine. It does show that Iran’s retaliatory campaign generated effects disproportionate to the material balance most pre-war assessments assumed.

Air Denial: Iran’s Demonstrated Wherewithal

Air denial differs from air superiority or air control. It describes a posture an actor adopts when it cannot contest a domain outright. Such an actor can still make that domain costly, unpredictable, or degraded enough to meaningfully constrain an adversary’s freedom of action.¹⁷ The denying party need not gain freedom to operate there itself. Four elements make up the concept, as applied to the 2026 campaign. The first is dispersing and hardening key assets against precision strikes. The second is degradation of an adversary’s sensors and command-and-control architecture, rather than its aircraft directly. The third is persistent, if imprecise, cost imposed through mass rather than precision. The fourth is denial of secure basing and uncontested overflight, to the extent achievable.

On each count, Iran’s demonstrated wherewithal was real but partial. Analysts writing in War on the Rocks documented a campaign that struck at the “nests and eggs” of American airpower, rather than at aircraft in the air.¹⁸ Iran hit satellite-communications terminals at Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain.¹⁹ It struck early-warning radar, including AN/FPS-132 and AN/TPY-2 systems, in Qatar and Jordan.²⁰ It hit tanker aircraft at Prince Sultan Air Base.²¹ On March 27, it destroyed an E-3 Sentry airborne early-warning aircraft.²² At that moment, the US fleet had only six E-3s deployed and was already stretched to sustain two continuous orbits.²³ This is a textbook illustration of denial logic: attack enablers rather than platforms. Degrading the whole system, on this reasoning, imposes more friction than attriting individual airframes. Roughly thirty hardened, dispersed underground sites extended the same logic to Iran’s own missile production and launch capacity. Several were reopened and returned to limited use within hours of being struck by US bunker-penetrating munitions.²⁴

A more sceptical reading, advanced at the Modern War Institute, argues that “air denial” fits awkwardly with a conflict fought substantially with rockets, cruise missiles, and drones rather than manned aircraft.²⁵ Iranian launches continued “throughout and beyond the conflict.” The author reads this less as evidence of coherent denial doctrine than as proof that traditional air control is no longer achievable against a determined, dispersed adversary. The asymmetric cost structure reinforces this ambiguity rather than resolving it. Iranian Shahed-type drones cost an estimated USD 20,000 to USD 50,000 apiece. Iranian ballistic missiles cost between USD 1 to USD 2 million each. Patriot PAC-3 interceptors cost USD 4–5 million; Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors cost between USD 12 and USD 15 million.²⁶ Independent analysis judged this exchange ratio unsustainable against repeated large-volume barrages, within any plausible US missile-defence budget. In short, Iran possessed enough of the constituents of air denial to impose real cost and real constraint. It did not possess—or need—the wherewithal to deny the coalition the air domain outright.

Mosaic Defence in the 2026 Test: Coordinated Retaliation versus Decentralised Survival

Mosaic defence is a different proposition from air denial, though commentary on the campaign often conflates the two. Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Brigadier General Mohammad Ali Jafari formulated it from 2005. He built thirty-one semi-autonomous provincial commands with pre-delegated authority.²⁷ The doctrine was explicitly designed against decapitation. Its own metaphor holds that a mosaic, unlike a clockwork mechanism, can lose individual tiles while the larger picture survives. The 2026 campaign tested this claim on its very first day, when strikes killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and dozens of senior commanders. Iran launched the opening tranche of Operation True Promise IV within minutes regardless. Provincial IRGC formations reportedly kept operating without what analysts characterise as clear central authorisation. That reportedly included at least two documented strikes against targets in Oman and Turkey.²⁸

That evidence supports the doctrine’s core claim about survivability. It sits awkwardly, though, with how True Promise IV itself appeared: a substantially centrally coordinated retaliatory campaign, sequenced in waves and calibrated in target selection. Decentralised, provincially delegated authority would not obviously produce that on its own. The tension is real, not merely semantic. Iran’s missile forces retained pre-delegated launch authority as one of mosaic defence’s five constituent domains.²⁹ That fact allows centrally-directed retaliation and decentralised battlefield survival to coexist without contradiction. The offensive missile force executed a broadly centralised campaign plan. Ground and naval formations, meanwhile, absorbed losses and kept functioning without waiting for instructions—instructions that leadership losses had made impossible to issue. The more defensible reading is that True Promise IV’s opening salvos were centrally sequenced before decapitation losses fully registered. Subsequent defensive survival, local strikes, and continuity of government then fell to the decentralised architecture mosaic defence was built for. One assessment captures the resulting condition precisely: Iran fought “a war without a centre—operationally continuous but strategically without direction.”³⁰ The same source concludes the system “successfully prevented a rapid regime collapse.” It leaves open, though, whether this durability substitutes for a negotiated strategic outcome, or merely consoles its absence.

Air Denial, Mosaic Defence, or Something Else: Weighing the Evidence

None of the three explanations—air denial, mosaic defence, or generic institutional resilience—fully accounts for Iran’s performance on its own. Each operated at different levels and on different timelines, not as competing, mutually exclusive. Air denial best explains the operational-level facts. It shows how Iran degraded coalition effectiveness by targeting sensors, tankers, and command nodes rather than contesting the sky directly. It also shows Iran imposing a cost-exchange ratio no plausible interceptor budget could sustain indefinitely. Mosaic defence best explains the institutional-level fact: why the Iranian state did not collapse after a decapitation strike. Against a more centralised adversary, that strike plausibly would have ended organised resistance within days. Neither concept fully explains the specific, closely sequenced character of True Promise IV’s opening waves. Those look less like emergent, bottom-up improvisation than a retaliatory plan that predated the war and was simply executed once triggered.

A third factor is harder to weigh, given the limits of open-source evidence: institutional and cultural preparation. IRGC political culture has been built since 1979 around the expectation of external attack. A leadership succession model matters here too: the so-called “fourth successor” arrangement lets the Assembly of Experts activate interim authority well beyond the immediate chain of command.³¹ It had been rehearsed conceptually, if not operationally, long before February 2026. That prior institutional preparation may account for as much of Iran’s demonstrated resilience as either named doctrine alone. The balance of evidence, graded honestly, points toward overlapping, partially coincidental factors. A pre-existing retaliatory plan, a genuinely decentralised survival architecture, and deep institutional preparation for regime survival all played a part. This was not the clean execution of either doctrine in isolation. Analysts should resist collapsing that layered picture into one tidy label for narrative economy.

Perception and Adaptation: Were the US and Israel Surprised?

Western and Israeli planners were not caught entirely unaware by Iranian decentralisation. Iran’s provincial IRGC structure and its five-branch mosaic architecture were both documented in open Western scholarship for nearly two decades before 2026.³² So was its post-2003 study of why centralised states collapse quickly under decapitation. What appears to have been underestimated was not decentralisation as a concept. It was that concept’s practical durability under sustained, multi-domain pressure. Separately, planners underestimated the depth and dispersal of Iran’s missile production and launch infrastructure—something a CAPSS assessment describes as “apparently not been bargained for.”³³

The clearest missed signal sat closer to the war’s opening than any doctrinal debate. On February 17-18, 2026, roughly ten days before Epic Fury’s first strikes, Iran staged “Maritime Security Belt 2026” at Bandar Abbas with Russian and Chinese naval units.³⁴ A parallel Iranian drill ran alongside it: “Smart Control of the Strait of Hormuz.” That drill practised anti-ship cruise-missile fire. It also carried out drone and submarine operations launched from three Gulf islands—close to the actual toolkit Iran used to shut the strait five weeks later. Western assessment at the time treated the exercise as political theatre rather than rehearsal. A former CENTCOM commander described it as Russia and China “showing support,” not preparing for war. Independent analysts judged the small foreign contingent operationally marginal.³⁵ Whether that judgment reflected a genuine intelligence gap, or a defensible reading of ambiguous evidence, is not settled by open sources. What is clear is this: planners had a concrete, near-term demonstration of strait-closure tactics in view, five weeks out, and did not weight it heavily in campaign planning.

Operationally, the coalition did adapt. The shift toward counter-value targeting reflected real-time adjustment to a harder-than-expected problem. So did the sustained effort to strike missile-production sites despite their hardening and dispersal. But adaptation in execution is not correction in goal-setting, and this is where the campaign’s central weakness lay. Victory conditions, on the Hudson Institute’s reading, were never made precise enough to be judged achieved or not by any objective external test.³⁶ Six months into a campaign framed initially as existential, the stated primary objective had shifted from denuclearisation to oil-price stability. That shift points less to Iranian success at concealment than to a goal-setting process that never fixed what an acceptable, verifiable end-state would look like. Iran did not so much defeat US and Israeli air campaigns as it outlasted a set of political objectives. Those objectives kept moving to stay within reach of what military means could plausibly deliver.

Implications for India: The Pakistan Question and India’s Own Planning

Whether Pakistan could replicate an Iran-style combination of air denial and mosaic defence against India deserves scepticism, not assumption. Pakistan’s civil-military relationship, however dominant its army has historically been, is not organised around an IRGC-equivalent institution. It lacks that institution’s ideological cohesion, provincial redundancy, and pre-delegated launch authority. Pakistan’s own conduct during the 2026 crisis reflects this difference. China pursued active regional mediation during the 2026 Middle East crisis involving Iran. While maintaining an official stance of neutrality, Islamabad hosted multilateral consultations and partnered with Beijing to issue a joint five-point peace initiative urging an immediate ceasefire, dialogue, and maritime security.³⁷ It also deployed forces to Saudi Arabia, framed as defensive cooperation, not an offensive posture.³⁸ That is a state working through conventional inter-state channels, not one rehearsing decentralised resistance doctrine. A structural precondition for mosaic defence is a regime that expects existential, centrally targeted decapitation. Such a regime also needs parallel survival architecture, built against that specific contingency over decades. Nothing in Pakistan’s institutional history suggests an equivalent expectation or build-out. Wholesale transplantation of Iran’s model is implausible. Selective tactical borrowing—dispersal of missile assets, layered low-cost drone defences—is a different, more plausible matter.

The more durable lesson for India lies less in the Pakistan-specific question. It lies more in what the campaign reveals about goal-setting, victory conditions, and ways-and-means discipline against any comparably resilient adversary, including China. India’s own exposure to the campaign’s second-order effects was immediate. It depends on the Strait of Hormuz for a large majority of its crude imports and the great bulk of its LPG supply. That dependence translated directly into a domestic price shock, prompting emergency conservation measures.³⁹ India still honoured fuel-supply commitments to Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh through the crisis. That exposure argues for treating energy and chokepoint resilience as a standing element of India’s own strategic calculation, not an afterthought managed once a contingency begins. The central military-planning lesson of Epic Fury and Roaring Lion is harder, but no less important. Overwhelming tactical execution—thousands of sorties, tens of thousands of munitions, sustained target-list growth—did not by itself produce strategic closure. The campaign’s political objectives were never pinned down precisely enough, at the outset, for military means to be matched against them with discipline. For India, planning against an adversary that may combine dispersed, hardened strike capacity with decentralised survival architecture of its own, the discipline that mattered most in the Iran case was not additional firepower. It was the prior, harder work of defining, in falsifiable terms, what victory would actually consist of—before committing to the ways and means meant to secure it.

Conclusion

Iran’s 2026 performance against Epic Fury and Roaring Lion is best read as neither pure improvisation nor the clean execution of one named doctrine. It was the convergence of three things: a pre-planned retaliatory campaign, a genuinely decentralised survival architecture built over two decades against exactly this contingency, and institutional preparation for regime continuity that predates either doctrinal label. Air denial explains how Iran raised the coalition’s operational costs. Mosaic defence explains why decapitation did not produce collapse. Neither alone explains the whole. What the campaign demonstrates most clearly, six months on and still without a settled outcome, is that materially overwhelming force, applied against goals that were never precisely fixed, produces tactical records without strategic closure. That lesson should weigh more heavily on Indian planners than the narrower, less certain question of whether Pakistan could replicate Tehran’s specific institutional model.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Centre for Aerospace Power and Strategic Studies [CAPSS])

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