When the Chief of Army Staff General Upendra Dwivedi declared the names, Rudra, Bhairav and Divyastra, on Kargil Diwas, it was not a ceremonial reminder of the past achievements. It was a measured message that India's defence posture is becoming a proactive sword as opposed to a reactive shield. There is a tectonic doctrinal shift with each formation: Rudra, the Integrated Battle Group, Bhairav, the Special Forces brigade and Divyastra, the long-range precision strike force. They combined to create the institutionalisation of a war-fighting ethos that India has long theorised on and been reluctant to operationalise. It marks a shift from legacy ‘Cold Start’ to a more relevant model of ‘Cold Strike’.
What we are witnessing is the physical manifestation of India’s evolving deterrence doctrine, which has now crystallised as Cold Strike. This is not a derivative of the 'Cold Start' doctrine of the 2000s. Cold Strike is a bold departure. It is India’s preemptive, multi-domain deterrence philosophy, shaped by real-time intelligence, information dominance, and strategic orchestration. It thrives not on brute invasion but on cognitive disruption, precise degradation, and narrative control. It is war as deterrence, not destruction; assertion, not adventurism.
For nearly two decades, the Cold Start Doctrine remained a paper deterrent; conceptually sound, politically constrained, and operationally untested. It was meant to offer a swift, shallow offensive against Pakistan without crossing nuclear thresholds. But in execution, Cold Start suffered from a civil-military disconnect, doctrinal ambiguities, and mobilisation lags. It lacked both political appetite and real-time capabilities.
Operation Sindoor changed that. It proved that India could conduct punitive, multi-domain strikes while keeping escalation under tight control. Sindoor was not just an operation; it was a doctrine in action—cold, calibrated, and cognisant of geopolitical optics. It showcased jointness, speed, and strategic restraint—qualities absent in previous crisis responses. It is from the ashes of Cold Start and the learning curve of Sindoor that Cold Strike has emerged. And it is through formations like Rudra, Bhairav, and Divyastra that Cold Strike now takes muscle. Cold Strike is not just a doctrine; it is India’s sharpened sword of calibrated multidomain deterrence, fusing speed, precision, and narrative dominance to seize the initiative, strike pre-emptively, and control escalation across all domains without flinching to nuclear blackmail.
Cold Strike: From paper doctrine to battlefield posture
Cold Strike is not an upgraded Cold Start; it is a complete reimagining. It does not wait for an act of war; it redefines what constitutes an act of war. It elevates the threat of terror to trigger preemption. Its strategic objective is not territorial gain but operational denial, capability degradation, and information supremacy.
What possibly makes Cold Strike uniquely Indian is its calibrated tempo. It could work in 12 to 24-hour combat cycles, enabled by real-time intelligence and precision vectors. The non-kinetic war: the cyber disruption, electronic jamming, and information dominance are unleashed to temporarily blind and destabilise the foe even before the rounds of the first kinetic assault are fired. Invoked kinetic operations are quick and constrained; they are carried out through drones, missiles and manned assaults targeting enemy infrastructure and military assets.
But should the adversary escalate, Cold Strike seamlessly transitions to integrated contact warfare. Here, formations like Rudra IBGs enter the fray, not to invade but to punish, dislocate, and deter further escalation. It is a doctrine designed not just to respond to provocation but to seize initiative and terminate conflict on India’s terms. The escalatory matrix could entail non-contact to contact multi-domain escalation with levers of escalation and domination at each ladder and a clear conflict termination profile institutionalised without giving away predictability.
Rudra, Bhairav, Divyastra: Embedding doctrine into structure
If Cold Strike is the doctrine, then Rudra, Bhairav, and Divyastra are its instruments. Their institutionalisation marks the cutting-edge doctrinal reform in India’s military structure in decades. Conceptually, the traditional structures are being replaced by a tech-infused combat architecture built for dominance, speed and autonomy. At its core are mission-configurable units; agile, multi-domain formations primed for rapid deployment across varied terrains and threats. Autonomous systems are no longer auxiliary; they now define cyber-proof precision engagement through AI-enabled drones and adaptive strike platforms, bringing in the era of precise mass. The command backbone is a zero-lag, secure C5ISR layer that compresses decision-to-execution cycles, creating real-time kill chains. Combat isn’t confined to land, sea or air; cyber, space, and electronic warfare have been fused into frontline operations. Strategic independence is powered by sovereign systems, with indigenous platforms tailored for India’s needs, not imported templates. Most critically, the doctrinal mindset is shifting, from reactive and deterrent to predictive and pre-emptive, enabling India to act first proactively, not just respond.
Rudra is not a symbolic name; it is a mission-configurable, theatre-specific Integrated Battle Group 2.0, designed for high-tempo, high-precision operations. Drawing on years of doctrinal research and operational feedback, Rudra embodies the principle of “pre-emption, dislocation, and disintegration.” It is the reconstitution of India’s fighting formations into lean, mobile, and lethal smart integrated combat units, built not for attrition, but for agility, dislocation and dominance with overwhelming mounting and execution tempo.
Bhairav serves as the light commando battalion, which is kitted and specialised to be agile and lethal. Bhairav Special Forces units will be ultra-ready to strike across the border, behind enemy lines with surprise and tempo. Besides, every infantry battalion will have a commando platoon and a dedicated drone platoon.
Divyastra, the long-range precision strike force, is the deterrent edge. It carries the capability of escalation control through calibrated use of long-range vectors. It is the instrument of strategic punishment that allows India to hold targets at risk deep within hostile territory without crossing into full-spectrum war. Together, these formations institutionalise Cold Strike across all levels of warfare—tactical, operational, and strategic.
Integrated Battle Group 2.0: Rudra, the backbone of dislocation
The transformation toward Integrated Battle Groups (IBGs) has been decades in the making, but its real push came in the wake of Operation Parakram and the doctrinal introspections that followed. The old model of monolithic, defensive mindset-oriented formations with sluggish mobilisation timelines is incompatible with future wars. Rudra resolves that gap.
These technology-enabled modular formations based on deployability, employability and multidomain capability integration aim to achieve combat overmatch and terrain-specific missions. They represent infantry and armour, artillery and air defence, engineers and drones, and C5ISR into a unified structure. But more importantly, they bring operational autonomy at the lowest viable level. They can be launched within hours, fight independently, and be scaled up as part of larger formations.
In the plains, Rudra enables pre-emptive shallow thrusts that can dislocate enemy reserves and force strategic recalibration. In the mountains, they serve as rapid response forces for deterrence, denial, and quid pro quo operations against Chinese salami slicing. Whether on the western front against Pakistan or the northern front against China, Rudra are the theatre-level tools India needs to fight smart with compressed kill chains, greater survivability and operate under a nuclear overhang.
The conceptual shift towards Rudra is based on three pillars—manoeuvre warfare, directive command, and combined arms employment with technology and effect-based operations ingrained. They rely on the quality of leadership, inter-service synergy, battlefield transparency and real-time domination of information.
Doctrinal, institutional, and cultural reforms must follow
To convert this transformation from concept to combat readiness, several shifts are essential. India politically needs to legalise its new deterrence policy by stating an explicit National Defence Strategy that outlines pre-emption levels, escalation ladders and red lines. Implicit in the argument is the operational construct that under imminent threat, it is legitimate to target assets across the border via precision strikes, making the argument move from strategic ambiguity to strategic assertion.
Institutionally, a National War Cabinet must be created for wartime governance, one that can activate strategic, military, and diplomatic levers in sync. Intelligence fusion must be centralised under a National Digital War Grid that integrates space, cyber, UAV, and battlefield data into a live decision-support system.
Militarily, the Chief of Defence Staff must drive the creation of ‘functional’ theatre commands—Cyber, Space, Air Defence, and C5ISR. The restructuring of artillery into a Missile-Drone Strike Force, the creation of a Cognitive Warfare Directorate, and the doctrinal elevation of drone warfare as a strategic pillar, not a tactical accessory, are non-negotiable.
This transformation also demands a cultural shift. Commanders must be trained not for attritional warfare but for tempo-based proactive offensive manoeuvre warfare. The bottom line must be hope of success and not fear of failure. War is now as much about knowledge as firepower. The keys to victory lie in dislocation- physical, technological, moral, psychological and temporal, and none of this with the loss of restraint or defensive mindset. Also, along with the battlespace geometry, we need to enhance the cognitive geography for narrative dominance.
Conclusion: Cold Strike is not just a doctrine, it is India’s posture
The era of symbolic deterrence is over. India is now scripting a playbook where wars are deterred not by nuclear ambiguity but by visible capability and credible compellence. Cold Strike is India’s message to its adversaries: the cost of provocation is now high, the response is no longer predictable, and escalation will be managed but not avoided.
The institutionalisation of Rudra, Bhairav, and Divyastra is the inflexion point. They are not just new units; they are India’s doctrinal response to a rapidly evolving security environment. They ensure that future conflicts will be fought not on the adversary’s terms, but on India’s initiative, timelines, and terms of escalation.
India now has a strategic doctrine with bite, formations with muscle, and a mindset that aligns political will with military capability. Cold Strike, backed by integrated battle groups and precision strike forces, is not a theory waiting for a trigger. It is a posture ready for the moment. That moment, when it comes, will no longer catch India unprepared.