The Integrated Defence Staff (IDS) is in the final stages of creating a new body that will guide the ‘strategic communication’ of the armed forces in order to shape “influence and legitimacy” in modern warfare. The move comes even as the security forces faced questions that communication strategy devised by India was not entirely effective, despite decisively besting Pakistan during the four-day-long Operation Sindoor.
Speaking to THE WEEK, Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Anil Chauhan said: “We are creating a new body to handle and guide the holistic strategic communication for the Army, the Navy and the Air Force. It is awaiting the requisite sanctions at the moment and should be up anytime soon.”
The CDS was speaking on the sidelines of the second edition of the Tri-Service seminar ‘Ran Samwad’ that is being held at the Air Force Training Command, Bengaluru, with the core focus of building a roadmap for preparing the Indian military for multi-domain operations (MDO), encompassing the land, air, sea, cyber, space and cognitive domains.
The strategic communication cohesive will include cognitive warfare and perception management to coordinate efforts across all three services, especially perception management, but will also operate independently in the domain of cognitive warfare.
“We are also in an advanced stage of its promulgation across all services’ networks, and we are looking to expand it into the cyber and space domains and geo-specials,” the CDS had said in his address.
The new unit, comprising officers from the three armed wings, will also include diplomats, bureaucrats, influencers and media professionals.
The CDS pointed out that 15 per cent of the armed forces’ effort during Operation Sindoor was spent in countering disinformation and misinformation.
With modern wars increasingly becoming a vital part of gray zone warfare with the aim to influence, coerce, and destabilize adversaries, ‘strategic communication’ falls short of an open armed conventional conflict but utilises false propaganda, disinformation, and cyber operations to give shape to an information warfare that sets up “optics” while spewing false “narratives” in order to shape perceptions.
At the moment, the Indian Army already operates a directorate for strategic communication that was set up in the aftermath of the 1999 Kargil war, which is responsible for the perception management of the Indian Army. A small branch on perception management has also begun operating under the IDS.