Bengaluru (PTI): Army Chief General Upendra Dwivedi on Thursday said Operation Sindoor demonstrated India's progression towards "domain jointness" and called the military offensive carried out inside Pakistani territory a "defining case study" of operational significance of integration.

In May last year, India had launched a military response targeting terror launchpads in Pakistan post the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack that killed 26 Indian tourists.

"Operation Sindoor was India's most powerful tool of progression towards domain jointness. But we need to achieve domain integration and fusion," General Dwivedi said.

He was addressing the "Ran Samvad" forum on "Land Forces visualisation of Multi Domain Operation (MDO)," here.

The army chief also highlighted the creation of an information warfare organisation and a psychological defence division following Operation Sindoor. 

He said, "15 per cent of our effort was on managing the disinformation campaign."

He cautioned, however, that key challenges remain, particularly in synchronising operations across strategic, operational and tactical levels and addressing the growing prevalence of hybrid or grey-zone warfare.

"These are typically below the conventional military threshold, with the goal to exploit adversary vulnerability," he said, adding that non-kinetic operations are increasingly taking precedence.

"Operation Sindoor was India's most powerful tool of progression towards domain jointness. But we need to achieve domain integration and fusion," he said.

The Chief of Army Staff said his visualisation of MDO is not of six domains operating in parallel but all of them "in constant dynamic interaction where the weight shifts and the lead changes".

The Army chief stressed that modern warfare is no longer confined to geographical boundaries or single-service dominance, but is instead defined by continuous interaction across domains, stakeholders and levels of conflict.

"We are living through a dispersed, undeclared, multi-theatre, multi-domain war of our times. The question is not whether domains interact, it is how the interface is orchestrated across the battle space," he said.

General Dwivedi drew a distinction between land domain and land forces, explaining that while the former refers to the operational space, the latter represents the actors, comprising all six domains—land, air, maritime, cyber, space and cognitive—operating in a shared environment.

He underlined that these domains are no longer siloed but function through dynamic synergy.

Elaborating on the evolving battlefield, General Dwivedi noted that MDO has transformed warfighting into a layered, three-dimensional construct.

 

"In MDO, the battlefield is no longer a line on a map. It's a 3D -- cyber effects shaping the cognitive space, space assets cueing targets, and electronic warfare contesting every frequency simultaneously," he said.

He emphasised that commanders must develop cross-domain situational awareness from the tactical to strategic level.

Highlighting the operational significance of integration, General Dwivedi referred to Operation Sindoor as a "defining case study".

"It was a ground intelligence network coupled with cyber and EW (electronic warfare) inputs that gave the joint army-air force targeting, while the navy's repositioning shaped the strategic calculus simultaneously. No single domain decided the operation," General Dwivedi added.

He described such mutually enabling actions as the essence of MDO.

The Army Chief observed that while domains like cyber, space and cognitive operations benefit from centralised control, land warfare continues to rely on decentralised execution, creating a complex and adaptive system that must be aligned through central intent and technological integration.

On capability development, he said the Indian Army is transitioning steadily from concept to execution under a structured transformation roadmap.

He pointed to dedicated MDO war-gaming exercises since 2024 and the joint doctrine issued in August 2025 as milestones that have provided a unified operational framework across the three services for the first time.

General Dwivedi detailed several structural reforms underway, including the operationalisation of integrated battle groups, Rudra brigades, drone units, electronic warfare formations and cyber operations nodes.

He further underscored the importance of the "three Is" —integration, informatisation and intelligentisation—driven by technology but anchored in human decision-making.

"The human must remain in the loop exercising the judgment," he asserted.

The Army Chief emphasised the need for leadership transformation in the digital age.

"Commanders must evolve into techno-commanders, to build a force that does not know where one domain ends and another begins," he said.

Outlining the future roadmap, he identified "six Ds" shaping the MDO environment—dispersion, democratisation and diffusion among them—leading to imperatives such as diversification of assets, delegation of command and distributed response.

He called for a shift from "domain silos to domain fusion", describing a six-stage progression from domain purity to complete integration.

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Chennai (PTI): New entrant TVK, led by actor-politician Vijay, was leading in as many as 83 constituencies on Monday when counting of votes polled in the April 23 Assembly polls was on across Tamil Nadu. The AIADMK was leading in 58 seats while the ruling DMK was ahead in 34, EC data showed.

About two hours after the postal ballots were counted and EVMs opened for multi-round counting, Vijay's Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam surged ahead of its Dravidian rivals-- the DMK and the AIADMK, with the ruling party struggling to catch up.

If the trends maintain, Vijay could as well ensure the biggest electoral upset, something in lines with the "1967,1977" wins he had referred to in his campaign speeches.

While the Dravidian stalwart CN Annadurai brought the first non-Congress government in Tamil Nadu post-independence in 1967, the charismatic MG Ramachandran (MGR) installed the maiden AIADMK government 10 years later, unseating then DMK government under M Karunanidhi. TVK was leading in most Chennai segments, all considered DMK strongholds and currently represented by the party in the 234-member House.

A poor show by DMK could belie most exit polls giving an edge to it, riding on the number of populist measures Chief Minister M K Stalin had implemented in his five year "Dravidian model," inclusive governance.

According to EC and TV reports, 15 cabinet ministers, including Stalin were trailing. His son and deputy CM Udhayanidhi was also behind in his incumbent Chepauk-Tirvuvallikeni seat, according to a number of reports.

Stalin was trailing behind TVK's VS Babu by 1234 votes in Kolathur segment. Vijay was ahead in Tiruchirappalli East by over 3,000 votes at the end of two rounds of counting, according to EC data.

BJP is trailing in 26 constituencies and it is ahead in Thali segment alone. TVK is ahead in constituencies including Ponneri, Tiruvallur, Poonamalle, and Avadi.

AIADMK is leading in segments including Katpadi, and Guidyattam and party chief Edappadi K Palaniswami is ahead in Edappadi segment by 7003 votes.

DMK was leading in segments including Vellore, Anaikattu and Rishivandiyam.