Operation Sindoor was akin to playing a game of chess: Army Chief

The Hindu

4 days ago

Army Chief General Upendra Dwivedi has said Operation Sindoor was akin to playing a game of chess, as "we did not know" what would be the enemy's next move, and though the "test match stopped on the fourth day", it could have been a protracted conflict.
He also emphasised the importance of "narrative management" in such a scenario as "victory is in mind", and said if you ask a Pakistani "whether you lost or won, he would say, my [Army] Chief has become a Field Marshal, we must have won only, that is why he has become a Field Marshal".
The Army Chief made the remarks in his address at a function held at IIT-Madras on August 4. The video of his address was shared by the Army over the weekend.
Without naming any country, the Army Chief also underlined the threat perception, and said, "next time, it may be much more, and whether that country will do it alone, or supported by some other country, we do not know. But I have a strong hunch, feeling, that country will not be alone. That is where we have to be careful".
The Army Chief used the analogies of chess and cricket to emphasise the intricacies of Operation Sindoor, India's decisive military action launched in May on terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) in retaliation for the April 22 Pahalgam attack.
Four-day conflict
The operation led to a four-day military conflict between India and Pakistan that was halted after an understanding reached between the two sides on May 10.
"Operation Sindoor, a new normal, is just the beginning. It is the age of acceleration, transformation we are living in. And if that be the case, then the journey to travel together for upholding peace, even if enforced through strength, synergy and sovereignty, is the call of the day," the Army Chief said.
Using the metaphor of the chess game, Gen. Dwivedi said, "In Operation Sindoor what we did, we played chess. So, what does it mean? It means, we did not know what is the next move the enemy is going to take, and what we are going to do. This is something, we call... the grey zone. Grey zone is that we are not going for the conventional operations. But we are doing something, just short of a conventional operation." "Conventional operation means, go with everything, take everything you have. And, if you are able to come back, otherwise, stay there. That is called the conventional approach. Here, the grey zone means any activity that is taking place in all domains, that is something we are talking about and Operation Sindoor taught us that this is the grey zone," he said.
"So, we were making the chess moves, and he [enemy] was also making the chess moves. Somewhere we were giving him the checkmate and somewhere we were going in for the kill at the risk of losing our own, but that's the way life is all about," the Army Chief said.
Gen. Dwivedi emphasised that the grey zone was ever present and this would remain.
"And the next war which we are looking at, it may happen soon, and we have to prepare accordingly, and in this we have to fight this battle, non-kinetic one, together," he said without elaborating.
The Army Chief said the military alone would not be fighting it.
"If I look at it, India is facing a two-and-a-half front, and if it is facing the land borders, then keeping in with the psyche of people in India today, currency of victory will remain, as land," he said.
As far as Operation Sindoor is concerned, the Army Chief said the Indian ground forces were "playing chess" and in this board game, something was visible, while something was not visible.
"And, if something that was not visible, maybe other countries were helping to make it visible for the adversary...This test match stopped on the fourth day, it could have gone to 14 days, 140 days also, 1,400 days also, we don't know, but we have to be prepared for those things," he said.
Force orchestration
In his address, he also underlined the components if a force orchestration an Army has — force visualisation, force preservation and force application.
And Operation Sindoor was a "whole of nation approach" and military was given a "free hand" to decide what was to be done, the general officer said.
And, that is the kind of confidence, the political clarity, political direction, for the first time we saw, he said, adding, having no terms of restrictions raised the morale of the force.
That is how, it helped Army commanders on ground to "act as per their wisdom".
Giving further details of the operation, he said that on April 25, 'we visited the Northern Command, place where we thought, planned and conceptualised and executed seven out of the nine targets which were destroyed killing several terrorists.' On the precision strikes on terror camps, he said it was 'wide and deep where we hit the heartland, first time we hit the heartland, of course, our targets were the nursery and the masters'. 'This has never been done, and even Pakistan was not expecting that the heartland will be hit, and that's what came as a 'shocker' to them. But were we prepared for it, yes, we were prepared for it, to absorb the blow back which will come up,' Gen. Dwivedi said.
Use of social media
On how the battle of narratives was fought during Operation Sindoor, he said the Indian forces countered Pakistan's strategy in their own way — using social media and other platforms to convey the message to the masses.
'This is how, you can influence the population. It is the domestic population, the adversary's population and the neutral population,' he said.
"Strategic messaging was very important, and that's why the first messaging that we did was, justice done. That hit the maximum, I am told, in the world today, the number of hits which we received," Gen. Dwivedi said.
He further said today, globally 56 conflicts were going on, involving a total of 92 countries, adding, this strategic continuum of persistence would continue to grow.
"As far as we are concerned, we share two borders, and both borders, you can call it live, semi-live, in whichever terminology you can look at, but these potential adversaries have the capabilities to orchestrate a kind of war, which we have to face together or one by one, that we cannot say for sure, as of today, but capability-wise, we have to stand up to both the fronts," the Army Chief said.
Now, if that be the case, then "we have to look at five generations of warfare".
To boost preparedness, technology had to percolate down to the soldier level, and that was "why I have said, 'eagle on the arm', our 12-lakh population of the Army, everybody should have one drone each, 'eagle on the arm'," he said.
'So, from muddy trenches to the Internet of Things, that is the kind of arena we are looking at,' Gen. Dwivedi said, emphasising the multiple domains of evolving nature of warfare.