As India increases its defense spending amid tensions with China and Pakistan, it is closely studying the Ukraine conflict for clues about the future of the war and how to thwart its neighbors.
Some lessons Indian experts have already learned: India needs a lot of artillery, drone and cyberwarfare capabilities.
Comparing Ukraine to India is tricky. Ukraine faces a major enemy – Russia – while India faces its old foe Pakistan to the west and an increasingly powerful China on its northwest border. The Russo-Ukrainian War took place primarily in an Eastern European landscape of plains and forests, with a moderately good road network suitable for mechanized warfare. India must prepare for combat in varied geographic and climatic conditions, including desert, jungle and some of the highest mountains on the planet.
India is also trying to modernize and standardize the equipment of its armed forces, which number around 1.5 million armed with a potpourri of equipment from several countries, as well as indigenous Indian equipment. Until recent years, Russia supplied many weapons such as tanks and jets, but India is increasingly acquiring weapons from Western countries, including American howitzers, French jet fighters and Israeli drones.
The Indian Army’s artillery, for example, includes more than 3,000 weapons and multiple rocket launchers, including Russian, American, Swedish and South Korean designs. Indian observers believe that Ukraine demonstrates the importance of having abundant and modern artillery. Artillery arguably became the decisive combat weapon in this war, with the Russians firing 10,000 shells per day. and move forward, while an ammunition shortage has limited Ukraine to around 2,000 rounds per day. This deluge of firepower forced both armies to entrench themselves and transformed the conflict into trench warfare.
“Looking at the demonstration of artillery fire in the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, two lessons stand out for the Indian Army,” wrote Amrita Jash, assistant professor at Manipal Academy of Education higher, in a report for the Observer Research Foundation: an Indian think tank. “First, firepower can be a ‘victory factor,’ and second, the time between target acquisition and firing has been significantly reduced: where it once took five to ten minutes, it no longer takes only a minute or two.”
Indeed, India is already planning to modernize its artillery arsenal, including switching to 155mm howitzers – the standard NATO caliber – and developing longer-range shells and rockets.
Ukrainian military personnel fire artillery toward Siversk, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, April 1, 2024. Wolfgang Schwan/Anadolu via Getty Images
The air war in Ukraine turned out to be a surprise, especially given Russia’s superiority in aircraft numbers and technology. Anti-aircraft missiles have deterred air forces on both sides from venturing into enemy airspace, with Russian planes limiting themselves to firing missiles at Ukrainian cities from a distance rather than providing air support to their troops at home. ground. Drones have become the stars and workhorses of the air war, with both sides deploying – and losing – drones by the hundreds of thousands.
There are lessons here for Indian air power, according to Arjun Subramaniam, a retired Indian Air Force air vice marshal who helped write the ORF report. India must prepare to “take control of the air under conditions of limited time and space, in the context of a limited conflict of short duration and high intensity as well as in the context of a conflict longer and more prolonged. The Air Force must also ensure that its plans are synchronized with those of land and naval forces. India should also continue to focus on suppressing enemy air defenses, “especially against an adversary that is more interested in denying rather than controlling airspace.”
Unsurprisingly, Subramaniam wants the Indian military to increase drone development and production. But he also worries about the possibility of a massive drone attack on India. “Even more important is the need to rapidly develop counter-drone capabilities that would be critical to responding to large-scale surprise attacks and to retain effective second-strike capabilities,” he wrote.
Cyberwarfare has also emerged in Ukraine as a crucial tool in everything from hacking military computers and critical infrastructure to spreading propaganda and fakes in global media. Shimona Mohan, researcher at ORF noted “the growing role of largely civilian organizations like big tech in conflict situations and the growing interaction of civil-military partnerships around dual-use technologies like AI.”
Mohan recommends that India invest in cyberwarfare, as other countries are doing. “However, if this is not feasible for socio-political or economic reasons, countries should make it a priority to ensure that their strategic geopolitical allies are formidable technological powers. For example, in this war, Ukraine received much support from its more technological allies like the United States and private technology companies.
Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine and other publications. He holds a master’s degree in political science from Rutgers Univ. Follow him on Twitter And LinkedIn.
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