Digital Army
In the year 2015, the former Defense Minister of India, Mr. Manohar Parrikar has launched the Digital Army programme. Mr. Parrikar has unveiled a series of product to promote digitalization of Indian Army, such as IAF-HAL ePortal- an inter-organization information sharing system (IOIS) between the Indian Air Force and Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (an Indian state-owned defense company) to facilitate better coordination, transparency and faster decision-making, Army Cloud which includes a Central Data Centre, a Near Line Data Centre and a Disaster Recovery site for replication of its critical data along with virtualized servers and storage, Digi-Locker (a secure and exclusive data storage space to all the units and formation headquarters of the Army over its dedicated data network) and ARPAN 3.0 (Army Record Office Process Automation) etc. India has developed its first integrated defense communication network too. DCN is a strategic, highly secure and scalable system. It has a pan-India reach – from Ladakh to the North East to island territories. These steps are crucial in the process of transforming Indian Army from a platform-centric to network-centric force.
India’s Army Chief General Bipin Rawat, in his address at a conference on military communication, has said that the army has to keep pace with the “digitized world” and ensure that most of its systems are digitized as early as possible. Filling the communication gaps in the decision making and the integration of Armed forces are some of the key priorities of the Indian Army’s Digitalization initiatives.
Some of the key technology requirements as mentioned in the “Technology Perspective and Capability Roadmap (April 2013)” (released by India’s Ministry of Defense) are: Battlefield Transparency, Command and Control Architecture, integrated platforms to support Communication, supporting architecture and infrastructure towards achieving network centricity, Smart Radios, Strong encryption mechanisms and access to real-time information etc. The Digital Army initiatives of India are aiming to fulfill these requirements.
The concept of Digital Army is not limited to the use of Digital technologies; it is also about having a seamless coordination mechanism which provides actionable and real-time information. Defense agencies across the globe are building the capabilities which help them to take timely decisions based on the right inputs at the right time. The Joint Information Environment of the U.S., UK government’s Defense as a Platform (DaaP) infrastructure, and Australian Defence Force’s Single Information Environment are some of the recent notable initiatives around the world.
The standardization of ICT infrastructure for seamless coordination and integration of Tri-Services, tactical spectrum management and application of analytics, IoT, and cloud technologies in defense architectures are some of the immediate requirements of India’s Digital Army programme.
Read the official Press Release on Increasing Infrastructure for Digital Army Top Priority of Government: Dr. Subhash Bhamre
