Article Posted on : - Dec 24, 2014

NEW DELHI (PTI): Security challenges are going beyond traditional domains of land, sea and air and new forms of conflict and war are emerging, chief of DRDO Avinash Chander has said.

Delivering the 27th Intelligence Bureau centenary endowment lecture on Tuesday, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) chief said the space which has become a dominant force in people's day-to-day life, cyber space which is governing every activity, has proved to be a boon and threat simultaneously.

"Underwater area is emerging to be a new area of conflict because of resource control.. unmanned warfare will change the way the wars are fought and the way the security challenges are going to be handled," he said.

Chander said asymmetric warfare, guerrilla tactics, internal insurgencies sponsored by external forces has been traditionally a practice all over the world for thousands of years and "it is being refined more and more today by our adversaries."

"These challenges also give us an opportunity to play a leading role as a stabilising force in this region if we can find solutions to these challenges and come out stronger and that is where the harnessing of our intelligence, the process of information control becomes vital," he said.

The DRDO chief said technology in a way has revolutionised the mere genesis of intelligence, with it being a critical enabler in every phase of the intelligence cycle -- information gathering, information analysis and information dissemination to decision makers.

"The impact of technology has not only revolutionised the traditional means of intelligence such as human intelligence but has also opened new disciplines such as signals intelligence, geospatial intelligence, imagery intelligence, cyber intelligence and measurement and signature intelligence," he said.

The DRDO chief said the most important means of information gathering continues to be the open source intelligence - the internet monitoring, social media interaction and mobile communication access.

A whole lot of technologies from voice processing, natural language processing, data mining, text analysers, ontology and taxonomy involving individual characterisation, correlation and so on are being developed and constantly upgraded," he said.

At the same time, Chander said there is a need to strengthen the security of the communication as well as cyber infrastructure.

Chander said military strategies today are guided by Network-Centric Operations and these operations rely on computer equipment and networked communications technology to provide a shared awareness of the battle in space that is expected to synergize sensors, command and control and result in superior decision-making and overwhelming war-fighting advantage.

"It uses electronic and information technologies to provide real time situational awareness, mission-critical information, coordination and collaboration throughout the chain of command, securely and reliably," he said.

The DRDO chief said the networking world is also going to be a driving force and networks of every-day usage items are already a reality in terms of Internet of things.