Coded Commanders' are 'new General' as AI takes centre stage in warfare

OPINION

- DR. S. KRISHNAN AND RANVEER SINGH RATHORE

Warfare is no longer confined to trenches, tanks, and territorial lines. The battlefield of the twenty-first century has shifted to codes, algorithms, satellites, and quantum signals. In this new age, decisions are not just taken by generals in command rooms but also by machine learning systems parsing terabytes of real-time data. The United States and China have embraced this transformation with clarity and urgency, pouring unprecedented resources into artificial intelligence, cyber dominance, quantum networks, and unmanned systems. For India, a nation with strategic imperatives across two hostile borders and maritime vulnerabilities, the urgency is far greater. The question is not whether India should modernize but whether it can do so fast enough to ensure survival in wars where the first shots may be fired in cyberspace or space, not on land.

ALGORITHMS AT WAR: HOW AI IS REWRITING COMMAND AND CONTROL

Artificial intelligence has become the defining marker of military modernization. The United States leads in the integration of AI into its command and control systems, combining battlefield simulations with predictive analytics to give commanders decision superiority. In war-gaming scenarios, American forces rely on AI to identify enemy vulnerabilities, optimize troop movements, and execute precision strikes with minimal human latency. AI-driven ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance) is already a reality in the Pentagon's doctrine, where unmanned systems feed vast amounts of battlefield data into real-time decision networks.