The Future Warfare Course keynote fell to Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) Gen N.S. Raja Subramani, who addressed the fourth edition's inaugural session at the Manekshaw Centre in New Delhi on Monday.

He used the address to focus on the changing character of warfare and the growing weight of emerging technologies on military operations.

He spoke of the need to anticipate future security challenges early rather than react to them, and of building the capacity for the Armed Forces to respond effectively across multiple operational domains at the same time. It builds on themes Gen Raja Subramani has pressed since he took charge as CDS in May around jointness, Aatmanirbhar Bharat and innovation.

CDS flags AI, cyber and space as future warfare drivers

Gen Raja Subramani pointed to a cluster of technologies he said were reshaping how future conflicts would be fought: artificial intelligence, cyber capabilities and autonomous systems, alongside information warfare, space technologies and data-driven decision-making. None of these were framed in isolation. The thread running through the address, as detailed in the Ministry of Defence release on the address, was that these domains increasingly overlap on the same battlefield, and that officers trained today need to think across them rather than within a single one.

He also pressed the case for deeper jointness.

Jointness pitched as the connecting piece

Integration and collaboration between the Armed Forces, industry, academia and the research community are what strengthen national defence preparedness over the long run, Gen Raja Subramani argued, rather than any one service or technology working alone. It is a theme he has raised in other settings too, including during a review of readiness and indigenous manufacturing at South Western Air Command and the C-295 line at Vadodara earlier this year.

Future Warfare Course keynote sets a four-week HQ IDS agenda

The course is conducted by Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff (HQ IDS), the apex tri-service body for higher defence management, and runs for four weeks, from August 3 to August 30.

It draws officers from the Army, Navy and Air Force alongside representatives from government, industry, academia and strategic institutions, and this Future Warfare Course keynote framed that mix as central to the exercise rather than incidental to it.

What the syllabus covers

Participants will work through geopolitics, emerging technologies, cognitive and cyber warfare, multi-domain operations, scenario-building and technology-enabled warfare over the four weeks. HQ IDS has run the course before with coordination support from the Centre for Joint Warfare Studies (CENJOWS), its affiliated think tank on jointness and integration, which also coordinated this edition's curtain raiser earlier this month.

Jointness as a running theme under the current CDS

Gen Raja Subramani has repeatedly returned to jointness, Aatmanirbhar Bharat and innovation as organising themes since taking charge as India's third Chief of Defence Staff at the end of May.

No timeline for outcomes from the course was given, and the release named no other speakers at the inaugural session.