The Key to India’s Multi-Domain Deterrence, Hard Choices, Enabling Layers, and the Urgent Need for Industrial Reform
As China’s Military Poses a Serious Challenge, India Must Reconceptualise Its Doctrinal and Technological Choices to Bridge the Capability Gap—Before the Window for Reform Closes
China’s military poses a serious challenge to India. New Delhi has no choice but to pursue a robust industrial strategy to offset China’s military advantage. Otherwise, it risks the widening of the capability gap. But bridging this gap requires political expediency to make urgent, hard policy choices—what to buy, what to build, and the potential costs and benefits. The challenge is that technology is evolving faster than doctrine, making precise choices even more difficult. The question is how India should reconceptualise its doctrinal and technological choices and adopt a credible defence-industrial strategy to deter the People’s Liberation Army.
This is not merely a procurement problem. It is a strategic challenge that cuts across every aspect of national security: industrial policy, military doctrine, technological innovation, and the very structure of India’s defence institutions. The choices India makes in the next few years will determine whether it can deter a rising China or find itself increasingly vulnerable.
Three Paths, One Choice
There could be three contrasting ways to approach the issue.
First, India could adopt a bold approach. It would imply betting on the right technological trends and investing in a completely new bundle of war-fighting technologies. The risk is if implementation fails, it can create acute capability vulnerabilities and further weaken the margin of deterrence with India’s adversaries. Besides, India lacks the industrial heft to produce technologies at scale and speed to neutralise China’s advantage. But, if successful, it could help reduce the capability gap.
The bold approach is the most ambitious. It would mean skipping entire generations of military technology, investing directly in the cutting edge—hypersonics, directed energy weapons, advanced AI-enabled systems. The payoff could be transformational. But the risks are commensurate. India’s industrial base is not currently structured to deliver such technologies at scale. A failed bet could leave India worse off than before.
Second, India could consider a more conservative strategy. This would entail integrating a wide range of emerging technologies with those in-service to make the existing force more effective. It would also entail enhancing India’s cyber, space and electronic warfare capabilities to digitise the battlespace, to streamline and condense the kill chains. This is entirely doable, but it would not alter the balance of power. Perhaps, this strategy is more suited to fight a short war with Pakistan, not a protracted conflict with China.
The conservative approach is the safest. It would not require radical changes to procurement or doctrine. It would make the existing force more effective. But it would not close the capability gap. Against a rapidly modernising PLA, this approach would leave India permanently behind.
Third, India could explore the middle path. While it continues to rely on legacy platforms, it invests in the creation and deployment of enabling layers, to enhance its ability to deter China. While multi-domain operations should be the obvious choice, India is not there yet for a mix of reasons. Besides, MDO as a concept is difficult to define, and even more difficult to operationalise. This would entail fielding a set of crucial enabling layers—of Command and Control (C2), Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR), deep-strike, close-battle, infrastructure and logistics—which are critical to war outcomes. As these layers evolve, India’s military would shape into a syncretic, multi-domain force.
The middle path is the most realistic. It does not require India to leapfrog decades of industrial development overnight. But it does require a focused, disciplined effort to build the enabling layers that make existing platforms more effective. It is a strategy of incremental but cumulative improvement.
The Industrial Challenge
Historically, military transformations have adopted well-known paths. It entails aligning research, development and industrial capacity, doctrines and structures and technology and tactics across institutions, and over time, to deter threats. National security institutions, including the military, have to work together to develop a common picture of the deterrence that the state wishes to create.
Since India’s margin of deterrence against China is uncertain, India’s endeavour should be to analyse the factors that explain the systemic challenges to building a robust posture. Two aspects stand out.
First, India’s industrial challenges are well known. Its industry is transformed into military requirements into industrial targets is doubtful. The issue is not its technological competence but its defence-industrial base, which is not structured to deliver at speed and scale. Missiles, munitions and drones are urgent industrial investments of the day; so are the ISR and C2 networks and shortfalls in legacy platforms. India needs to expand its defence-industrial base in conjunction with private industry; otherwise, it may continue to face constraints.
The problem is structural. India’s defence industry has been dominated by the public sector for decades, with private industry playing a marginal role. The public sector enterprises have many strengths, but they do not have the capacity to produce at the scale required, nor do they have the agility to adapt to rapidly changing technology. Private industry has the capacity and the agility, but it has been kept on the margins.
While there is no one-off solution to coordinating industrial capacity, technology and doctrine, incremental steps can generate benefits in the long term. Removing red tape, ensuring budgetary stability, and providing long-term contracts especially for specialised platforms could prove helpful. A mindset change recognising that private players can build military systems more efficiently than the government sector is needed. It is never too late to shore up the system, but the window for industrial reform is clearly shrinking.
The Procurement System
Second, India’s procurement system has to focus on evolving and not constraining the fighting force. The system has to adapt faster and be rooted in an efficient defence-industrial base that can produce what an evolving force needs. India needs to spend more, but spend smarter by making hard choices in prioritising key deterrent capabilities. This will require the broadest possible debate and consensus on what needs to be done, and why. It is also the military’s job to explain its roles and tasks to the political leadership, the costs of inaction and possible trade-offs, and how they impact the deterrence that India wishes to achieve.
India’s procurement system is famously slow and cumbersome. Projects take decades from conception to delivery. By the time a system is fielded, the technology is often obsolete. This is not sustainable in an era of rapid technological change. The system must be reformed to prioritise speed and flexibility over bureaucratic perfection.
The Enabling Layers
Strengthening India’s deterrence would mean altering China’s military confidence, while preventing it from assuming that any single capability could prove decisive. This is more so when India has no single capability which is exquisite enough to alter the military balance. By creating and operationalising the enabling layers—C2, ISR, deep-strike, close-battle and others—India can aspire to field a capable multi-domain force, to deter the Chinese.
India must have two top priorities.
First, to identify those military vulnerabilities that present an advantage to China. Its fledgling C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) is one such concern. Dominating the C4ISR battle is key: the side that can see can continue to fight. India needs cheap ISR platforms, in numbers which it can afford to lose, yet maintain ISR capacity. It even needs superior cyber, space and electronic warfare capabilities to deceive and degrade the adversary’s ISR platforms. A layered C4ISR—one that enhances one’s ISR capacity, while limiting an adversary’s ability—is vital.
There are other layers, as well. For instance, the integration of missiles, aircraft and drones as the strike layer to dislocate the enemy in depth. Coordinated employment of land-based platforms such as tanks, guns, and infantry vehicles as a layer to fight front-line battles is crucial. A robust logistic layer that integrates all rear-zone elements including logistics installations, supply chains, and infrastructure is essential for fighting a protracted war. Equally important, in India’s case, will be its nuclear deterrent, and how much nuclear capability it needs to compensate for a lack of conventional deterrence to dissuade a nuclear adversary such as China.
Second, India needs to incentivise the right parts of the defence industrial base, by making one-off budgetary allocations in select capabilities. China has a sizeable missile inventory and has the industrial capacity to produce thousands more, during conflict. If a conflict erupts, it can use these against India, with devastating effect. Even if India were to withstand the initial PLA strikes, it would put severe pressure on India’s surge capacity. This inventory gap is a risky bet. India has to incentivise defence production, in the absence of which, China might be tempted to drag India into a protracted fight.
Conclusion: The Window Is Shrinking
India should, therefore, be spending less time admiring the service-specific acquisitions, and fix the critical enabling layers in the deterrence system. Besides, theatre-isolation alone might not help create these layers, unless it is rooted in deep doctrinal convergence.
The choices are hard. The trade-offs are real. But the alternative—a widening capability gap, a shrinking margin of deterrence, a China emboldened to take risks—is unacceptable.
India has the talent, the resources, and the industrial capacity to build a credible deterrent. What it lacks is the political will to make the hard choices. The window for reform is closing. The time to act is now.
Q&A: Unpacking India’s Defence-Industrial Challenge
Q1: What are the three contrasting approaches India could take to address its military capability gap with China?
A: First, a bold approach—betting on cutting-edge technologies like hypersonics and AI, accepting the risk that implementation failure could worsen vulnerabilities. Second, a conservative approach—integrating emerging technologies with existing platforms to improve effectiveness, but not altering the balance of power. Third, a middle path—continuing with legacy platforms while investing in “enabling layers” (C2, ISR, deep-strike, logistics) to create a syncretic, multi-domain force. The middle path is considered most realistic.
Q2: What is the primary industrial challenge India faces in building a robust defence posture?
A: India’s defence-industrial base is not structured to deliver at speed and scale. The public sector has dominated for decades, but lacks capacity and agility. Private industry has capacity and agility but has been kept on the margins. The issue is not technological competence but the inability to produce required systems in sufficient quantities quickly. India needs to expand its defence-industrial base in conjunction with private industry to overcome constraints.
Q3: Why is India’s C4ISR capability identified as a critical vulnerability?
A: India’s fledgling C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) is a major concern because the side that can “see” can continue to fight. Dominating the C4ISR battle is key. India needs cheap ISR platforms in numbers it can afford to lose, while maintaining capacity, and superior cyber, space, and electronic warfare capabilities to deceive and degrade adversary ISR platforms. A layered C4ISR approach is vital.
Q4: What specific industrial priority does the article identify regarding China’s missile inventory?
A: China has a sizeable missile inventory and the industrial capacity to produce thousands more during conflict. India’s inventory gap in missiles and munitions is a risky bet. If conflict erupts, China could use this advantage with devastating effect, putting severe pressure on India’s surge capacity. India must incentivise defence production in missiles, munitions, and drones to avoid being dragged into a protracted fight.
Q5: What systemic reforms does the article recommend for India’s defence procurement system?
A: India’s procurement system must evolve to focus on enabling the fighting force, not constraining it. It needs to adapt faster, rooted in an efficient defence-industrial base. India needs to spend more but spend smarter by making hard choices in prioritising key deterrent capabilities. Removing red tape, ensuring budgetary stability, providing long-term contracts for specialised platforms, and changing the mindset to recognise that private players can build military systems more efficiently than the public sector are all essential. The window for industrial reform is shrinking.
