New Delhi: Chief of Army Staff General Upendra Dwivedi has warned that India’s next conflict may come sooner than anticipated, and will demand the combined effort of the armed forces, civil institutions and citizens.
“The next war which we are looking at, it may happen soon. We have to prepare accordingly, and this time we will have to fight this battle together,” General Dwivedi said in an address at IIT Madras on 4 August. The Army’s Additional Directorate General of Public Information (ADGPI) released a video clip of his speech this weekend.
He stressed that the future of India’s security would require a “whole-of-nation” approach, with soldiers, scientists, industry, academia and citizens working in unison.
Without naming any country, he spoke about the threat perception: “Next time, it may be much more, and whether that country will do it alone, or supported by some other country, we do not know. But I have a strong hunch, feeling that the country will not be alone. That is where we have to be careful.”
The Army chief discussed Operation Sindoor, likening it to “playing a game of chess”, where “we did not know” the enemy’s next move. Also using a Cricket reference, he said that although “the test match stopped on the fourth day”, the conflict could easily have lasted far longer.
Operation Sindoor was launched in the early hours of 7 May to strike nine terror camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The action had followed the 22 April terror attack in Pahalgam, in which at least 26 people were killed.
According to General Dwivedi, the operation was fought in the “grey zone”—not through conventional open-field warfare—in a manner calibrated to stay below the threshold of full-scale war, while still delivering strategic damage.
“We did not know what is the next move the enemy is going to take and what are we going to do. This is something we called the grey zone… Somewhere, we were giving him a checkmate, and somewhere we were kind of going in for the kill at the risk of even losing our own, but that’s what life is all about,” he remarked.
He also described the broader strategic picture, saying that India faced a “two-and-a-half front” scenario, with the “currency of victory” in the public’s mind still tied to control over land. He added that during Operation Sindoor, the Army’s “chessboard” included both visible and invisible moves, and in some cases, “maybe other countries were helping to make it visible for the adversary”.
The Army chief recalled that the response planning had begun the very next day after the Pahalgam attack: “This is the first time that Raksha Mantri (Defence Minister Rajnath Singh) has also said: I think enough is enough. And all the three chiefs were very clear, something has to be done. And the free hand was given, of course, that you decide what is to be done. And that is the kind of confidence with the political directions and political clarity for the first time we saw.”
He added: “That’s what made a difference because we want to do a lot, but that kind of hand-holding and kind of free, no terms of restrictions… if I can say that… And that is what kind of raises your morale. That is how it helped our Army commanders or commanders-in-chief on ground to kind of act as per their wisdom,” he said.
By 25 April, the Northern Command had planned to execute strikes on seven of the nine identified targets, said General Dwivedi. “This was the first time we hit the heartland, and of course, our target was the nursery and the masters.”
On Saturday, Indian Air Force chief Air Chief Marshal A.P. Singh also addressed aspects of the operation, countering speculation that the Air Force had avoided SEAD and DEAD (Suppression and Destruction of Enemy Air Defences) missions due to political constraints. The speculation had followed remarks by India’s Defence Attaché to Indonesia, Captain Shiv Kumar, that “some” fighter jets were lost to Pakistan during Operation Sindoor in the early hours of 7 May because targeting was limited to terror camps.
“A key reason for success was the presence of political will. There were very clear directions given to us. No restrictions were put on us… If there were any constraints, they were self-made,” the IAF chief said during the Air Chief Marshal L.M. Katre lecture in Bengaluru.
Also Read: We were given free hand, no restrictions placed on us: IAF chief on Op Sindoor
‘Battle of narratives’
General Dwivedi framed Operation Sindoor not only as retaliation, but as a demonstration of India’s capability to fight multi-domain conflicts—on land, in the air, and in cyber space, with close integration between services and agencies. He also said that for the first time, a single operational name was used by the Army, Navy and Air Force, replacing the earlier practice of separate codenames.
He recounted a moment from the naming process, when he initially thought the operation was called “Operation Sindu”, referring to the Indus River.
“I said excellent sir, Indus Water Treaty has just been frozen by you. Then I am told, it is not Sindu, but Operation Sindoor. Just see this one name has connected the whole nation together,” he said, adding that every time a woman applies sindoor, “she will always remember the soldier”.
General Dwivedi said that the Army’s internal post-action assessments had underscored two decisive factors in modern conflict—seamless integration of technology and deliberate control of the narrative. “Victory is in the mind,” he remarked, pointing to Pakistan’s success in convincing its domestic audience it had won—a perception, he suggested, reinforced by symbolic gestures, such as promoting its army chief to field marshal.
“If you ask a Pakistani whether you lost or won, he’d say, my chief has become field marshal, we must have won only,” he said. “The first messaging we did was, ‘Justice done’. That hit the maximum, I am told, in the world today in terms of the number of hits.”
The Army chief further stressed that narrative shaping is no longer an afterthought, but an operational imperative aimed at influencing not just the domestic public, but also the adversary’s population and neutral observers. This, he explained, demands a structured “narrative management system” to track public sentiment, counter disinformation and amplify the official line through credible messengers.
He added that India countered Pakistan’s messaging through coordinated use of social media and other platforms, targeting domestic, adversary and neutral audiences simultaneously.
He pointed out that open-source intelligence (OSINT), social media content and inputs from “good Samaritans” in the Indian diaspora abroad played a valuable role in gathering imagery and signals intelligence for the operation.
A significant portion of his address focused on the technological backbone of Operation Sindoor. He described a transformation “from muddy trenches to the internet of military things”, where interconnected data, sensors and autonomous systems drive battlefield decisions in real time.
General Dwivedi stressed that true preparedness meant taking technology down to the level of every soldier, hence calling for “eagle on the arm”—envisioning each of the Army’s personnel to be equipped with a personal drone.
With respect to intelligence, he said that the Army had fused its operational picture with the Navy and Air Force, drawing on inputs from manned aircraft, commercial satellite imagery, and high-altitude pseudo-satellites (HAPS) capable of loitering over targets, to maintain continuous watch before and during the strikes. Tethered drones, he said, further provided persistent surveillance despite attempts at electronic jamming during the operation.
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)
Also Read: Secret to Pakistan aircraft losses in Op Sindoor could lie in Martin-Baker’s ejection seats records