The Indian military fears a ‘Chinese aggression’ in less than a decade. A secret exercise, called ‘Divine Matrix’, by the army’s military operations directorate has visualised a war scenario with the nuclear-armed neighbour before 2017.
| Assuming China hasn't fallen apart due to economic collapse before then. |
“A misadventure by China is very much within the realm of possibility with Beijing trying to position itself as the only power in the region. There will be no nuclear warfare but a short, swift war that could have menacing consequences for India,” said an army officer, who was part of the three-day war games that ended on Wednesday.
In the military’s assessment, based on a six-month study of various scenarios before the war games, China would rely on information warfare (IW) to bring India down on its knees before launching an offensive. The war games saw generals raising concerns about the IW battalions of the People’s Liberation Army carrying out hacker attacks for military espionage, intelligence collection, paralysing communication systems, compromising airport security, inflicting damage on the banking system and disabling power grids. “We need to spend more on developing information warfare capability,” he said.
The war games dispelled the notion that China would take at least one season (one year) for a substantial military build-up across India’s northeastern frontiers. “The Tibetan infrastructure has been improved considerably. The PLA can now launch an assault very quickly, without any warning, the officer said.
The military believes that China would have swamped Tibet with sweeping demographic changes in the medium term. For the purposes of Divine Matrix, China would call Dalai Lama for rapprochement and neutralise him. The top brass also brainstormed over IndiaÂ’s options in case Pakistan joined the war to. Another apprehension was that Myanmar and Bangladesh would align with China in the future geostrategic environment. |