Prez exhorts army officers to equip for combat tech warfare

Wellington, Tamil Nadu, Feb 24 (UNI) President A P J Abdul Kalam today exhorted Army officers to equip themselves to combat the technology driven warfare in future.

Addressing students and faculty members of the Defence Service Staff college here, he said the future officers of the Armed Forces, particularly young officers have an important role to play in the changing scenario.

''The whole war environment will be a network centric warfare and it could be controlled electronically combined with space encounters, deep sea encounters, and ballistic missiles encounters,'' the President said.

He said the winner of future warfare would be the officers, who can visualise the strength of the enemy, not based on the previous war but based on the current capabilities, and technological advancements in the global scenario.

''Our Armed Force officers will have to get trained in virtual reality based simulated warfronts of all the terrains and extreme conditions of warfare,'' he said.

''Walk through during a space attack, chemical attack, nuclear attack and electronic encounters need to be visualised and proper counter measure needs to be practiced. The future battle field would require a synergised team work with joint services operation and use of land, aero space and ocean as important war theatres.

Future soldiers will be knowledge workers,'' Dr Kalam added.

In the electronic warfare, computers with intelligent software would fight in the place of many strategic systems and they would be more powerful to destroy the economic capability of the country exceeding the power of nuclear weapons.

''Dear young officers, I am sure, you will, definitely, have an opportunity to witness this type of technology intensive battle during your service. May I request you to develop all round capabilities in all your assignments so that Armed Forces of India can emerge as the best and most powerful Armed Forces in the world,'' the President said.

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