The age of non-contact warfare is becoming the new normal as nations devise strategies to win wars without incurring casualties in close combat, a senior Army officer has said.
Modern conflicts increasingly rely on remote power such as surveillance capabilities and cyber operations, and the Indian Army must be ready to dominate in these areas, said Lt Gen Adosh Kumar, Director General, Artillery, Indian Army.
He was delivering a keynote address at the 3rd edition of the Gen S F Rodrigues Memorial Seminar on ‘Non-Contact Warfare: Capability Building Imperatives for the Indian Army’ on Friday (September 19, 2025).
"Contact on the battlefield may no longer be a prerequisite for decisive action. The age of non-contact warfare is becoming the new normal, and nations around the world have been devising strategies for winning wars without incurring casualties in close combat. As far as we are concerned, the transformation to non-contact warfare was already happening," Lt Gen Kumar said.
Modern conflicts increasingly rely on remote power — surveillance, cyber operations, space assets, long-range precision strikes and autonomous systems — to impose costs on adversaries without traditional battlefield contact, he said, adding that these tools allow militaries to degrade or disable opposing forces while keeping their own personnel safe.
