Future warfare is likely to be hybrid with weapons ranging from computer virus to hypersonic missiles: IAF Chief

"What I am trying to get at is that in the next war, the enemy might not be a country or an organisation,” he mentioned.

India may never know the perpetrators of a "Distributed Denial of Services" attack and we will not know when and from where the attack will take place, he added.

In the future, India could be attacked on all fronts, ranging from economic strangulation to diplomatic isolation and military standoffs to information black outs in the form of attacks by "Distributed Denial of Services”, he mentioned.

All this will happen well before the first bullet is fired or the first aircraft goes across the border, he noted.

Future warfare is likely to be hybrid in nature and the spectrum of conflict will be spread across all domains spanning from conventional to sub-conventional, kinetic to non-kinetic and lethal to non-lethal, all under a nuclear overhang, he said.

"The weapons we are looking at would be ranging from a small computer virus to hypersonic missiles,” he added.

"There is a need for us to develop capabilities across the full spectrum of conflict and focus on multi-domain operations. Similarly, our doctrines, equipment, training and tactics will have to be flexible and able to adapt rapidly to these new challenges," he stressed.