Information warfare today is all pervasive and intrusive. It transcends geography, distances and societies. The Indian armed forces, however, have been conservative in their approach.

making sense of it: The Forces may need to create a distinct public relations ‘service’.

WORDS are the new weapons, satellites the new artillery… Ceasar had his officers, Napoleon had his armies. I have my divisions: TV, news, magazines,” were the telling words of Elliot Carver, a media baron and arch villain in the movie ‘Tomorrow Never Dies’, to James Bond.The movie, released in 1997, was in an era when the world had just been introduced to the Internet while 24×7 TV news channels were already well established. Social media networks such as YouTube, Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram and the like were still non-existent. In the last 10-12 years, however, the ‘armoury’ of information warfare has dramatically changed with the advent of social media that, as a medium, have been used to spark conflict, hatred, horrific violence and deaths and public unrest with greater frequency in societies and countries around the world.‘Each age has had its own peculiar form of war’, observed 19th century Prussian military strategist, Major General Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz. Indeed, with the ongoing revolution in information and communication technologies (ICTs), Information Warfare or IW has become a highly active tool for both militaries and terrorist groups worldwide. Terrorist groups such as the ISIL and so many other Islamisc groups are engaged in provocative propaganda inciting violence.Militaries the world over consider their relationship with the media as adversarial. The conflict between the media and military arises because of competing requirements. Whereas successful military operations require an element of surprise, the media’s success lies in being the first to break news. And in their effort to produce stories in a time-constrained environment, journalists usually reach for the ‘lowest hanging fruit’ and report what is the most easily observed or what results in the most spectacular images.Several countries have done ‘lessons learned’ exercises and taken pragmatic measures to address this challenge. The Americans, learning from their Vietnam experience, have over the years developed detailed doctrines such as the JP 3-13, a joint doctrine on information operations. The Sidle Panel established after the 1983 US invasion of Grenada to examine ways to allow news coverage of military operations recommended most perceptively, among several measures, that public relations planning for military operations be conducted concurrently with operational planning.More recently in July last year, the British armed forces, which are relatively less militarily engaged compared to the Indian Army, took the pragmatic step of creating a special force of warriors skilled in psychological operations and the use of social media to engage in unconventional warfare in today’s information age. The approximately 1,500 strong tri-service 77 Brigade, which is divided into six columns, operates across the Royal Army, Navy and Air Force, and is responsible for non-lethal warfare with non-military methods against 24-hour news, smart phones and the various forms of social media. Each of the six columns has its respective speciality that assists in objectives such as ‘shaping behaviours through the use of dynamic narratives’.Interestingly, this new brigade has been named the ‘77th’ in tribute to the Chindits, the British guerrilla force which was deployed deep behind enemy lines where it successfully operated with unorthodox and controversial tactics against the Japanese in Burma (now Myanmar) during World War-II. Just like the US military which is active on various forms of social media, the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) is active on 30 such platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, in six languages, thus enabling them to engage with an audience that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to reach.The question is whether the Indian armed forces, which are among the world’s busiest, engaged as they are in vast and varied operations, are drawing appropriate lessons to deal with the revolutionary changes brought about by ICTs? While some attempt is being made, the Indian armed forces have been relatively conservative in their approach. While part of the reason lies in the manner in which the Ministry of Defence is structured with the armed forces having little influence in policy making, the Services too are inherently hesitant and cautious.In today’s game of information warfare, perceptions have come to matter more than facts. The armed forces will need to take the initiative and engage the media and not expect the media to interpret their (the military’s) actions the way the latter views them. The armed forces no longer have the luxury to dismiss the media in today’s era governed by the phenomenon of everything instant — instant global communication and 24×7 news coverage and instant response and impact.Information warfare today is all pervasive and all intrusive. It transcends geography, distances and societies.Given its diverse engagements across and beyond the country, the Indian armed forces will need to equip themselves to handle various forms of media that will increasingly be perceived as ‘intrusive’, ‘unfair’, ‘biased’ and ‘exaggerating’ in their (the armed forces’) professional world of ‘black and white’, ‘own and enemy’, ‘right and wrong’. Perhaps the day is not far when the armed forces will need to create a distinct public affairs or public relations ‘service’ on the lines of an Army Service Corps, with qualified officers with firsthand media education to handle a dynamic media environment.