Deputy Chief of the Air Staff Air Marshal Tejpal Singh on Tuesday (August 18, 2026) said that while the importance of weapons and platforms will never go away, today’s battlefields and battle airspace are defined by “information superiority”, network-centric operations, and most importantly, split-second decision making.
But to achieve true operational superiority, we can no longer treat these three aspects, that is surveillance, C4I2 and electro-optics in their own silos. Because it is a system where the sensors, communication and the shooter are all integrated, he said this is where the experience gained from designing and operating the IACCS (Integrated Air Command and Control System) is very critical,. “The intention is to make our OODA loop shorter than that of the adversary so that we can decide and act before he can.
In his address at a seminar hosted in New Delhi, he also said success in multi-domain operations can come only if “we can reduce and shorten our OODA (observe, orient, decide and act) loop”. Air Marshal Singh, who on August 1 took charge as the new Deputy Chief of the Air Staff (DCAS), said the objective today in the battlefield is to “sense better, understand faster, decide with confidence, engage precisely and assess continuously”. They need to be integrated into a system of systems,” the Air Marshal said. He said C4I2 will act as their “central nervous system” which will integrate all these, fusing disparate sensors into real-time and actionable intelligence and situational awareness for the commander in the field.
He emphasised that integration of these, is not merely an engineering tool or a goal, but it is a “combat multiplier”. The DCAS said as network-centric operations will accelerate, these network themselves may become a target, for the adversary, and “we must confront these critical operational bottlenecks”.
