New Delhi: The presence of various army, navy and airforce professionals marked the first day of the
GeoIntelligence India 2013 conference here today. The two-day conference is centered around the theme, ‘Geospatial: Force Multiplier for Modern Warfare.’
In his guest address, Lt Gen Anil Chait, PVSM, AVSM, VSM, GOC-in-C, Central Command, Indian Army, gave a soldier’s perspective of geospatial technology as a force multiplier. Introducing the changing landscape of warfare, he said the very notion of victory is undergoing a sea change. He also pointed out that there has been a shift from defence to security and the current day wars operate in information dominated world and there is a lot of emphasis on cognitive domain. Since warfare is all encompassing, it is being played during peace and during war depending on the instrument chosen.
Saying that there is no single approach to deal with the situation, he said that India lacks a ‘whole of government’ approach. Acknowledging that geospatial technology is a great facilitator of network centric operations, both at the operational and tactical level, he recommended a geospatial framework for the country. However, he said to facilitate and support such a framework, India needs a national communication network that can leverage on a national information grid to harness national power.
Admiral DK Joshi, PVSM, AVSM, YSM, NM, VSM, ADC, Chief of Naval Staff, Indian Navy, during his inaugural address described the myriad ways geospatial technology can impact life and living. Acknowledging the contribution of Survey of India, National Hydrographic Office, Indian Space Research Organisaiton in producing geospatial data in India and the contribution of NSDI in bringing all the data providers in the country together, Admiral Joshi said that timely availability, integrity and security of information is still a challenge. Space based geospatial data is susceptible to non-disruptive destruction. The challenge is to integrate the data produced by all different organisations and create applications. While there are different organisations developing applications in the civilian domain, he said there is a need to harness the potential of geospatial information by developing applications in the military domain.
Giving the industry perspective, Kaushik Chakraborty, Vice President, Hexagon India said that for the first time in the history of warfare, there is no excuse for taking a wrong decision citing the lack of information at the right time. In this period of transition and partnerships, it is important to take advantage of the legacy systems, work on them to build new platforms with the right use of technology.
In the backdrop of the glut of data posing a challenge, Kaushik stressed on the need to have an integrated multi-INT system – a system that can take all streams of data including human, imagery, signals, measurement and signature, full motion video, geospatial and open source and tailor the same for operators, analysts, decision makers and diverse users. Talking about trends, Kaushik drew the attention of the audience to the workflow based spatial modelling, C3I, mobility and content streaming, cloud enabled information services and rapid mapping.
Earlier, welcoming the gathering, Lt Gen (Dr) AKS Chandele, Managing Editor-GeoIntelligence said, India is poised to become an economic super power but to be able to become one, it needs credible defence capability. The mere number of forces will not determine victory, but the side that can better harness technology will be victorious, he added.
Source: Our Correspondent
