Army chief General Upendra Dwivedi on Saturday said Operation Sindoor was like a “game of chess” as the tactics deployed were not conventional, but fell in a “grey zone” where the moves were calibrated to fall just short of a full-scale war with Pakistan while still inflicting decisive blows.
“In Operation Sindoor, we played chess. It means that we did not know the next move the enemy was going to take and what we were going to do. This is what we call a grey zone,” he said while speaking at an event at IIT Madras earlier this month.
“Somewhere we were giving them the checkmate and somewhere we were going in for the kill at the risk of losing our own, but that’s what life is all about. Grey zone means that we are not going for conventional operations.”
The army chief emphasised that as far as the grey zone was concerned, it was ever-present and would remain so. “And, the next war which we are looking at, it
may happen soon, and we
have to prepare accordingly, and in this we have to fight this battle, a non-kinetic one, together,” Gen. Dwivedi said without elaborating.
The future wars, he said, would require a “whole-of-nation” approach — not just military forces, but academia, industry, government research agencies and even citizen volunteers.
The army chief said that the day after the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack, defence minister Rajnath Singh told the tri-services chiefs that “enough is enough” and something had to be done.
Echoing his air force counterpart, Air Chief Marshal Amar Preet Singh, on a “clear political will”, Gen. Dwivedi said the military was given a “free hand” during Operation Sindoor.
“That is the kind of confidence, political direction and political clarity we saw for the first time.... That is what raises your morale. That is how it helped our army commander-in-chiefs to be on the ground and act as per their wisdom,” Gen. Dwivedi said.
Recently, leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi had alleged in Parliament that the Centre lacked the political will to carry out the operation and the entire exercise was done only to protect the image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He claimed the hands of the IAF were “tied” by the government.
