AI Will Transform Battlefield In All Aspects: Chief Of Defence Staff To NDTV

Artificial Intelligence is going to transform the battlefield in all aspects and the Indian armed forces have made significant progress in this sphere, Chief of Defence Staff General NS Raja Subramani said at the NDTV Defence Summit 2026 on Sunday. 

India's top military leader noted that he sees AI as "an opportunity and then as a challenge".

Speaking to NDTV's CEO and Editor-in-Chief Rahul Kanwal, Managing Editor Shiv Aroor and Senior Executive Editor Aditya Raj Kaul, General Subramani said, "All three services have progressed a great deal in terms of how to go about it. AI is going to transform the battlefield in all aspects, whether it be planning, logistics, decision-support or intelligence. For that, you require compute, data, networks, and skilled personnel. As far as compute is concerned, the defence forces are working very closely with the national AI mission and MeitY (Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology of India)."

Data, the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) said, was siloed between the three services, but they have made efforts to ensure that their data schemas are correct and sharing can happen. AI has already been implemented in some areas, especially OSINT (Open-Source Intelligence) and predictive intelligence. 

"We are looking at making our legacy systems smarter by infusing AI and are ensuring the new systems we procure have it.  AI should also be able to act at the edge, it is not enough to have it at the centre - at the battle edge, where AI is required, the soldiers need to have it. So I can assure you that the armed forces are looking at it in a very, very serious manner... We are working with private sector players as well as the DRDO (Defence Research and Development Organisation) on this," he said.