Book: The Kill Chain
Understanding the Defence Sector
With the display of defence capabilities during the Operation Sindoor, the Indian Defence Industry is at an inflection point akin to the Y2K moment.
This post is an attempt to learn more about the sector and a potential way forward for Indian Defence by (1) drawing insights from Christian Brose’s The Kill Chain, (2)looking at the Indian Defence establishment through the lens of this book. Key Ideas from the Book the Kill Chain
1) The US Defence is centered around dominance and offensive operations. They have a small number of large platforms (like the Aircraft Carriers) with their operations requiring huge logistics (Relatively speaking…the author is comparing, let’s say aircrafts with UAVs). While this mode of operation was optimal in the Unipolar World, where the US was the supreme power, today it’s not the case. The world has now changed with China emerging as a competitor/rival, and the US doesn't have an edge, or the edge they enjoyed is rapidly diminishing.
2) The old way of operations is vulnerable. The Chinese can easily disrupt the logistics required for US operations. They can inflict major damage to the US forward bases in the like of countries like Japan.
3) The warfare has become largely asymmetric. The need of the hour is not platforms that require huge maintenance. What you need are intelligent systems with low cost - these will be expendable, and rather than maintaining the forces can procure the latest technology right away.
4) The Defence Industry in the US got consolidated. The incentives were not properly aligned. Although the US is forefront of technology, the same does not trickle down to the Defence Sector. As bureaucracy increased, the process of developing military technology became harder. The technology tailwinds happened in other sectors. The budget process is delayed, and hence, money goes to the existing programs with very little room for trying and iterating new technologies.
5) The future requires network-centric distributed systems where intelligent machines communicate with each other to complete the Kill Chain (Understand, Decide, and Execute) in real-time with minimal human intervention.
The following quote from the book highlights the dauntingness of the task:
Most of these allegedly information-age military systems struggle to share information and communicate directly with one another to a degree that would shock most Americans. For example, the F-22 and F-35A fighter jets cannot directly share basic airborne positioning and targeting data despite the fact that they are both Air Force programs and built by the same Company.
Let’s delve deeper into the concepts from the book and their relevance in the Indian Context
1. What is Kill Chain?
The kill chain is a process that occurs on the battlefield or wherever militaries compete. It involves three steps:
The first is gaining understanding about what is happening. The second is making a decision about what to do. And the third is taking action that creates an effect to achieve an objective.
Better understanding, decisions, and actions are what enable militaries to prevent unnecessary loss of life-both their own people and innocent civilians.
The Kill Chain emphasizes the critical need to update the traditional battlefield process—understanding the environment, deciding on action, and executing with effect—by integrating emerging technologies and dynamic networks of intelligent machines. The U.S. experience, as Brose details, shows that failure to innovate and procure cutting-edge capabilities leaves forces vulnerable to peer competitors like China, who leverage networked sensors, AI, hypersonics, and autonomous systems to gain battlefield advantage.
For India, this presents a clear imperative: the defense kill chain must evolve from slow, bureaucratic processes to agile, technology-driven networks that can rapidly sense, decide, and act. This means embracing and investing in AI-enabled command and control, unmanned systems, and integrated battlefield awareness to counter regional threats effectively. 2. What are the Objectives?
All too often in defense, we think the measure of our strength is our platforms-individual vehicles and specific advanced military equipment and systems. We generate our requirements for military power in terms of platforms. We build our budgets and spend our money on the basis of platforms. We define our goals for military capability in relation to platforms.
Indeed, platforms often rise to the level of defining the very identities of military institutions. Leaders too often seem to lose sight of the larger objective-the reason why we would want any platform in the first place.
The goal of the military should not be to buy platforms. The goal is to buy deterrence, the prevention of war. And the only way to deter wars is to be so clearly capable of winning them that no rival power ever seeks to get its way through violence.
Thinking in terms of holistic objectives rather than in terms of Platforms. What gets measured gets managed, i.e., when something is tracked and measured, it becomes a focus of attention and effort. The goal, however, is not a particular platform but rather a holistic view on creating deterrence. 3. Asymmetric Warfare
The warfare is increasingly becoming Asymmetric, where low-cost systems can effectively destroy high-value military platforms. A terrifying example of this asymmetry was the destruction of the Russian Bomber Fleet by Ukrainian drones.
Over many decades, we have built our military around small numbers of large, expensive, exquisite, heavily manned, and hard-to-replace platforms that struggle to close the kill chain as one battle network. China, meanwhile, has built large numbers of multi-million-dollar weapons to find and attack America's small numbers of exponentially more expensive military platforms.
The need of the hour is to leapfrog. Fusion of technologies is required to create asymmetric solutions.
Drones in the recent conflicts have shown to be very asymmetric - India has a good drone ecosystem. The planners also recognise this, e.g., calling for the entire country to be restricted airspace for drones and focusing on unmanned aerial vehicles as well as submarines. Fusing technologies with air defence and artillery. 
4. Network-Centric Warfare and AI
Emerging technologies would enable militaries to build new battle networks of sensors and shooters that could close the kill chain more often and more rapidly than ever, that these battle networks would rely far more on advanced machines than on human beings, and that this new kill chain would render many traditional military systems vulnerable and obsolete.
The key feature of the Op Sindoor was the demonstration of the Integrated Air Command and Control System (IACCS), whereby multiple systems and platforms are connected to a network to provide a unified response. Not only are the new systems integrated, but the legacy systems have also been upgraded and connected to the network. The next step is automation in communication between different systems and platforms to take real-time action. This will require the indigenisation of the defence hardware and software giving full control.
Part of the reason why India is looking to develop its own 5th Gen Aircraft program is that only indigenous aircraft will be able to fulfill the requirements of being network-centric. (Remember the issues faced in integrating Indian Missiles in Rafale)
5. Building Military-Industrial Complex
Factories win the war. This is going to be relevant in the upcoming conflicts. The goal is to get the best technology in the hands of the Defence Forces.
China, for example, uses Saam, Daam, Dand to get the technologies they need (not to underestimate their own research capabilities)
What makes the Chinese Communist Party's technological ambitions even more threatening to the United States is a major way that Beijing enacts them-through a systematic global campaign to capture the world's best technology by whatever means necessary, which includes a massive foreign intelligence operation to steal trade secrets and intellectual property through cyber espionage and human spying. It also includes pressuring foreign corporations that seek to open operations in China-either as manufacturers or to sell to Chinese consumers-to hand over their intellectual property to the Chinese state as the price of doing business there. It includes the coercion of Chinese students at foreign universities, including at US universities, to spy on their peers, steal their research, and transfer it to the Chinese government. And it includes the deployment of significant sums of capital to invest in high-tech start-ups in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, establish ownership positions, and send their intellectual property back to China.
Focus on building indigenous development and manufacturing capacity. 6. Spending for the future
The timelines to procure defence equipment need to be shortened. The required capability must first be delivered at the earliest time and iterated to perfect it. It is more imperative now to foster innovation and competition, engage the private sector (opening of AMCA for private sector is very positive signal) , startups and academia.
A flexible budgetary mechanism can be given to the forces to experiment with new technologies.
Build core technological capabilities domestically, especially in critical areas like jet engines, hypersonics, and AI-powered systems.
To Conclude
India is at a critical juncture in modernising its defence.
The way forward is modernization through technology, streamlined processes, and empowered human capital
Legacy defence must pave the way to a modern network-centric, distributed, resilient kill chain and surpass regional adversaries. This requires bold reforms in procurement, increased investment in indigenous innovation, and a cultural shift toward embracing intelligent, networked warfare.
To focus more on the overall objective of deterrence in a conflicted neighborhood.
If these elements are integrated, it will not only enhance military readiness but also establish it as a global defense manufacturing hub, securing its strategic interests in the Indo-Pacific and beyond.
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Good well researched and thought provking