Modern war spans attrition and precision strike; neither ensures victory—social resilience, adaptability, and information dominance are decisive
In recent years, two types of war have emerged. The first one is the older kind, redefined in Ukraine, where adversaries have been engaged in a prolonged war for the past four years, losses of life have been staggering, as has the loss of infrastructure. The battlefield has shown that high-tech, small-unit tactics involving drones, Artificial Intelligence, and commercial technology are as crucial as heavy armour.
The second is the American-Israeli approach, one that has been reframed since 26 February, a model of precision-long range warfare, using missiles and bombers. The loss of life for the attackers is almost negligible, but proves to devastating for adversaries, as the experience of Gaza and the recent strikes in Iran indicate
These are not merely tactical variants of the same enterprise. They reflect fundamentally different approaches to military coercion with different assumptions about the relationship between force and political outcome and tolerances for cost and time. Understanding their respective logic—and limits—is now essential for any serious defence planning community.
The US “shock and awe” strategy of long-range precision strikes is based on total domination and requires a sophisticated and layered air defence system.
Any war with an adversary like the US cannot but be fought in an asymmetrical fashion. The US “shock and awe” strategy of long-range precision strikes is based on total domination and requires a sophisticated and layered air defence system. So far, none have tested an air defence against it, although Serbia did take on the US-NATO air forces to an extent in 1999 and also shot down a stealth fighter.
For the US, in Iran war, the key lesson was to avoid committing ground forces, given its experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. This will limit its ability to end the Iran campaign on its terms. As it is, despite having destroyed most of the Iranian military and decapitating its leadership, the US has yet to win the key campaign—that for the control of the Hormuz Strait. Here it confronts a hybrid Iranian threat involving sea mines, anti-ship cruise missiles, drones, midget submarines, fast speed-boats and unmanned undersea vessels. And, above all, geographical advantage.
The Iranian asymmetrical response has unfolded with drone and missile attacks on its Gulf neighbours and also Israel. Its limited missile arsenal prevents it from focusing on its primary adversary, Israel, and so, a major focus is on raising the economic cost of the war to its neighbours and the world. The key,, however, will remain how social resilient Iran can be. Sustained internal cohesion is the only way that it can defeat the US campaign, much as the Taliban did in Afghanistan , and the Vietnamese decades earlier. However, Iran has revealed major fractures in the recent past, which should be taken into account.
Both current campaigns contain a third dimension that remains only partially visible but whose strategic significance is growing rapidly: the integration of AI into targeting processes, and the use of cyber operations as a force multiplier.
There are credible indications that AI-assisted targeting—specifically variants of the Project Maven programme, which uses machine learning to process surveillance data and refine target lists—has been applied in the current campaigns. If so, this represents a qualitative shift in the speed and granularity with which an attacker can identify, classify, and prioritise targets. AI enables the shortening of the sensor-to-shooter cycle that significantly impacts both offensive and defensive operations.
On the cyber dimension, reported Israeli penetration of Tehran's traffic camera network and mobile telephone infrastructure suggests that cyber operations have served not merely as a tool of disruption, but as a critical enabler of the physical targeting campaign—providing real-time movement intelligence on high-value individuals and feeding into the broader ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance) architecture. The convergence of cyber and kinetic operations represents perhaps the most consequential evolution in this domain since the advent of precision guidance.
The battle for information dominance—over networks, sensors, and AI systems—is increasingly inseparable from the physical battle.
For defence planners, the implications are significant. A force that has been comprehensively surveilled, whose communications have been penetrated, and whose leadership movements are being tracked in real time by AI-assisted analysis, faces a qualitatively different threat than one confronting a purely conventional adversary. The battle for information dominance—over networks, sensors, and AI systems—is increasingly inseparable from the physical battle.
There remain, however, substantial unknowns. The full extent of AI integration into targeting processes, the degree to which cyber operations have shaped the course of events, and the countermeasures that have been deployed remain largely opaque. Both sides have invested heavily in capabilities that remain partially disclosed. These unknowns should counsel analytical humility; the visible dimensions of these campaigns may not fully represent their operational reality.
For India, these campaigns carry direct and pressing implications. India occupies a uniquely demanding strategic position: it must be prepared to operate across both paradigms simultaneously. Last year’s Operation Sindoor demonstrated that the precision strike model is applicable in the subcontinent and that India possesses the capability to dominate Pakistani military facilities from the air. Significantly, both sides avoided attacking civilian infrastructure —reflecting a shared understanding of the escalatory risks inherent in the region's nuclear environment.
However, India cannot designing a force around a single threat or a single model of warfare. The Pakistan scenario, manageable through air dominance, is qualitatively different from the challenge posed by China. A conflict with China could rapidly develop into an extended attritional campaign in which the lessons of Ukraine—mass, industrial depth, social resilience, and the avoidance of over-reliance on any single technological solution—become directly relevant. The two-front strategic problem demands a force structure and a doctrine that can credibly address both contingencies.
A conflict with China could rapidly develop into an extended attritional campaign in which the lessons of Ukraine—mass, industrial depth, social resilience, and the avoidance of over-reliance on any single technological solution—become directly relevant.
The AI and cyber dimensions add a further layer of urgency. India must develop offensive capabilities similar to that of the US and Israeli forces, and defensive architectures—hardened command networks, AI-resilient communication systems, and robust counter-cyber capacity—that can deny an adversary the information dominance that has proven so decisive in current campaigns. The battle for information superiority is now a precondition for effective operation across both warfare paradigms.
India cannot afford to be lax here. Reports that the Indian NavIC navigation satellite system is suffering major failure because of the failure to import atomic clocks is not good news. The NavIC is India’s GPS alternative and has important defence applications, but it is yet to befully operational.
The two paradigms—attritional and precision strike—are not mutually exclusive; they represent different points on a spectrum, and real-world conflicts may migrate between them in ways that defy initial planning assumptions.
The lesson drawn from the Ukraine war is that despite being the strongest force on paper, faulty plans and execution can still deny you victory. It also tells you that there is no weapon or class of weapons that can guarantee victory, and as in the case of drones, innovation can be quickly matched by the other side. The key factor in a military contest really is social resilience.
On the other hand, in the precision-strike paradigm, the refusal to commit ground forces preserves short-term options but restricts long-term outcomes. While AI-assisted targeting and cyber-enabled ISR are central components of this model, the capacity of an adversary to exploit asymmetric means and geography should engender caution in a technologically advanced force. In the case of Hormuz, for example, the attacker’s ability to destroy does not quite automatically confer the ability to control.
Manoj Joshi is a Distinguished Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation.
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Manoj Joshi is a Distinguished Fellow at the ORF. He has been a journalist specialising on national and international politics and is a commentator and ...
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