Bengaluru: Chief of the Army Staff General Upendra Dwivedi addresses a session on 'Visualisation of MDO' during the 'Ran Samwad 2026', in Bengaluru, Karnataka, Thursday, April 9, 2026. | Photo Credit: PTI

Army Chief General Upendra Dwivedi on Thursday said Operation Sindoor demonstrated India's progression towards "domain jointness" and called the military offensive a "defining case study" of operational significance of integration.

In May last year, India had launched a military response targeting terror launchpads in Pakistan post the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack that killed 26 Indian tourists.

"Operation Sindoor was India's most powerful tool of progression towards domain jointness. But we need to achieve domain integration and fusion," General Dwivedi said.

He was addressing the "Ran Samvad" forum on "Land Forces visualisation of Multi Domain Operation (MDO)," here.

The Chief of Army Staff said his visualisation of MDO is not of six domains operating in parallel but all of them "in constant dynamic interaction where the weight shifts and the lead changes".

The Army chief stressed that modern warfare is no longer confined to geographical boundaries or single-service dominance, but is instead defined by continuous interaction across domains, stakeholders and levels of conflict.

"We are living through a dispersed, undeclared, multi-theatre, multi-domain war of our times. The question is not whether domains interact, it is how the interface is orchestrated across the battle space," he said.

General Dwivedi drew a distinction between land domain and land forces, explaining that while the former refers to the operational space, the latter represents the actors, comprising all six domains—land, air, maritime, cyber, space and cognitive—operating in a shared environment.

He underlined that these domains are no longer siloed but function through dynamic synergy.

Elaborating on the evolving battlefield, General Dwivedi noted that MDO has transformed warfighting into a layered, three-dimensional construct.

"In MDO, the battlefield is no longer a line on a map. It's a 3D -- cyber effects shaping the cognitive space, space assets cueing targets, and electronic warfare contesting every frequency simultaneously," he said.

He emphasised that commanders must develop cross-domain situational awareness from the tactical to strategic level.

Highlighting the operational significance of integration, General Dwivedi referred to Operation Sindoor as a "defining case study".

"It was a ground intelligence network coupled with cyber and EW (electronic warfare) inputs that gave the joint army-air force targeting, while the navy's repositioning shaped the strategic calculus simultaneously. No single domain decided the operation," General Dwivedi added.

He described such mutually enabling actions as the essence of MDO.

Published on April 9, 2026