NEW DELHI: In a stern message to Islamabad for supporting cross-border terrorism, Army chief General Upendra Dwivedi on Saturday referred to Op Sindoor launched in response to the Pahalgam terror attack and said if “Pakistan continues to harbour terrorists and operate against India, then they have to decide whether they want to be a part of geography, history or not”.At the Sena Samvad event here, Gen Dwivedi lauded the capabilities of the tech-savvy generation and the Army’s intention to utilise their potential.“Let me first concede and accept that the (tech-savvy) generation is at least 10 times better than our generation. They are much more adaptable. They’re socially aware, globally connected, and digitally fluent…The Indian Army is talking about 2026-27 as the year of networking and data centricity. We have started the internship, and we received one lakh applications for 100 vacancies,” he said.The Army chief talked of rapid changes in technology and its impact on military modernisation. “Today, the military is changing so fast, the modernisation is taking place so fast, and technology becomes stale within 18 months. If you have to adapt to that kind of technology, how are you going about it? Therefore, the ripples of change have to be felt at every level, starting from a soldier to a Major to a Major General, till a general like me,” he said.While imparting leadership lessons to the young generation, Gen Dwivedi, who is set to retire on June 30, also shared a personal dream: He wants to open a cafe named ‘Ahista Zindagi’, which will serve as a retreat for the senses in a fast-paced life.At the same event, Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan said Op Sindoor was different from all the past conflicts as it was a kind of multi-domain operation, largely non-contact warfare, involved newer technologies like space and cyber and required a huge amount of coordination not only among the three wings of the services, but also with other instruments of the government and various agencies. “It was a very well-coordinated operation.… Even the metrics of victory were different…Imagine something landing accurately in this room from 300 or 400 km away. That was unprecedented in our geography. So that is why this particular operation was entirely different,” he said.On the brink of retirement after a distinguished service of over 45 years, CDS Gen Chauhan said what he has learnt in the past three-and-a-half years has been entirely different from earlier leaderships. “Because, till now, it was only till the chiefs, whereas a CDS’s responsibility is slightly more than that of service chiefs also, of interaction also, slightly more. So, it’s a new thing that we have learned to streamline the system, get benefits out of the system... So, probably will be able to teach the newer lot of officers, who will be assuming senior appointments in future,” he said.
