Global conflicts have raised questions about the current concept of “short and decisive wars”, Navy Chief Admiral Dinesh K Tripathi said on Friday, adding that countries need to remain prepared to meet challenges by building their defense industrial parks.
“There is clearly a thought process that the post-Cold War peace dividend has definitely expired,” Tripathi said at the 2026 Resina Dialogue, a conference on geopolitics and geoeconomics held annually in New Delhi. “Therefore, countries must be prepared for their national security, and this requires building their own defense industrial complexes.”
He said that most countries follow this approach in some way, either individually or through partnerships with other countries. Admiral Tripathi touched on the urgent need to keep pace with rapidly evolving technology in the defense sector during a session titled “Peacemakers: Munitions Factories for the Liberal Order.”
“One should not only produce [military equipment] On a large scale, but one must also be prepared to upgrade during production, because technology changes at the speed of thought. In response to a question about the lessons learned from military confrontations and the industrial capacity requirements of modern warfare, he said: We have seen the need for this and we must be prepared in this regard.
He added: “We have monitored global events, especially in the last three or four years, and what is clear and clear is that the idea of short and decisive wars may now face questions.” He said rapid adaptation is a must because time waits for no one, and spare capacity must be sufficient to deal with challenges.
Admiral Tripathi, who spoke at length about the need to achieve self-reliance in the current global scenario, said: “It does not mean that you will be exposed to situations when your equipment is ready. Inventory management is critical, and we need the ability to ramp up when needed. This requires highly sophisticated defense industrial bases. These are some of the lessons learned from what is happening around the world.”
“Be it democratization of dual-use technologies, monopolization of resources, or weaponization of supply chains, all these factors are forcing many countries to become self-reliant. We in India believe in Atmanirbharta. [self-reliance]Like many other countries, we are engaging with many of our partner countries to develop capabilities in the defense sector on the basis of joint development and co-production. We as a country are very aware of how to work with many partners, and Russia is one of them,” he said, responding to a question on whether India’s military relationship with Russia hampers deeper defense industrial cooperation with the US or Europe.
