India’s lessons – Can we create an Air-Mountain Warfare Doctrine?

Troops induction at a forward Air Force base near Siachen. Image: MoD

In summary, we need to create an integrated Air-Mountain Warfare doctrine. This then should also integrate Space dimension, Cyber dimension and Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) dimensions for the border against China.

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What is China doing?
Very systematically, China embarked on economic uplift of its largely agrarian society. So much so, that by end of the century it achieved its goals through sheer reverse engineering and very low cost manufacturing of world’s goods. “Made in China” became a symbol of minimum common denominator products all over the world – a remarkable achievement, indeed. However, the turn has come in last decade – back to converting economic achievement to military capability and global assertiveness. The first two decades of the new century are ear-marked to enhancing military capabilities along with expanding economic expansion. Next 30 years – from 2020 onwards – China will start the phase towards increasing its assertiveness in the world. The phase requires deep mining of Africa and complete control of the world by manufacturing everything that the world need. A remarkable twist to globalization – by playing the low-cost high-volume player initially then slowly but surely moving up to the high cost and high technology play to start defining the future. In this quest and plan, China needs a very strong military. It has to confront an extremely powerful foe in USA and its far-reaching tentacles.

What USA wants – from India?
US want to play India against China. In their game plan, India may be played against China, the way they played Pakistan against USSR occupation in Afghanistan. Obviously, it cannot be a similar game. In fact, it may turn-out to be dramatically different play given the decades old trust-deficit India and USA have. Yet, that is what US will strive to do and in fact, it is USA’s play as is visible in various announcements and actions by US in recent years.

The Indian Response and Play
India cannot be to China what Pakistan is to India. The key question however is and we need to answer this – in the quest of China becoming a “superpower” – whatever type of power they may call themselves, and the decline of influence of US (and West), what is it that India should do? If we are not impacted, we should definitely ignore US, China, Russia and Europe’s actions in the global geo-political game. However, in the globalizing world, with so many “butterfly effects”, India cannot be a mute witness alone.

As a nation, India needs to become a Robust Nation. Indian nation has been divided in the last 70 years or so in 3 parts, already. The next 50 years are actually ours for the taking – given the demographic relative youth that India will have compared to the rest of the world. If this young energy goes in serving the west or reacting to the Pakistan/China, the next 50 years will be eaten up. India’s potential will remain untapped and will be destroyed. We need to make a “Robust Nation”. That means a nation maintaining its key functions that it needs to perform to meet its developmental objectives despite internal and external perturbations. This requires that India should function reliably as a nation, despite having unreliable components/constituents and perturbations in its environment.

“The Robust Nation” – is the key architectural construct for India. We have the key mechanisms and principles to build robust India. Compared to others, for example, USA has used a system design approach to design a nation with reliable components – almost like a perfect machine with perfect sub-systems. China is using “very quick” surgery of replacing/eliminating non-performing components – by continuously being on the guard and carrying and using its scalpel or dagger as the case may be. Both these design principles are successful when the world is closer to being predictable or certain. In the environment of large scale changes, evolution with robustness is the natural design principle. It requires diversity of components combined together in more or less loosely coupled operational principles.

India has inherited unreliable components in its diversity with uneven development. That arguably may be the reason for our bifurcation in 1947 and also further division in 1971. The three divisions of India are similar to the state India was in before British came or even before Mughals came – a group of small kingdoms, existing together yet fighting with each other from time to time. So one school of thought being propagated – hope that is not the predominant logic in the Indian psyche is – since India has not functioned as a unified nation on its own – accept by the Ashoka the Great and then later only by outsiders such as Mughals and British, why should we even consider a possibility that we will be able to function as an integrated nation in future. Let Chinese come and grab whatever they want. Let USA take whatever they want and let west divide us into “many” “bites” that are more manageable by Big powers. Since, that is our destiny there is no point in being in any competition with Rising China or Mighty US.

India needs to give itself a Chance – Making a Robust Nation
Let us give ourselves a chance. A possible new way – creating a Robust Nation – where the components of our nation may be unreliable, may fail and may also have extreme errors, but as a nation India becomes reliable. How do we create a “The Robust Nation”? In that we have a unique system of building a Nation that can become a new model – it is not the western model and not the China/Russia Model – it has to be a uniquely Indian – and one can argue the most natural model for a nation that we should see emerging. Having said that, we need to define the robust nation model and then of course create those systems that allow us to function with unreliable components.

A robust system doesn’t imply an unchanging system. In fact, robustness implies ability to change in a manner that maintains the system function, sometimes evolve through creation of new functions by changing its system components and mode of operation in a flexible manner. An adaptive structure is the key to responding to such perturbations. Robustness is a fundamental feature of living systems. Evolution requires robustness; in fact, natural systems if they have to evolve need to be robust. However, robust systems face fragility and just good enough performance to evolve. To understand robustness we need to look at stable states of a system. The stable state is state of the system that maintains itself in specific environmental conditions. The fragility of system components or their chaotic nature may be balanced through higher level layers of minimum control and adaptation. However, if the stable state is attacked by random changes that are unknown or unprecedented – the system moves to a new stable state without losing its key functionality. It may do so by re-arranging its system components, creating new system components, changing its mode of operation or doing all of the above. The key is to return to the previous stable state or move to a new stable state without compromising on its key functions. The stable states are called ATTRACTORS in chaos theory.

Can India Evolve?
USA’s “shaping the world” as per its fickle national interests and its expectation from India for becoming a key element of Asian Pivot, India has to evaluate from its own national interests. However, in trying to avoid being USA’s front against China, we should not give away too much to China, Pakistan and others. An approach based on real facts on the grounds and our clear “interests” is essential. We need to be proactive rather than reactive. China is playing out its strategy of being a “new type of super power”. Is there an Indian blueprint of what we want to be? If we define that, we will see that collaboration with both powers – the rising as well as declining superpower has to be looked at very cautiously. In this constrained situation, one option is for India to develop into a practical chameleon. – a capability India has not been able to develop – although Pakistan has always been able to do demonstrate that capability. Further, since India cannot be in any of the black and white partitions, we need a set of capabilities and actions that give us more degrees of freedom than is being allowed as of now. With every passing day, with every new event, which China is playing out along with what US is doing, our degrees of freedom is being slowly but surely being reduced. China is not really the “holy Businessman” that is being projected. There are clear geo-political designs that are emerging. The development of many sea-ports in Pakistan, Srilanka, Mynamaar, etc, ostensibly to reach to Africa faster, better and in an optimal manner may have hidden dimensions to it that will start emerging in future. When the Chinese business interests are in conflict with business interests of USA – the chances of conflict increase. However, as was seen during the cold-war era, superpowers do not come eyeball to eyeball. They play with their fronts. USA is hoping India will be that front and China believes India is just a weak nuisance, in its game plan, to be milked for resources and markets and always kept of tight leash by teaching lessons through military and diplomatic bullying.

India need to penetrate smokescreens of China and USA and may be need to create its own response structure with long-term views. Indian Media, especially TV journalists are ill-equipped to put a comprehensive effort to understand. However, whoever actually creates the Indian response and influences Indian long-term plan needs to think very deep about what India should be doing. Last year I wrote the requirements of an “Indian algorithm“. I think, we need to build a Robust Nation with non-robust components – a uniquely Indian way of organization and creation. Evolvable Systems – for example living species – are robust and evolvable. Collaborative diversity that has been our architecture is a uniquely Indian way, compared to point-based approaches of US and China.

In my opinion, that model of collaborative diversity that India has practiced will lead to an evolutionary robustness – just like a living organism. However, this model that India is practicing and proposing will not be accepted by US as well as China. Yet, this is the natural model. India however, need to create an evolutionary mechanism that results in reaching the same stable state or moving to new stable states with each superpower and internally as well. India should think very deeply before getting into the emerging cold war between due to China containment by US and Chinese assertiveness in the world. Let’s be prepared.

Navneet Bhushan (Navneet) is a founder director of CRAFITTI CONSULTING (www.crafitti.com) – an Innovation and Intellectual Property Consulting firm focused on co-crafting Innovation in global enterprises. He is the winner of Indira India Innovation award for Entrepreneurship and Innovation Leadership for 2012. He is the principal author of Strategic Decision Making- Applying the Analytic Hierarchy Process published by Springer-Verlag, UK, as part of the Decision Engineering Series. Read Navneet Bhushan Profile. Read Navneet Bhushan Columns.

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Is NASR MAD?

Mutually Assured Destruction is a cold war term – Nuke deterrence term indicating the balancing of each side against nuclear strikes by the other side. However, NASR, cannot be construed as MAD. In NASR’s case, the spiral of increasing deterrence may lead to increasing probability of an actual nuke use – and looking at current state of Pakistan – the danger has increased manifolds – as non-state actors may get NASR and actually arm and launch it. You never know what Hafiz Saeed types can imagine with what they can get their hands to!

Key Message from Pakistan

Message Pakistan is giving India – “You keep on spending on conventional weapons and bleed your economy. We will sandwich your conventional capability which is not agile and anyway cannot create a tempo quick enough for any real gains – we will sandwich you in the Nukes dimensions with full spectrum capability and keep on poking you in lower end with variety of mechanisms – Kargil, Parliament attack, 26/11, Beheading your soldiers and many more to come.” India’s visible response is to buy and increase conventional weapons – Rafale, all sorts of Helicopters, different types of transport aircraft – artillery guns.

What can Indian “Common Man” learn from Bollywood?

Since our government’s responses are not visible, we can learn from recent Bollywood movies. Two of the recent Bollywood movies by the same director give us some interesting possibilities. In “A Wednesday” – a common man plans and executes killings of terrorists using common communication technologies, media and using the police force. In “Special 26” set of conmen work the system to create fake CBI and Income Tax raids on politicians, businessmen and babus. Let the common Indian citizens start doing “A Wednesday” OR start doing “Special 26″ with the Politicians, businessmen and Bureaucrats – on second thoughts – may be the “Common Man” has to do both “A Wednesday” and ” Special 26″!

Navneet Bhushan (Navneet) is a founder director of CRAFITTI CONSULTING (www.crafitti.com) – an Innovation and Intellectual Property Consulting firm focused on co-crafting Innovation in global enterprises. He is the winner of Indira India Innovation award for Entrepreneurship and Innovation Leadership for 2012. He is the principal author of Strategic Decision Making- Applying the Analytic Hierarchy Process published by Springer-Verlag, UK, as part of the Decision Engineering Series. Read Navneet Bhushan Profile. Read Navneet Bhushan Columns.

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If the incidents of last few decades are anything to go by, the world is going to face more and more crisis and disasters. Further, given the rapidly globalizing world, the impact of crisis and disasters will have far reaching consequences than were in the less globalized world of the past. The complexity that is being built in multiple dimensions call for new approaches to respond to these disasters. There is a need to build holistic responses, structures, frameworks, strategies and actualization capabilities to respond to these disasters. These capabilities are needed at multiple levels of an individual, family, community, city, country or even the whole world.

The Need

The rapidly globalizing world is creating complexities that demand unprecedented capabilities from all of us. We find ourselves in the middle of situations that can rapidly lead to extreme loss if not responded to or countered within constraints of time and space. These situations are called CRISIS and/or DISASTERS. These situations are characterized by extremely intertwined interplay of many factors in multiple known or unknown dimensions. We need capabilities to understand the interplay of these factors, comprehension of their meaning, and rapid projection of their interplay in near future to be able to comprehend and potentially conceive courses of action that lead to robust solutions for their mitigation or control their impact. These capabilities have been termed as situational awareness (SA). A comprehensive SA is important in all decision making scenarios, however, it is critical in case of disaster and crisis situations as the disaster (man-made or natural) by definition lead to extreme loss for the affected community. Further there is a need to evolve a framework, set of methodologies and systems for crisis and disaster management at multiple levels – an individual, family, city, country and even the whole world. This short note describes an initiative to involve public, experts and government agencies to create a holistic framework for avoiding and managing Crisis and Disasters

How to Create a Disaster Proofing system

Wisdom of Crowds says that large number of people from different fields collectively is much wiser than the individual experts in any field. Further, they know the reality much more than any individuals or a set of experts. Utilizing the wisdom of crowds to solve complex problems requires developing an interaction system where anyone can participate in designing and developing a disaster-proofing system. This participation can be enabled through open social media platforms – utilizing the known social media platforms and blogs. The objective will be to create a set of factors and parameters that lead to a comprehensive set of strategic guidelines and a framework for responding to the situations that may become disasters. These situations may be very pronounced or may jump on us suddenly, but they have radical impact. Whether situations leading to disasters are black swans or crystal clear, we need to respond to these crisis situations through radically different methods.

The three stages of a situation reaching to a disaster are defined as (a) Peaceful Situation (b) Crisis Situation and (c) Disaster Situation. The objective during the peaceful situation is to Avoid Crisis, when the crisis situation has arrived then the objective is to Manage Crisis to Avoid Disaster and finally when the crisis has deteriorated to a disaster, the Disaster Management phase starts. In each of these phases key factors, parameters and capabilities needed to respond will be different. However, every disaster situation will go through each of these stages in time dimension – that is Crisis Avoidance, Crisis Management/Disaster Avoidance and Disaster Management. Further, in the space dimension one can consider the dimensions of City, Nation and whole World. This leads to a framework of 9 Space-Time windows. We call these the Situational Awareness Windows (SAWS).

Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) DISASTERS

The “accidental” disasters – manmade or natural are difficult to respond to yet they can be attributed to carelessness, no or less awareness of risks. It is those disasters that are designed by man, such as an attack on the country that should be nipped in the bud. The gravest threat the world is facing today is the probability of low intensity conflicts being suddenly transformed into a high intensity conflict through possession, threat of usage and actual use of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) by actors (state and non-state actors) that are resorting to low intensity conflicts against nation states. The most dangerous and most likely way a covert actor will resort of an act of war or terrorism is by possessing, threatening to use and actual usage of Biological weapons – although chemical and nuclear weapons cannot be ignored. The Nuclear, Biological and Chemical (NBC) weapons are truly horrendous. These weapons cause mass destruction through severe impacts on humans and human designed systems. Use of biological agents to create mass casualties against a nation state will have a dramatic impact. Covert actor’s decision to use biological weapons has sound logic as it is relatively easy to remain covert with bio weapons.

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

Further, one needs small quantities as the living organisms used as bio weapons for example, multiple themselves, are relatively cheap and easy to produce, very difficult to detect and potentially available. Further, biological agents do not have to be pure to create casualties – the very fact of usage has a massive psychological impact.

Due to the unique positioning of this high intensity weapon in the hands of low intensity conflict actors, bio-war is relatively more probable than say a nuclear war. The consequences of a bio-attack are massive in terms of potential destruction (not only physical but the moral well-being of the population at large).We need to think and act for integrated, comprehensive, calculated response to the threat of bio-attacks. We need to craft the response before the attack – the challenges are enormous and it definitely cannot be left as the responsibility of the government alone.

Situation Awareness Windows (SAWS) Framework for managing disasters

As per the system operator or nine windows we divide the space dimension into Super-system as the world at large, System as the country or nation subjected to bio-attack and sub-system as the specific city or cities in the nation state that are likely to be attacked. The framework development process invites the wisdom of crowds for looking at various factors/parameters that will impact the nine windows of SAWS and then rank order them using the well-established methodology of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Figure below describes the output of the SAWS when all factors in nine windows are rank ordered using AHP.

Click to Enlarge

Crisis avoidance is better than disaster management. Crisis leads to disasters. If we can see the crisis, a crisis avoidance blueprint needs to be created and executed. This time disaster will be extremely costly. The Situational Awareness Windows Framework (SAWS) described above is a comprehensive mechanism to create a system for avoiding, managing, and minimizing the impact of disasters at low, medium and high intensities. Every city and every country need to create an integrate response system for disaster management and SAWS framework is one possible direction. For more information on AHP and Crisis and Disaster management, readers are referred to our book – Strategic Decision Making- Applying the Analytic Hierarchy Process (Springer-Verlag, UK, 2004).

Navneet Bhushan (Navneet) is a founder director of CRAFITTI CONSULTING (www.crafitti.com) – an Innovation and Intellectual Property Consulting firm focused on co-crafting Innovation in global enterprises. He is the winner of Indira India Innovation award for Entrepreneurship and Innovation Leadership for 2012. He is the principal author of Strategic Decision Making- Applying the Analytic Hierarchy Process published by Springer-Verlag, UK, as part of the Decision Engineering Series. Read Navneet Bhushan Profile. Read Navneet Bhushan Columns.

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Scenario: Pakistan supported, penetrated and engulfed by China – 2017-2022 timeframe

Chinese Flag over Pakistan. Pakistan Occupied Kashmir included.

The process of Chinese support to Pakistan is an ongoing process. Since 2010, China has 11000 soldiers in POK. This is close to 2+ Infantry brigades equivalent strength. Chinese are involved in building the Gwadar port – a very strategic conduit to middle-east and of course to Africa as well. Besides, China has been providing arms and ammunition to Pakistan Military forces for many decades now. Chinese are in. They are considered the thick friends by Pakistani Military.

Key factors making the above scenario likely:

USA is a declining superpower. The Obama win in the Presidential elections might have delayed the demise little bit. In 2017, there will be a new US President. Most likely it will be a republican President. US Forces will leave Af-Pak by 2014 creating a sudden military vacuum. This will be filled by Talibans in the most atrocious manner one can imagine. By 2017, Pakistan military will seek more and more support from China as China already is the largest supplier to Pakistan. China will enter, embed itself and bring-in its strategy of changing the population ratio – as clearly implemented in Tibet, systematically. Pakistanis may start learning Chinese by 2017.

China is pursuing Deng’s reforms of 1978. The Deng reforms very clearly articulate the “superpower” phase that China will has entered since the start of this century. A new type of Superpower is the design. To fulfill the Superpower by 2050 dream, will require secure, fast and wide access to Africa because of its natural resources – untapped. Also, China will need access of markets in other part of world. Karakoram highway is already open to China. China will need to build fast goods trains from Karachi, Gwadar and Pasni to Karakoram. It will also require the land transport to be safe and secure. By 2022 China has to achieve that. Their Superpower design is at stake.

Pakistan is failing if not already a failed state. Living under drones 24×7 has made many Pak-Afghan areas border residents anti-US. The people also may be shifting towards Chinese, thinking of China to be their long-term savior. With Pakistan completely under China, it will be very difficult for India to be of consequence in the new “Chinese world”. With India curtailed, China will pursue its world dominance economically and otherwise. If Pakistan does not go to China, it is but a matter of few years that Pakistan will be divided into 3 or 4 independent countries. These countries may fight with each other. This will not allow China to access the sea-routes to the world at large. Deng’s algorithm for China does not allow Pakistan to get away from Chinese hands. China is slowly, steadily and systematically getting ready to do a “Tibet” on Pakistan. However, this time, China is pursuing the mission with great patience.

Impact on India
Pakistan was created as “non-India”. Non-India is an identity that Pakistan would like to preserve. However, that identity is in grave danger from multiple dimensions – the greatest dimension being the China’s superpower quest and design. India needs to fight it out in multiple ways. China taking over Pakistan is order of magnitude more dangerous for us compared to Tibet overtaken by China. Today, Hindus from Pakistan are seeking asylum in India. From 2017 onwards, there will be an influx of Pakistanis Muslims – in India – they would be terrorized by Talibans and then controlled by China – hence they would be forced to run away. Indian culture, language and even mannerisms are similar and Pakistanis will be more than happy to be assimilated in India. However, China, having taken up control of Pakistan, will not stop at that. China will start looking at Arunachal Pradesh and eastern parts of India as well. This will be a very dangerous scenario for India.

Options for India
Assimilate Pakistan in India by force – most readers will laugh at this suggestion. However, this thought has been proposed by press council of India’s Chairman, Mr. Katju. I am not sure about his drivers, however, instead of letting China take over Pakistan just like we allowed in Tibet, uniting Pakistan with India is a rather more promising option. However, the “how” to do it, is the key question. Second, do we have sufficient national willpower to execute this.

Should we join US in China containment? Should we become the new frontline state of US, just like Pakistan became against soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Of course, we may not become, but some element of cooperation with US and rest of the world powers in not letting China get Pak, needs to be carried out. Diplomacy, military power and economic factors need to be analyzed and a holistic response needs to be created.

Do nothing. Let us react to this when it happens. This is a highly unlikely scenario; we will see when it happens. If the reader is from Indian government think tanks, policy makers and executing agencies, I can see their response. However, in this case, waiting for the crisis to happen may not be a correct measure. Remember, India’s very existence may be at stake.

Crisis avoidance is better than disaster management. Crisis leads to disasters. If we can see the crisis, a crisis avoidance blueprint needs to be created and executed. This time disaster will be extremely costly.

Navneet Bhushan (Navneet) is a founder director of CRAFITTI CONSULTING (www.crafitti.com) – an Innovation and Intellectual Property Consulting firm focused on co-crafting Innovation in global enterprises. He is the winner of Indira India Innovation award for Entrepreneurship and Innovation Leadership for 2012. He is the principal author of Strategic Decision Making- Applying the Analytic Hierarchy Process published by Springer-Verlag, UK, as part of the Decision Engineering Series. Read Navneet Bhushan Profile. Read Navneet Bhushan Columns.

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The Variety of Aircraft with Indian Air Force

The last major aircraft acquired into IAF is the SU-30MKI. India today operates 8 squadrons of Su-30. Mirage-2000 is the next important aircraft, though, not in terms of numbers as IAF operates only 3 Squadrons of this multi-role aircraft, with which IAF is very happy. Besides the above, IAF has Mig-21s, Mig-27s, Jaguars and Mig-29s in its inventory. When the need for MMRCA came into picture it was for filling the gap – as Mig-21s – the real work horse of IAF for many decades – was coming to the end of its extended shelf-life. As is the case with so many varieties of Mig-23s, Mig-27s etc that IAF acquired in 1980s when US gave F-16s to Pakistan. The Mirage-2000 was also an acquisition in response to Pak F-16s. In 1990s, country hoped that LCA Tejas would be ready in the first decade of 21st century for squadron level entry to replace Mig-21s. With the delay in LCA, IAF said we need to fill an immediate need quickly by getting a Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft in the force. The importance of Medium in contrast to LCA’s Light is easy to distinguish. What could be a medium combat aircraft – definitely which can carry heavier load – may be more “hard points” – better, longer range avionics etc. When it came to choice, we created the competition between the best “Medium” aircraft available.

Indian’s Home grown LCA Tejas

Everyone agrees that Su-30 MKI is one of the most capable aircraft. It is already been improved and the new lot of 42 ordered last month will have better avionics etc. What is more, we would have our local Hindustan Aeronautics Limited able to absorb and built them as we get into future. Capability wise – will Su-30MKI fill up the role of MMRCA – May be yes, may be no. For one, it is not medium, it is heavy. But cost-wise and continuity-wise may be better if we look at an option of SU-30MKI and LCA for numbers this decade and next.

The Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft/Perspective Multi-Role Fighter (PMF) and Light Combat Aircraft (LCA)

By 2022 India will start receiving the FGFA or PMF being jointly developed with Russia. This is the logical evolution from SU-30MKI. Also IAF should start getting LCA and the LCA mark 2 as well. India will be working on three key aircraft streams FGFA, Su-30MKI and LCA and its variants.

The Unmanned Combat Aircraft Dimension

Many key operations performed by manned combat aircraft are rapidly being performed by Unmanned Air-borne Vehicles (UAVs) and the upcoming Unmanned Air Combat Vehicles (UCAVs). Indian Air Force will be well-served to increase more UAV/UCAV component in its inventory rapidly. Here, Indian Industry can be handy with our vast experience in software. The key to “Unmanned” is mission-critical software that makes these vehicles – unmanned.

Recommendations

Given the above factors and dimensions, it may be prudent for IAF to rethink its future order of battle and design itself on three key streams of Su-30MKI, LCA++ and FGFA. Also, IAF will be well-served with increasing and creating potent “Unmanned” capability – long-range, medium-range and short-range. The transitions will be well-served by the existing MIGs, Jaguars and Mirage-2000s. Rafale, although a fantastic aircraft, will not fit into the long-term requirements of the country. Unless it is being considered to include Rafale as the third leg of the IAF future thereby, making LCA still-born. If IAF take this as the key requirement – then in 2030 we should be giving may be Trillion Dollars for buying the latest Toys that French may create and our adversaries will be laughing continuously as China would have its own stealth fighters and bombers which China will gleefully share with Pakistan. Hope the defence budget cut proves to be a blessing in disguise and we stop this “Medium” search to focus on real future.

Navneet Bhushan (Navneet) is a founder director of CRAFITTI CONSULTING (www.crafitti.com) – an Innovation and Intellectual Property Consulting firm focused on co-crafting Innovation in global enterprises. He is the winner of Indira India Innovation award for Entrepreneurship and Innovation Leadership for 2012. He is the principal author of Strategic Decision Making- Applying the Analytic Hierarchy Process published by Springer-Verlag, UK, as part of the Decision Engineering Series. Read Navneet Bhushan Profile. Read Navneet Bhushan Columns.

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Future War – The 7D War

Military affairs have been revolutionized by increasing the dimensions of war. No one thought before the WW II thought that aircraft and submarines will play almost decisive roles. The War ended by US creating a totally new dimension of “mass lethality” by using fission bombs – not once but twice. One of the major legacies of Second World War has been the aircraft carrier group that was used by Japan with a telling effect during Pearl Harbor attacks and later by US and Soviet Navy during cold war global shadow boxing. Lesser powers – UK and France also operated aircraft carriers and still do. India had an aircraft carrier that helped us block the East Pakistan during 1971 Bangladesh liberation war.

On one side of spectrum the hi-tech future wars are going to be anywhere any-time wars. The fronts (battle, theatre and war) will vanish and will be replaced by whole five dimensional expanses of our existence i.e., the space, air, land, sea surface and under water, and interestingly two man made dimensions of WMD and Cyberwar. This seven dimensional war (the 7D war) will have operations in each dimension and will have trans-dimensional impacts due to remarkable jointedness between the war making elements. The clarity of goals will make the necessity of elimination of enemy obsolete. The attrition warfare of the yesteryears is replaced by the disruption warfare, where the intent is to control information flow and create information edge. The other side of spectrum the conflicts of future are most likely to be conflicts which will be messy, irregular and revolving around the rise of highly networked non-state actors, whose principal targets may, in many cases, be states.

Evolution of Lethality - Lethality the fundamental war making capability is seeing a marked shift. From “piecemeal lethality” to “massed lethality” and “stealth lethality” we have seen the evolution of lethality in the age of industrial revolution and a machine based world. In the information based world “remote lethality”, “virtual lethality” and “non-lethal lethality” are emerging new capabilities.

Lean Lethality - War making requires ability to inflict disruption, damage, and destruction of enemy capabilities and resources. This reflects in the primary capability of war making systems, instruments and arms, i.e., their lethality. The lethality should be protected from enemy’s lethality – hence every weapon system needs a self-protection capability – a defensive capability. Further, many weapon systems need to operate together to achieve an effective lethality hence a weapon system requires integration capability that become more pronounced in the information age with systems such as C4ISR attaining same importance if not more than combat systems. Further, lethality needs to operate and be operable in multiple heterogeneous environments. Hence weapon systems need operability in multiple environments without impacting their main function – that is their lethality. The de-massification of destruction is achieved by advanced technologies for surgical, pin-point attacks on high value targets instead of using the earlier method of massed attacks on large area in the fond hope that the target will be made in-effective. This is possible nowadays with the advent of ‘Smart’ and ‘Brilliant’ weapons and capabilities coming up in the form of unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAVs).

Remote, Virtual and Non-Lethal Lethality - Besides these the recent capability in the “cyber warfare” dimension demonstrated by the sole superpower against Iran in the form of Stuxnet, Duqu and Flame is an indication of shift to “virtual and non-lethal lethality”. The unmanned systems are becoming more and more capable and with the advent of unmanned combat systems – we are entering an age of what we can call “remote, virtual and non-lethal lethality”.

Non-Linear Battlefields - The new and future battlefields will be highly non-linear. The old concept of sequential battle front has been replaced by Follow-on-Forces Attacks (FOFA), Strike Deep Strike Hard (SDSH) and Air land battle doctrines. In new battlefields, battle front is considered not only the immediate engagement area, but whole space and all those elements in that space which support enemy’s forward deployed forces. These war execution ways calls for hitting deep inside enemy territory – way behind the immediate fronts where the actual combat between regular forces is taking place. It involves, hitting enemy Command and Control centers, Surveillance and Reconnaissance systems, Logistics Support System and Strategic Units, etc. In Future battlefields, there will not be a clear enemy in the traditional sense of combat troops, reserves, armored division etc. Instead, enemy military force will be based on small, independent, highly mobile and highly integrated fighting units. It will be imperative for the attackers to destroy not only the fighter units but also the integration links. The basis of this integration will be the Command Control Communication Computers Intelligence Interpretability Surveillance Reconnaissance (C4I2SR) system, Space and Electronic Warfare (SEW) system and Integrated Logistics System (ILS). Therefore, a shift from linear to highly non-linear battlefields will reshape the future warfare.

Joint Operations - It is in the area of joint operations that the future wars will depict a radical departure from traditional old fashioned wars. The trend of joint operations which started with Air Land Battle doctrine will be further improved and implemented. The benefits of joint operations are discernible from the fact that better effectiveness will be achieved by fewer resources. However these resources must be trained, bound, and integrated within the intellectual fabric of a joint military doctrine. This Joint Force Doctrine (JFD) combining all dimensions – Air, Land, Sea Underwater, Space and Time, of warfare will be the key to the future of warfare. Future commanders should be trained and educated to visualize and achieve the ‘best fit’ of available forces needed to produce the immediate effects and achieve the desired results. Indian forces are not trained to operate in joint operations. They continue to fight individual battles in the wars of future. A major pre requisite in this system of systems operating in joint operations is the need to provide logistics which are timely and good enough to support the higher tempo of battles.

Evolution of Lethality – Munitions

Military systems due to their nature, use and application, need to evolve more rapidly than non-military systems. Further, these systems need to be designed for future use under extreme conditions. Hence they may be a useful guide for understanding the evolution of technical systems in general. One of the simplest of these systems is a bomb. A bomb explodes, typically, to destroy an area or a specific target. With the advent of remote combat systems/platforms such as artillery guns and aircraft, these bombs were launched to travel a distance towards a target, before exploding to destroy a target. The remote launch of bombs helped the launcher to escape combat dangers in the form of enemy return fire.

Evolution of Munitions

These long-distant munitions started with the bomb being what is now called the dumb bombs. Typically an aircraft dropped bomb is called an iron bomb, gravity bomb, or a free-fall bomb. These are unguided mass of explosives that simply follow a ballistic trajectory.

In the second stage of evolution of munitions, the guided munitions added a capability to the dumb bomb to be guided to the target, by riding on a signal wave either emanating from the specific characteristic of the target or on a wave illuminating the target. The latter arrangement requires an operator to illuminate a target by acquiring it on an active target illuminator.

In the third stage of evolution of munitions, they become what are called smart munitions. These munitions have fused sensors for the dumb bombs; hence, they can be self-guided and also have minimal target selection capability. In the increasing intelligence of munitions evolution, today we already have brilliant munitions that have autonomous search, detect, identify, acquire and attack capabilities.

Using the law of increasing intelligence of technical systems, one can predict the next stage of Genius munitions that will develop the type of warheads/munitions needed in run-time when they are acquiring targets. The drones – the unmanned airborne vehicles (UAVs) currently being deployed and used are becoming UCAVs – Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles – which will have higher level of intelligence than brilliant munitions. The Genius Munitions, we predict will start emerging within a decade or so.

We need forces which are organized into a large number of smaller sized highly independent and autonomous, capable units which are backed up by a mass transport and maintenance system to take care of all the potential threats. The future SLAP (Sea Land Air and sPace) forces will be highly mobile and their basic building blocks will be autonomous Knowledge Based Units capable of destruction of the enemy by selective attrition of key enemy elements.

Creating Future 7D Soldier

Today’s world structures are based on Knowledge. Be it the geo-political system, economic system or social system. This same trend can be seen in warfare of future. Due to the remarkable advances being made in the technology, the future military forces will be composed of highly interconnected units with greater autonomy and firepower. The future battlefields will have increased tempo, lethality and uncertainty. Therefore, a doctrine based on interconnecting technologies to take care of unanticipated, unknown and multiple threats is needed.

The Soldier of the future force need to work in an environment of

1. Operating in Continuous change
2. Able to operate and work with increasingly intelligent combat systems
3. Ability to operate in joint operations
4. Ability to operate in integrated teams
5. Highly networked combat and combat support systems
6. Virtual, Remote and Lean Lethality requires – precision decision-making ability
7. Extreme Innovation to adapt, design and evolve military operations

More than the platforms, combat systems, or combat system of systems, it is creating the future soldier who can fight the 7D war will be the challenge. Are we prepared to create such a soldier? Can we create the new soldier? How to design a system of creating the new soldier who innovates, decides, and execute in a highly evolved lethal environments which has system of systems acting against and for him at the same time? These questions need to be answered quickly and a design of the future should be implemented or evolved – else we will not be able to fight the wars of the future!

Navneet Bhushan (Navneet) is a founder director of CRAFITTI CONSULTING (www.crafitti.com) – an Innovation and Intellectual Property Consulting firm focused on co-crafting Innovation in global enterprises. He is the winner of Indira India Innovation award for Entrepreneurship and Innovation Leadership for 2012. He is the principal author of Strategic Decision Making- Applying the Analytic Hierarchy Process published by Springer-Verlag, UK, as part of the Decision Engineering Series. Read Navneet Bhushan Profile. Read Navneet Bhushan Columns.

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From Cyber Flaming to Physical Destruction

Stuxnet, Duqu and Flame computer viruses – the new dimension of unleashing cyber weapons – have been continuing for some years now. The only nation state that has actually used not one but two nuclear bombs in the world so far is the US. By increasing the new dimension of cyber warfare – US and Israel have created increased war-complexity to the next level. Problem of US and Israel has been pursuing “Narrowly defined National Interests” with passion of a dictator without seeing any long term consequences of what they may be doing to the world. During the cold war, US and USSR built weapons of mass destruction – in fact so many times that they can destroy the whole world many times. What should other countries do? Should they remain happy with few having ability to destroy any country the way they want and then threaten them to pursue their activities within their “National Interests”? Or should not they also start building their capabilities to defend themselves against all sorts of bullies the world will be throwing on them?

Whether Iran or for that matter any other country has the right to build nuclear weapons as a deterrence, in a world which has nuclear weapons, is a question that may require much larger and passionate debate, from multiple dimensions. Leaving aside, the morality or true motives of the war/attack, it is a very plausible scenario, now that President Obama continues as President of US, that we will have Israeli attack on Iran to destroy Iran’s nuclear capability. The result or objective of those attacks may be a regime change in Iran.

Uranium Enrichment Facility at Fordo, Qom, Iran. Image: Google Maps

Why Crisis Gaming?

Penetrating the shadowy and complex intersection between psychology and decision maker remains a key analytic challenge. To address the organizational psychology of crisis management in many socioeconomic, sociopolitical, politico-military and industrial disasters and crisis situations, technique of role-playing simulations have been proposed and used. When properly done, such games offer a close approximation of the stress and flow of events of a real world crisis, saturating the participants – often more than they anticipated or desired – with policy conundrums and quick demands. Games can provide a realistic portrayal of various stumbling blocks in crisis resolution.

Country’s top decision-makers require a framework on a scientific footing to come up with possible strategies for coping up with various crisis situations. This requires a thorough understanding of possible crisis situations, how these may be avoided and how to manage them.

The Crisis Gaming Methodology provides such a framework for us to explore future situations and to create strategies on a rational basis. Games provide a form of laboratory in which to observe the activities of individuals or groups in simulated crisis. These games use the standard simulation techniques such as Monte Carlo or Discrete Event Simulation for generating virtual crisis situations for creating near real life experience for the PM.

Crisis is defined as a crucial stage or turning point, which implies fairly compressed period of time. Crisis is a situation which has a high probability of reaching to a disaster in very short period. Disaster is a situation of extreme loss – many times – loss of human life. Risk (R) of an event has been defined as the product of probability of occurrence (p) and consequences (q),

High-risk events can lead to crisis situations. Therefore events with high probability of occurrence or with grave consequences or both may be identified as Crisis Events. The idea of crisis management is that when the high-risk event actually occurs or is about to occur, it can be deciphered. However, due to the compressed reaction time available it becomes difficult to respond appropriately to avoid crisis or disaster. In this regard, it is extremely important for the decision-makers to make decisions, which are not only effective but are taken at a rapid pace under extreme pressure conditions.

We define Crisis Index associated with a risk as

Where, tp is the time taken by the crisis conditions to lead to the crisis event and tq is the delay after the crisis event has occurred and the occurrence of consequences or impact.

From (1) and (2)

In effect the Crisis Index is inversely proportional to the reaction time available to the respondent. Lesser the value of reaction times higher the value of CI.

Thus while carrying out risk assessment it is not only important to compute Risk (R), but it’s imperative to evaluate the Crisis Index (CI) of the events as well. The CI will give a true picture of grave consequences that are possible with occurrence of each event as it incorporates the reaction time.

Israeli Air Force F-16I Sufa. Image: IDF

The general-purpose Crisis Game flow chart has five key steps (1) Initial Scenario writing (2) Scenario Evaluation in terms of Indicator values and Crisis Index (3) Selection of courses of actions by all players (4) Occurrence of events (5) Update the indicator values for all players (6) Repeat steps 2-5 till game termination conditions are reached (7) Game Post-Mortem to learn key lessons and share those lessons.

Various risk events possible in the evolution of the situation based on the scenario, actions by various players and their impacts are discovered while playing the game. Their CI’s as described by equation (3) are also computed in run-time. Based on the resources available to the decision-maker and scenario the performance Indicators are identified. The performance indicators (PI) may be qualitative or quantitative as per the preference of trainer. Sometimes the initial values of PI are estimated on a qualitative basis. These are converted to numerical values using well-established quantitative scale.

The decision-makers are asked to indicate their Course of Action (COA) along with the estimation of impact and cost/feasibility. The COA is evaluated in terms of impact on PI values. The game structure defines linkages between various scenarios, initial PI values, likely events during the execution of the scenario, likely events due to chosen COA and certain random events corresponding to the scenario. The CI’s as computed earlier are used to estimate the time and consequences of occurrence of high- risk events.

As the COA is chosen the crisis situation is simulated. As the scenario goes through the simulated time, the events linked to chosen COA, linked to the scenario and random events keep on occurring. The occurrence of each event modifies the performance indicator values of the each actor. As the event occurs the decision-maker is given a chance to redistribute his resources and allocation of tasks as per his plan and changing scenario. The time given to the decision-maker is in accordance with the reaction time estimated for all events, which has been used while calculating CI. This cycle is repeated till the game termination condition occurs which usually is the end of crisis – either resulting into a disaster or management of disaster/crisis.

Once the game is over the decision-maker, the trainer and other experts undergo a post-game analysis phase, where all the COAs and scenarios are evaluated. It is of paramount importance, however, that game post mortem sessions must not become only faultfinding sessions. It should be a group discussion to carve out various lessons from the whole exercise.

Crisis-Gaming the Israel-Iran conflict

On the night of 13th-14th of November 2012, as Indians were celebrating the festival of lights, Diwali, a series of simultaneous attacks deep inside Iran, destroyed key nuclear facilities and Israel claimed victory over Iran in the early morning television broadcast on 14th November. The operation was executed flawlessly and Israel claimed that sufficient damage has been inflicted on Iran that they will not be able to build any nuclear weapon at least for a decade if not more. If the above scenario is played out in a crisis game, we should be able to come out with our options and see how those options play out in the above simulated scenario.

To design this crisis game, we need to play out following actors – Israel, Iran, US, China, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, China, Russia, UN and of course India. In a very peculiar situation, the game may play out with India, Pakistan, China and Russia collaborating to minimize the crisis impact. However, the attack will have a huge impact on India. The first being, a sudden shortage of oil across India, this may create cascade of crisis and may peg back India’s GDP by large percentage points.

However, there is an immediate danger of destruction of nuclear installations through conventional weapons – and that is – possibility of Chernobyl or Fukushima or worse and actual fission reaction. If the worst happens, whole region may be impacted. Let us play out the worst, the “surgical attacks” by Israel are found to be not so surgical and in fact more of meat-chopper bombing. This leads to a ground burst of medium KT fission burst – the so called surface/below surface nuclear burst. If we assume a tonnage equivalent to 10KT nuclear bomb at the surface, we will have impacts that will be immediate ones for Pakistan and India besides other countries nearby. The surface burst will create large ground craters and take the earth in the protected silos – to the atmosphere – thereby destroying Iran’s nuclear installations and also creating the dreaded nuclear fall-out and radioactive rains that may continue for many months in future. This is a truly horrendous scenario – not only in the immediate impact but also the long-term and geographic impact.

As I write this article, there is major fire in Bangalore. Looking at how our fire-men are responding with limited protective clothing, one can well imagine what we will face – if there indeed is nuclear fallout from Iranian nuclear plant destruction. The operative word is “if”. The bottom line is we are clueless.

Further pointers

Israel’s attack on nuclear installations of Iran is the scenario that has been discussed for last few years. Cyber-attacks on Iranian nuclear installations by Israel and US have already taken this conflict to another dimension. Yet, Israel, perhaps with the history of successfully destroying Iraqi Nuclear reactor in 1981, may carry out the strikes against Iran. One reason Israel wants to destroy the Iranian nuclear plant early is to minimize the possibility of radiation, or worst fission reaction. From multiple reports and pointers in the popular press it is evident that Israel was waiting for the results of US elections. Now, United States have a continuity of its President, Israel may not wait further.

India will be impacted in multiple ways – due to close proximity – we will have to share the spill-over effects of Iranian nuclear facilities destruction and possible escalation of conflict. Secondly, India need to fulfill the sudden reduction of oil supply – estimates of up to 12% of India’s oil needs coming from Iran are available. This percentage for China is 22%. Hence, India and China – the two economies that are growing much better than others will be impacted in a major way. The world will need to see – this may lead to economic depressions that we have not seen before. May be exactly 100 years after WW I we will have WW III.

What should India do? What can India do? What will India do? These questions we should debate and be prepared for in case of this scenario playing out. We have proposed in this article the methodology of crisis gaming or seminar gaming also called the free-form gaming. We also believe, we need to play this game as early as possible, as now the time is running out. Definitely, this time is not based on end-of-world predictions by 21-12-2012, although, that thought did cross my mind!

Navneet Bhushan (Navneet) is a founder director of CRAFITTI CONSULTING (www.crafitti.com) – an Innovation and Intellectual Property Consulting firm focused on co-crafting Innovation in global enterprises. He is the winner of Indira India Innovation award for Entrepreneurship and Innovation Leadership for 2012. He is the principal author of Strategic Decision Making- Applying the Analytic Hierarchy Process published by Springer-Verlag, UK, as part of the Decision Engineering Series. Read Navneet Bhushan Profile. Read Navneet Bhushan Columns.

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This article is in response to readers comments in previous articles What Ails Indian IT Companies – A View from Software Innovation Triangle and The Ladoo Game and Indian IT Companies

Competitive Advantage in a Globalizing world

Every company searches for competitive advantage to score ahead. We have seen the evolution of competitive advantage as the world has globalized through multi-dimensional impact of technology and openness. From “how much land and natural resources you have” to “how much you can manufacture/produce”, the world has moved to “how much information” and “how fast you decide” as the key ingredients of competitive advantage. As globalization increased in last two decades – the mantra has been how fast you innovate. It is evident now that new competitive advantage is not on how fast YOU innovate, but “how fast you Co-Create with all the minds that you can gather with you”. The competitive advantage is “co-creation with all the minds”. We call it Innovation Co-crafting. The companies need to transform its employees and itself into innovation co-crafters.

Who is an Innovation Co-crafter?

An Innovation Co-Crafter is a Simpleton, Scientist and Saint – who starts along with people in a system (experienced domain experts) to reach to the SOUL of the system. He starts every time as a simpleton – then he becomes a scientist and finally achieves sainthood – reaching and delivering a wisdom of the system to effect change that is needed – making the system as close to Ideal as is possible. In this journey – he creates systemic change along with people in the system.

Every time the co-crafter starts as a simpleton who has multiple lenses to view reality and many times creates new lenses to look at reality – during these adventures in wonderland he behaves like a scientist – experimenting, exploring, understanding through the steps of SOUL – See, Observe, Understand and Live – after the simpleton has reached to the SOUL of the system, he starts the change process needed – a change that impacts all around him. Slowly the wisdom gleaned from this becomes the new change that the system needed and experts start developing their expertise in the new change!

A co-crafter is a simpleton who becomes a scientist and then achieves sainthood by working with a system and the people in the system to make the system as close to an ideal system as is possible – He has to be humble, has to accept that he doesn’t know and actually need to reach the SOUL of the system by learning to See, Observe, Understand and Live (SOUL) the system. Achieving Sainthood from being a simpleton every time is a learning process!

A co-crafter takes the organization that he works with to the Simplicity on the other side of complexity – one has to go through complexity. This side of simplicity will keep us simpletons – I hope you can connect with being Simpleton as this side of complexity – being a Saint is on other side of complexity and exploring complexity is being a scientist!

The co-crafter takes the system through a journey of simplicity from this side of complexity to the other side of complexity, breaking and many times shattering the mountains of complexity!

Learning is the Key

Complex Learning Happens in an environment of High Challenge Low Threat through Immersion in multiple authentic experiences and then active processing of these experiences to glean meaning – The Innovation co-crafter focuses on the above three for all “creative learners”

What is needed is an approach that is less control more creation, less management more on-its-own, less of post-facto data analysis, more of empiricism and experimentation – less of hierarchies more of networks, less of pyramidal thinking more of all-inclusive thinking. We have to wake up to the fact that world is self-organizing!

Inventing an Innovation Co-Crafting Nation

Indian IT companies need to transform thousands of its employees into “innovation co-crafters”. This transformation is the need and it will not be easy to do so. This requires an understanding of moving from “elimination of weakest” to “thriving of the co-crafter” not “survival of the fittest”. However, it is do-able and we need strategic vision in creating this strategic innovation to transform ourselves into innovation co-crafting nation.

Navneet Bhushan (Navneet) is a founder director of CRAFITTI CONSULTING (www.crafitti.com) – an Innovation and Intellectual Property Consulting firm focused on co-crafting Innovation in global enterprises. He is the winner of Indira India Innovation award for Entrepreneurship and Innovation Leadership for 2012. He is the principal author of Strategic Decision Making- Applying the Analytic Hierarchy Process published by Springer-Verlag, UK, as part of the Decision Engineering Series. Read Navneet Bhushan Profile. Read Navneet Bhushan Columns.

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The third Indo-Pak war is on its 7th day (if we say 4th December was the D-day). It is around 9 pm, I am sitting in the balcony of the government quarter where I stay. My mother is beside me and my sister who is 30 months old is sleeping in the room. We live in Faridabad, a small town near India’s capital – Delhi. My father, a government servant, goes every day on his bi-cycle to catch a train to Delhi where his office is and he comes late in the evening on the same bi-cycle which he keeps at the railway station. He also has to carry a license for his cycle.

Over the past few weeks my mother has put dark brown papers on all our windows and in fact painted everything black on the outside. The war between India and Pakistan can start any day and there are policemen and some sort of chowkidars whistling and telling to switch off all lights, not even candles should be lighted. There is a war between India and Pakistan. We kids go down to play in the open spaces between the rows of government quarters. Discussion is always about Gnats and Jets – I understand some – not much. One of the older kids was telling us that jets can fire missiles but our Gnats are very good and we can defeat them easily.

My father has not arrived from work; my mother is worried as we sit outside the house – in the balcony. This is a government colony and we are in the first story flat of two storied houses. As we sit outside, my mother looks at the sky – and sure enough there are dots moving below the stars. These are aircraft moving, my mother tells me. My mother tells me, “These are Indian Air Force planes. We don’t have Jets that Pakistan has, but our pilots are brave and they will stop them”. This is obvious reference to Sabrejets (F-86) that Pakistan had in 1971 from US. India did not have these types of high-end fighter planes. But our Hunters and Gnats proved better. The morale was high and may be so war training.

My father arrived on his cycle little late. He said he wanted to bring some cakes for my birthday or something like that. I am not sure now. But my memory of looking at the sky with dots moving below the stars and the fear in the air of a possible long war and my mother holding me – the young boy of 5 years – in the balcony of the government flat in Faridabad is so vivid and clear even now.

I think that was the day, when INDIA AWAKENED IN ME!

I just wanted to get up – reach up the sky and fire the Gun that I have been given as my birthday present on the Sabrejets that the enemy brings to the war with my country! I think that was the day I got hooked on to India and Indian defence. I pursued, as a hobby, reading on Indian security, defence, war and history. And even now the interest continues.

When did I realize India is my country? This was I think the point – at the age of 5, India awakened in me.

It may be an interesting exercise to recollect – when did India woke-up in you?
Wishing you a very happy Independence Day.

Navneet Bhushan (Navneet) is a founder director of CRAFITTI CONSULTING (www.crafitti.com) – an Innovation and Intellectual Property Consulting firm focused on co-crafting Innovation in global enterprises. He is the winner of Indira India Innovation award for Entrepreneurship and Innovation Leadership for 2012. He is the principal author of Strategic Decision Making- Applying the Analytic Hierarchy Process published by Springer-Verlag, UK, as part of the Decision Engineering Series. Read Navneet Bhushan Profile. Read Navneet Bhushan Columns.

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