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The fourth edition of the Tri-Services Future Warfare Course concluded in New Delhi on 30 August 2026, after a four-week programme that began on 3 August 2026 at the Manekshaw Centre.
It was conducted under the aegis of Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff and coordinated by the Centre for Joint Warfare Studies.
Participants included officers of the Army, Navy and Air Force alongside representatives of government bodies, academia, industry and strategic think tanks.
The curriculum covered artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, cyber and cognitive warfare, autonomous systems, space operations, grey-zone warfare and multi-domain operations.
Chief of Defence Staff General N. S. Raja Subramani addressed the concluding session; the fifth edition is scheduled from 16 November to 11 December 2026.
Grey-zone warfare is coercion that stays deliberately below the threshold of open armed conflict - cyber intrusion, disinformation, economic pressure, salami-slicing at a disputed border, the use of deniable proxies. It is designed to achieve strategic effect without triggering the response an armed attack would. Multi-domain operations are the corresponding military answer: planning and fighting across land, sea, air, space and cyberspace as a single integrated effort rather than as separate service campaigns. Both concepts explain why a course like this is deliberately tri-service and why it brings in academia and industry, since the relevant capabilities no longer sit inside any one service.
Simple Analogy: Grey-zone warfare is pressing hard enough to hurt but never hard enough to be called a punch; multi-domain operations are answering with the whole body rather than one arm.
Tri-services organisation under the Ministry of Defence that promotes jointness in planning, training and operations
Think tank on joint military studies and strategic research, which coordinated the course
Principal military adviser to the Defence Minister and head of the Department of Military Affairs; drives integration among the three Services
General Awareness > Defence Organisations and Current Affairs
GS Paper 3 > Internal Security > Defence Reforms and Emerging Technologies
General Awareness > Defence Current Affairs
Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff, the tri-services organisation under the Ministry of Defence
Centre for Joint Warfare Studies, a New Delhi think tank on joint military studies
Coercive action deliberately kept below the threshold of open armed conflict
Integrated military operations across land, sea, air, space and cyberspace
The body of the three Service Chiefs; the Chief of Integrated Defence Staff reports to its Chairman