Operation Sindoor was a reality check for India: Defence Secretary

'It is pretty clear in the context of the geopolitical situation now that most countries are paying a lot of attention to defence and hard power again," Singh said.

Pune: Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh on Friday said that "Operation Sindoor was a reality check for India" in terms of where we can do better.

Singh was speaking at the Southern Command Defence Tech 2025 seminar (STRIDE 2025) here.

"It is pretty clear in the context of the geopolitical situation now that most countries are paying a lot of attention to defence and hard power again. Given our neighbourhood, India is no exception. We just had this experience with Operation Sindoor, which in some ways was a reality check for us in terms of where we can do better, where we need to adapt to changing needs for future warfare," he said.

"I think in future as well you will see that in terms of providing visibility to the industry as a whole, through orders of mostly 81 per cent of our last year expenditure on defence CapEx was spent within the country, a lot of it would trickle down to some of the industries which are represented here. Intent is to keep up that and double down on our indigenisation efforts and make sure that we are able to not only be the world's third-largest economy in the near future but we would also have a commensurate large-sized defence industry which is both manufacturing for us and for exports," he added.

Addressing the gathering, Singh said the trend of increasing globalisation and free trade has been brought to a halt by geopolitical factors linked to the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and Europe and the rise of populist leadership patterns across the globe.

“These trends are causing competitive populism and economic protectionism around the world, accompanied by economic fragmentation, the decline of multilateral institutions, and a growing tide of nationalism.

“As a result, the need to back a soft power with hard power is becoming more and more critical at a time when strategic deal-making requires you to be able to project hard power as well,” said Singh.

He also said there is a need to bring academia, research institutes like DRDO (Defence Research and Development Organisation), private and public sectors together to meet the capability enhancement needs of the country’s armed forces.

(With inputs from agencies)