Preparedness of the armed forces to fight in an environment created by nuclear, biological and chemical war will come up for review at the Army Commanders conference beginning on Monday.
The week-long conference would witness for the first time the country's top nuclear and biological scientists sharing India's preparedness in nuclear and chemical warfare technologies with the army's top brass.
Post Operation Parakaram, during which the country faced veiled nuclear threats from its adversary, both Defence Research and Development Organisation and the army have come up with nuclear bomb-proof battlefield command posts with simultaneous efforts to equip frontline and other strategic forces with anti-radiation clothing.
Weapons systems have been adapted to operate in such environment. Efforts to turn an infantry soldier into a 'robotised fighting machine' as well a review of operational situation in Jammu and Kashmir and the northeast will also come up for discussion, according to an army spokesman in New Delhi.
The review assumes significance in the context of snow melting in the high Himalayan passes in Jammu and Kashmir making them vulnerable to infiltration by terrorists from across the Line of Control.
"Army's top brass will hold comprehensive discussions on future infantry soldier as a system (F-INSAS), as envisaged in Infantry Vision 2020," an army spokesman said. The F-INSAS aims at equipping a frontline infantry soldier with radar and sensor-guided helmets, night vision and Global Positioning System.
Equipping the infantry with such a mechanism would turn a soldier into a system to relay information and battle statistics to rear formations, army sources said. The United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation forces are also working on similar systems for infantry soldiers.
The Conference, which will be opened by Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee, will be chaired by Army Chief General J J Singh and attended by Admiral Arun Prakash and Air Chief Marshal SP Tyagi.
"Training of army personnel on information technology for organisational adaptation and meeting future requirements will be another important topic that would be deliberated upon," the spokesman said.
State of health of the army, budget expenditure management, creation of foreign language specialist officers and steps to make the top brass inspection more meaningful are the other issues to come up for discussion, he said.
The conference will be followed by the army holding one of the most complex offensive corp-level exercises in Punjab, next month. It will try out the new war doctrine concept of 'lightening thrusts' by tri-service integrated formations.
The exercises would be held to test the armed forces' response to a nuclear environment in battlefield, sources said.
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