NEW DELHI: Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan said that the use of Air Force during the 1962 Sino-Indian war “would have slowed Chinese offensive considerably.” However, he added that it would have been considered “escalatory” in nature at that time, which wasn’t the case during Operation Sindoor. “They would have had a significant advantage during the 1962 conflict. Shorter turnaround times, a favourable geography and the ability to bring maximum payloads to bear with maximum weight on the enemy. Use of air power would have slowed the Chinese offensive considerably, if not stymied it completely,” he said.“This would have given the Army much more time to prepare. In those days, I think, the use of the Air Force was considered escalatory. This, I think, is no longer true, and Operation Sindoor is an apt example of this,” he added. His remarks came in a recorded video message on Wednesday at the release of revised autobiography of late Lieutenant General SPP Thorat, titled ‘Reveille to Retreat.’

CDS’s reasoning for ‘flawed’ policy

He termed the use of uniform policy in Ladakh and NEFA (North-East Frontier Agency), present-day Arunachal Pradesh, “flawed.”Explaining his viewpoint, he said that Ladakh and NEFA had very different contexts — former had significant Chinese occupation, while India’s claim in the latter was stronger. “All I can say is that the forward policy should not have been applied uniformly to Ladakh and NEFA. The two regions had very different histories of the dispute, a different security context and entirely different terrain,” he said.“In Ladakh, China had already occupied much of Indian territory, whereas in NEFA, the legitimacy of India’s claim was stronger. To equate the two and pursue identical policies was, in my view, a bit flawed,” he added.However, he did note that views on forward policy would be coloured due to changed “To comment on the adequacy or inadequacy of the forward policy at this time is slightly difficult. Our views will be coloured due to many reasons, like geography has changed entirely and so has geopolitics,” he said.