When General K Sundarji conceptualised Operation Brasstacks in 1987, India’s security environment was intense, but still largely linear. The exercise was not merely a rehearsal of military manoeuvres. The three stages prior to Brasstacks IV involved national wargaming that brought together political leaders, bureaucrats, scientists, logisticians, and military commanders—a rare moment when the State thought collectively about war, governance, and national preparedness.
At that time, Pakistan was only 16 years past the trauma of 1971—still adversarial, but conventionally outmatched. China was only in the early phase of Deng Xiaoping’s Four Modernisations—emerging, but not yet shaping regional security dynamics. In that environment, it was logical that Brasstacks focused on massed conventional operations across geographically defined battle spaces.
Today, that world is scarcely recognisable. Pakistan possesses nuclear deterrence, missile capabilities, and is expanding access to drones and other emerging warfare technologies. Its fiscal fragility and internal instability do not restrain its behaviour; they often incentivise asymmetric posturing. With diminishing leverage in Afghanistan, it has sought a reverse form of strategic depth through intelligence footprints and sympathetic networks in Bangladesh. China has evolved into a deliberate strategist, not merely supporting, but shaping Pakistan’s threat profile. The contest is now multi-domain—cyber, informational, economic, diplomatic, and psychological—where narratives matter as much as capabilities.
In this evolving environment, Operation Sindoor provided reassurance, exposing no visible strategic weakness. Yet, as every seasoned practitioner knows, public success does not erase private lessons. What is not visible is often more valuable. Every operation brings clarity—not only about our strengths, but also about our friction points and unseen vulnerabilities. Learning from those requires more than a review; it requires simulation, rehearsal, and refinement. That is the unique strength of wargaming.
Unlike briefings or consultations, wargaming is an immersive learning tool. It does not merely present a situation—it forces decision, under pressure, uncertainty, and time constraints. It enables policymakers, diplomats, intelligence professionals, economists, and military planners to experience how crises unfold; and, critically, how their decisions shape consequences. It identifies institutional blind-spots, improves inter-agency understanding, and trains decision-makers to think in layers—not only about what the adversary might do, but why and when. The US, Japan, Israel, and China regularly simulate crises to refine decisions and strengthen strategic cognition.
The Indian armed forces have long excelled in this domain. Wargaming and scenario planning are deeply ingrained from academy training to operational and joint command levels. Officers are habituated to visualise, simulate, and optimise responses. Table-top exercises in disaster management are a quasi-military extension of this method—integrating agencies across domains and teaching coordination as a habit. But while the military lives wargaming, the national governance ecosystem only visits it. That must change.
The recent Delhi car blast was part of the same hybrid continuum—designed to probe resilience, shape perception, and exploit our cognitive blind-spots. It reminds us that modern conflict respects no boundaries, and can evolve faster than responses unless the responses are rehearsed. For India, this makes it imperative to institutionalise a national strategic wargame every two years, culminating in a combined commanders’ conference as a national convergence forum. Such simulations should assess crises involving cyber disruption, economic coercion, media manipulation, or internal destabilisation; testing decision sequencing, strategic signalling, response agility, and communication integrity—embedding true civil-military fusion.
India speaks confidently today of atmanirbharta in defence, theatre commands, civil-military synergy, integrated national security architecture, and hybrid warfare preparedness. These are promising, but their real strength will emerge only when they are anchored in a shared culture of strategic understanding. That demands experiential learning. The true value of such exercises lies in enabling those who would plan and decide to think collectively, not in silos. Wargaming becomes the safest way to gain that experience before we are forced to learn it in a crisis.
India is fortunate to have institutions such as the National Defence College and the Army War College, which are repositories of strategic knowledge and long-term security insight. These institutions can, without altering their core military purpose, evolve into national hubs where elected representatives, senior bureaucrats, domain experts, technology leaders, and diplomatic practitioners periodically co-learn about emerging strategic realities. These need not be long residential programmes, but structured strategic capsules—on hybrid warfare, deterrence stability, grey-zone coercion, intelligence shaping, information warfare, and national resilience.
This is not without precedent. At the Royal College of Defence Studies in London, a small group of elected representatives attends the annual strategic studies programme alongside military leaders, diplomats, security practitioners, and professionals from over 40 nations. They do not become military experts, but they emerge as far more informed legislators. Not because they were taught what to think, but because they learned how to think about war, peace, resilience, and national purpose.
Such intellectual cross-pollination in India would only enhance the role of political leadership and policy institutions. It would help ensure that national security is understood not only in military terms, but also in its economic, societal, diplomatic, technological, and psychological dimensions. That is precisely where national level wargaming can become the bridge between theory, insight, and decision.
In a world where conflicts are increasingly shaped in the mind before they are fought on the ground, wargaming may well be India’s most powerful peacetime strategic integrator.
Lt Gen Syed Ata Hasnain (retd) | Former Commander, Srinagar-based 15 Corps; Chancellor, Central University of Kashmir
(Views are personal)
(atahasnain@gmail.com)