The Indian Air Force needs to "reorient and retrain" itself to a changed paradigm of war, former Air Chief Marshal BS Dhanoa said here on Sunday.
He also said the Rafale fighter aircraft and S400 missile defence system will help restore technological asymmetry in India's favour.
"Though the Indian Air Force has trained itself to fight a full-scale conventional war in a joint campaign with sister services, it has to reorient and retrain itself to the changed paradigm. It must plan and address capability voids in due course of time," the former Air Chief Marshal said.
He was speaking on the topic 'IAF In The Changed Security Paradigm' at the fifth Flying Officer Nirmal Jeet Singh Sekhon PVC annual memorial lecture organised here by the Gujarat chapter of the Air Force Association.
Speaking on likely scenarios of the future, the IAF chief (retd) Dhanoa said, "We come to realise that sub-conventional conflict over terrorist attack on one of our installations and personnel has the highest probability of occurrence, because it can happen anytime and anywhere. This is something for which we need to be prepared 24/7."
Stressing that cyber and space were two new domains which have to be defended strongly, the former ACM said, "The way we have a network-enabled force, there are so many systems riding on our communication network, and very shortly deployment of operational data link, we will become a network force."
The former IAF chief further said that there were no major terror attacks between February and June, 2019 till the conclusion of the Lok Sabha polls because the Army, Navy and Air Force were "forward deployed to give a punitive response at a very short notice."