Abstract
Rapid advances in artificial intelligence, cloud computing, autonomous systems and pervasive sensing are compressing the traditional stages of military transformation. This paper introduces the concept of Transformation Compression to explain this phenomenon and examines its implications for India’s military modernisation. It argues that sequential capability development is increasingly impractical and proposes a Leapfrogging Framework to distinguish capabilities that must be built, developed concurrently or selectively leapfrogged. The paper concludes that India’s future military advantage will depend not merely on acquiring emerging technologies, but on sequencing military transformation through informed choices about what to build, what to compress and what to leapfrog.
Keywords: Algorithm Centric Warfare, Data Centric Warfare, India, Military Modernisation, Network Centric Warfare, Transformation Compression
