NEW DELHI, October 16 — The Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff (HQ IDS) in joint execution with the Indian Army, Indian Navy, and Indian Air Force on Friday concluded the intensive multi-domain exercise 'Cyber Suraksha 2026', validating resilient tactical networks under contested electronic and information warfare conditions.
Coordinated by the Defence Cyber Agency (DCyA), the simulation pitted specialized blue teams against simulated state-sponsored red-team adversaries executing coordinated denial-of-service incursions, satellite telemetry spoofing, tactical software-defined radio (SDR) jamming, and zero-day SCADA penetrations against simulated air defense command and military logistics grids. Technical observers from the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) and I4C participated.
Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) leadership underscored that mastering grey-zone operations, cognitive disruption, and electromagnetic spectrum superiority is prerequisite to operationalizing upcoming joint integrated theater commands, insulating sovereign military networks against foreign cyber sabotage.
The institutional mandate of the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS, created in 2019 following the Shekatkar Committee recommendations), the specialized tri-service agencies (Defence Cyber Agency, Defence Space Agency, and Armed Forces Special Operations Division), the roles of NTRO and CERT-In, and doctrines of hybrid warfare form core study components across UPSC Civil Services (GS-III: Internal Security) and Defence officer examinations.