New Delhi: With the government moving towards the creation of three new theatre commands, the Department of Military Affairs (DMA) is looking towards further expanding and upgrading its cyber and space warfare capabilities.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had cleared the creation of two agencies including the Defence Cyber Agency and Defence Cyber Agency five years ago to deal with threats from these domains as well as prepare India’s offensive capabilities too in this sector. These agencies are headed by Major Gen-rank officers from the military.

“With the increasing use of the cyber domain in warfare as could be seen in the Ukraine war and also our own experiences, the DMA is looking at the possibility of further expanding the Cyber agency and have more strength to deal with the challenges,” government sources said.

Similarly, in the recent past, a number of space launches and other deployments in that domain have been reported about our adversaries. We would also need to strengthen our capabilities in the space domain too to help the Theatre Commanders to assess the threats and tackle them, they said.

A number of Cyber attacks have been thwarted by Defence Cyber Agency against its own military IT infrastructure as well as own personnel.

The civilian agencies created along the Defence Cyber and Space agencies have also made enormous progress in their capabilities in the last few years, the sources said.

However, the sources said, with the increasing global activities and rapid weaponisation of these domains, there is a need to expand and upgrade the capabilities of these agencies.

The forces have been mulling about having permanent or long-term cyber and space specialists in these agencies which can help them utilise their expertise for the long term.

The agencies can also be put under Lt Gen-rank officers in view of the need for significant expansion in size.

The DMA under the Chief of Defence Staff has been tasked by the government to create Theatre Commands which would create meaner and leaner fighting formations to fight wars of the future.

The Theatre Command discussions are going on among the services and the structures are likely to be finalised soon with consensus among the services and top brass over almost all the issues.