We old-timers have a problem. We remain stuck in a groove. But then there is that age-old maxim: the more things change, the more they remain the same. This came about like nowhere else than in that short conflict between India and Pakistan. As the young AVM of the PAF rattled term after term that had us scratching our cerebral nooks to make meaning, so seemed the equally impressive Air Marshal Bharti of the IAF — Aurangzeb's equivalent — struggling to fathom what this younger version of him from across the line was trying to explain.

Perhaps the audiences, like all of us — and I blame them not; fighter flying anyway is esoteric and otherworldly — were happy enough to know and understand the bottom-line 6-0, that the erudite AVM was so effective in delivering.

Is it all as new for it to be unfathomable? Let's dissect. It begins with 'domain superiority' and includes 'spectrum-dominance'. It is easier to explain 'domain superiority' because it is similar to air superiority, that to us old fags was the sine qua non for success in air operations. It always had shades: should it be local, transient, pervasive or absolute. In the post 70s world of combat air operations and campaign planning this is what air forces vied for. In that bargain the entire war would be over, and the air forces would remain consumed with winning the air superiority battle.

Their contribution to the total-war effort that the nation had entered was left unattended. The army and the navy had frequently complained about the air force fighting its own parallel war at the cost of support to the surface forces. Conceptually the surface forces thought of the air force as an adjunct to their........

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