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Opinion National Interest PoV 50-Word Edit

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Spectrum is a warfighting asset — India can’t keep auctioning it off for viral videos

The real choice before us is simple: do we want our soldiers competing with viral videos for bandwidth when it matters most?

Recent escalations between Israel and Iran have exposed the raw stakes of spectrum dominance in modern conflict. Iran’s missile barrages and Israel’s precision intercepts, enabled by real-time drone feeds, satellite ISR, and AI-driven targeting, relied on secure, interference-free electromagnetic channels. This is what net-centric warfare looks like. And in this, spectrum is a warfighting asset.

Military spectrum availability matters because modern strikes are no longer just about aircraft, missiles, and bombs; they are about sensing, jamming, relaying, synchronising, and re-tasking all of them in near real time to compress the kill chain and sustain tempo.

US military history shows what happens when that spectrum runs short. In Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan, 2001), UHF satellites were oversubscribed by 255 per cent, crippling CENTCOM’s tactical relays for special forces and air operations. Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003) saw networks crash under bandwidth overload, forcing a voice-only “analog fallback”. Troops triaged Improvised Explosive Device  jamming, Close Air Support calls, or ISR feeds amid spectrum “e-turf wars”. Bosnia’s Operation Deliberate Force (1995) showed intense use for airstrikes and clearly recorded that the rescue of USAF pilot Scott O’Grady after he ejected from his F-16 could have been thwarted by limited access.

Spectrum is not merely an enabler of war, but part of war itself. Stealth aircraft, stand-off weapons, airborne early warning platforms, electronic attack aircraft, and drones all depend on it for command and control, target designation, battle-damage assessment, and coordination across domains. The side with assured access to secure, protected bands can see farther, decide faster, strike........

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