Overview

• General Anil Chauhan said employing air power in the 1962 Sino‑Indian War would have slowed, if not stymied, the Chinese advance and bought the Army more time.
• He delivered the remarks via video at the release of the revised autobiography of Lt Gen S. P. P. Thorat, the former Eastern Command chief.
• He argued the forward policy should not have been applied uniformly to Ladakh and NEFA because the disputes, security contexts and terrain differed.
• He suggested Thorat had considered calling in the Indian Air Force in 1962 but was not permitted by the government of the day.
• He cited May’s Operation Sindoor—air strikes on terror hubs in Pakistan and Pakistan‑occupied Kashmir after the Pahalgam massacre—as evidence that using air power is no longer automatically viewed as escalatory.