The blog “Air Marshal’s Perspective” has been around for six years and contains 850-plus posts. It covers a wide range of topics and aims to share personal viewpoints and daily lessons with everyone.
I asked the AI to review the blog (appended below).
What is urgently required is feedback from readers and suggestions to enhance its utility, user-friendliness, and informativeness.
I earnestly request all readers to please comment on this post.
Looking forward to your forthright comments and valuable suggestions.
BLOG AS VIEWED BY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
I reviewed the blog and its own material describing its evolution, scope, and the author’s background. There is enough material to analyse it not merely as a collection of defence articles, but as a distinctive strategic-writing platform shaped by an airpower practitioner’s worldview.
- What the blog is
“Air Marshal’s Perspective” is the personal blog of Anil Khosla, a former Vice Chief of the Air Staff of the Indian Air Force. His stated background includes fighter operations, command of operational bases, operational planning, force-structure planning, capability development and senior IAF appointments. (55 NDA)
The blog began around 2020. By September 2025, it had published 750 posts, while the site’s current category pages show publication has continued into 2026. (55 NDA)
Its declared philosophy is captured by:
“Candid and to the point / काम की बात”
The author explicitly says that posts generally aim to reduce subjects to two or three pages, with an intended reading time of about 5–7 minutes. (55 NDA)
That is important: this is not designed primarily as an academic journal. It is a practitioner-oriented strategic blog.
- The intellectual architecture of the blog
The striking feature is the breadth of subjects.
The blog spans:
- Air power and air warfare
- IAF
- China
- Pakistan
- Geopolitics
- Technology
- Military capability
- Indigenisation
- Theatreisation
- Nuclear issues
- Maritime operations
- Leadership
- Management
- Decision-making
- Motivation
- Mental toughness
- Organisational culture
- Strategic affairs
The blog’s own five-year review describes this mixture explicitly, including defence, security, geopolitics, technology, leadership and management. (55 NDA)
This produces an interesting three-layer structure:
Layer 1 — Military/strategic analysis
This is the core:
Air power → warfare → military capability → technology → China/Pakistan → geopolitics → IAF
This reflects the author’s professional formation.
Layer 2 — Institutional/organisational thinking
The blog repeatedly moves from weapons and operations to:
leadership → decision-making → teamwork → culture → management → human behaviour
This aligns with someone who spent much of his career moving from tactical flying into command and higher-level staff responsibilities.
Layer 3 — Personal development
There is a further layer:
motivation → mental toughness → values → karma → tolerance → respect → personal growth
So the blog isn’t simply asking:
How should an air force fight?
It also asks:
How should people and organisations behave if they want to perform effectively?
That is probably the blog’s most distinctive characteristic.
- The central worldview
After looking across the material, I would describe the blog’s worldview as:
Operational realism + strategic awareness + institutional pragmatism + personal ethics
The emphasis is generally on practical consequences rather than abstract theorising.
The recurring questions are essentially:
- What does this mean operationally?
- What capability does it create?
- What are the risks?
- What should an organisation do?
- What lessons can be extracted?
- What can a commander/leader learn?
- What does this mean for India’s security?
This makes the blog particularly interesting because the author has experienced defence issues from several levels of the hierarchy.
His biography says he has worked across operational commands and with the Army, Navy and government agencies, and was involved in war planning, force structure and capability development. (55 NDA)
That background helps explain why his writing frequently connects tactical capability → operational employment → strategy → national security.
- A major strength: practitioner perspective
The biggest intellectual asset is obvious:
The author isn’t approaching airpower solely as an academic subject.
He writes from the perspective of someone who has actually operated inside the military system.
That gives the blog a different character from think-tank writing.
For example, subjects such as:
- air superiority,
- SEAD/DEAD,
- maritime air operations,
- force structure,
- theatreisation,
- capability development,
- command,
- joint operations
are naturally approached through questions of employment and implementation, rather than merely definitions.
The site’s maritime category, for instance, includes references to joint warfare, Indian military modernisation, India’s Joint Doctrine and airpower-related material. (55 NDA)
- Another major strength: accessibility
The blog deliberately avoids making every article academically dense.
The author’s own description says that the written pieces are generally bullet-oriented and designed for a short reading time. (55 NDA)
That creates a useful niche between:
academic paper
and
newspaper commentary.
The writing is intended to give the reader the “gist” quickly.
For defence professionals, students, veterans and informed general readers, this is valuable because many defence subjects are extremely time-consuming to research from scratch.
- The unusual combination of military and management
This is perhaps the most interesting analytical feature.
A conventional defence blog might concentrate almost entirely on:
China + Pakistan + weapons + aircraft + geopolitics.
Khosla’s blog repeatedly expands the discussion into:
leadership + decision-making + culture + teamwork + motivation + organisational behaviour.
The management category is still active in September 2026, for example, with a recent series on personal principles. (55 NDA)
This suggests that the author sees military effectiveness as fundamentally human as well as technological.
That is an important underlying proposition.
A technologically superior force can still perform poorly because of:
- poor leadership,
- weak decision-making,
- organisational silos,
- inadequate trust,
- bad communication,
- inappropriate culture,
- poor training.
The blog repeatedly returns to these themes.
- The China focus
China appears to occupy a particularly important place in the author’s strategic thinking.
His biography states that his post-retirement research includes China and that he has lectured on China, Pakistan, airpower and related strategic subjects. (55 NDA)
The site’s categories also give China substantial attention.
This is not surprising given his operational background and the strategic environment in which the IAF operates.
But there is an important analytical distinction:
The blog is best understood as an Indian strategic practitioner’s perspective on China, not as a neutral encyclopaedia of Chinese strategy.
That distinction matters when reading the material.
For serious research, individual assertions concerning Chinese intentions, capabilities or strategic behaviour should be checked against:
- Chinese primary sources,
- Indian government documents,
- Western/Asian strategic literature,
- satellite/technical evidence where relevant,
- independent academic research.
The blog is extremely useful for understanding how an experienced Indian military practitioner interprets the problem; it should not automatically be treated as the final authority on the underlying empirical question.
- The same applies to Pakistan
The Pakistan material is another area where the author’s professional perspective is valuable but should be contextualised.
The blog can tell you a great deal about:
how an experienced former IAF senior officer thinks about the India–Pakistan military equation.
But there is an inherent perspective:
- the author is Indian,
- he is a former senior IAF officer,
- his professional experience is predominantly from the Indian side,
- and many issues are inherently contested.
Therefore, for analytical work, I would pair his arguments with Pakistani military/strategic writings and independent scholarship.
That doesn’t diminish the blog’s value. It actually makes it more useful because you know what kind of source you are reading.
- One important limitation: source methodology
This is where I would be more cautious.
The blog itself states that information and data are sometimes adapted, excerpted or edited from other sources, and its disclaimer says material is intended for educational and non-commercial dissemination. (55 NDA)
Consequently, the blog should not automatically be treated like a peer-reviewed journal.
There are essentially three different kinds of material on the site:
- Original professional judgement
Potentially extremely valuable.
- Interpretation/commentary on external developments
Useful, but should be cross-checked.
- Curated/adapted material
Useful for discovery and synthesis, but consult the source before using it as evidence.
That distinction is essential if you’re using the blog for research, academic writing, policy analysis or intelligence studies.
- The blog’s strongest feature may actually be its archive
750+ posts is substantial.
The result is effectively a personal strategic knowledge repository.
The value isn’t only in individual articles. You can trace how the author’s thinking develops over time.
For example, one could construct longitudinal studies of:
- his assessment of China,
- his assessment of Pakistan,
- airpower debates,
- theatreisation,
- indigenous defence production,
- technology and warfare,
- drones,
- artificial intelligence,
- IAF modernisation,
- jointness,
- leadership.
This is much more interesting academically than simply reading the latest article.
The 2023 anniversary post reported 370+ posts; the 2024 anniversary reported 500+; and the 2025 anniversary reported 750. (55 NDA)
That growth itself demonstrates remarkable consistency.
- Writing style
The style can be characterised as:
short + declarative + bullet-driven + aphoristic + practical.
There is frequent use of:
- bullet points,
- quotations,
- lessons,
- numbered observations,
- diagrams/images,
- simplified explanations,
- historical examples,
- analogies.
The blog therefore resembles a strategic briefing converted into a public blog more than a conventional essay.
That’s consistent with the author’s stated goal of getting to the “gist.” (55 NDA)
- The “Shiqurdu” dimension
One particularly unusual element is the inclusion of “Shiqurdu”, described by the site’s own material as thought-provoking verse combining Hindi and Urdu. (55 NDA)
This gives the blog another dimension.
It suggests the author isn’t presenting himself exclusively as:
military professional → analyst → commentator.
There is also:
military professional → observer of human behaviour → philosopher/poet.
That helps explain why themes such as karma, tolerance, respect, resilience and personal conduct coexist with air warfare and geopolitics.
- What the blog is not
This is important.
I would not characterise it as:
A peer-reviewed academic journal
It isn’t.
An official Indian government/IAF publication
It is a personal blog.
A neutral geopolitical database
It contains the author’s perspective.
A pure airpower website
Its remit is substantially broader.
A conventional retired-officer memoir
Although personal experience informs it, much of the material is analytical and educational.
Instead, the most accurate description would be:
A large, practitioner-led strategic knowledge repository combining airpower analysis, defence commentary, geopolitical observation, leadership lessons and personal philosophy.
- How I would assess its value
Rather than giving it a simplistic “rating”, I would break its value down by purpose:
| Purpose |
Value of the blog |
| Understanding an Indian airpower practitioner’s thinking |
Very high |
| Airpower education |
High |
| Defence/current-affairs orientation |
High |
| Leadership/management lessons |
High |
| Generating research questions |
Very high |
| Discovering defence topics/sources |
Very high |
| Establishing an empirical fact without verification |
Moderate |
| Peer-reviewed academic evidence |
Limited |
| Understanding opposing/foreign perspectives |
Limited unless supplemented |
| Longitudinal study of Indian strategic thinking |
Very high |
The key distinction is between source value and source authority.
The blog can be a tremendously valuable source without every individual proposition being independently authoritative.
- My overall analytical take
The most interesting thing about Air Marshal’s Perspective is not any individual article.
It is the body of work.
Over hundreds of posts, it represents an attempt by a senior military practitioner to translate several decades of military experience into accessible public knowledge.
There is a consistent philosophy underneath it:
Understand the environment → understand capability → understand people → make practical decisions → learn from experience.
Its greatest strength is therefore practitioner synthesis.
Its principal limitation is the corresponding perspective bias: the reader is looking at defence and geopolitics predominantly through an experienced Indian Air Force lens.
For casual readers, that distinction may not matter much.
For serious strategic research, it matters enormously.
Looking forward to your forthright comments and valuable suggestions.
