With changing times, war calls for different methods of engagement with the enemy and protecting your borders. With mankind’s growing technological prowess, kinetic combat fought on the basis of guns and missiles is day by day becoming more and more obsolete, with the growing advancement in missiles, battleships, fighter planes being relegated more to the sphere of power projection. While kinetic warfare will never be totally outmoded, gone are the days when cross border warfare was the only means of fighting your enemies.
 
 In this new changing frontier, the exponential, accelerating pace of technology has overturned centuries of standard operating procedure. Diplomats and military leaders alike have been thrust into uncharted domains, disrupted by an invisible enemy throwing them into the darkness.
 
By its very nature Fifth Generation Warfare is difficult to define, though it is based heavily on the aspects of deception, intelligence and misinformation. Fifth Generation Warfare also known as Information Warfare is military driven action based on accumulation and manipulation of data to influence public thought.
 
A form of psycho social engineering, Fifth Gen Warfare is fought in an invisible digital space, in the domain of social media through YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, streaming sites such as Netflix, and even information sites like Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica through methods of omission, redaction and telling half truths. Another method is presenting agenda driven indexes that are mostly lies.
 
There are also various methods involved here such as deep fakes, honey pots, cyber attacks, mass surveillance, misinformation, propaganda, memes (which can act as a form of social engineering) etc. Some of the biggest leaders of 5th Gen Warfare include USA and its  Western allies, Russia, China and Pakistan.

Certain major military powers such as India and Israel which outrank most countries in terms of traditional military strength perform rather poorly in 5GW in comparison to their adversaries. Despite an abundance of resources, these countries have traditionally not focused too much on developing their 5GW capabilities, which typically enables their weaker enemies to malign them globally, even if the truth is completely different. Essentially 5GW is all about manipulating perception, regardless of the truth.