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India’s long-awaited move towards establishing integrated theatre commands is in its final stages, with the armed forces working to operationalise the new structure well before the government-mandated deadline of May 30, 2026, Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan said on Friday.
Speaking at the Pune Public Policy Festival 2026 at the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, the CDS said the move aimed at creating joint theatre commands remains one of his core responsibilities and is now “almost there”.
“Theatreisation is one of my tasks, to create joint theatre commands. We are almost there. Post Operation Sindoor, we wanted certain lessons to be incorporated, especially with regard to higher defence organisations,” General Chauhan said during a fireside chat with Editior-in-Chief, Nitin A. Gokhale on ‘Technology’s Role in India’s National Security’.
When asked for a timeline, he said the ‘ government has given me extension till May 2026. The effort is to complete the process before that.’
Author, thought leader and one of South Asia's leading strategic analysts, Nitin A. Gokhale has forty years of rich and varied experience behind him as a conflict reporter, Editor, author and now a media entrepreneur who owns and curates two important digital platforms, BharatShakti.in and StratNewsGlobal.com focusing on national security, strategic affairs and foreign policy matters.
At the beginning of his long and distinguished career, Gokhale has lived and reported from India’s North-east for 23 years, writing and analysing various insurgencies in the region, been on the ground at Kargil in the summer of 1999 during the India-Pakistan war, and also brought live reports from Sri Lanka’s Eelam War IV between 2006-2009.
Author of over a dozen books on wars, insurgencies and conflicts, Gokhale relocated to Delhi in 2006, was Security and Strategic Affairs Editor at NDTV, a leading Indian broadcaster for nine years, before launching in 2015 his own digital properties.
An alumni of the Asia-Pacific Centre for Security Studies in Hawaii, Gokhale now writes, lectures and analyses security and strategic matters in Indo-Pacific and travels regularly to US, Europe, South and South-East Asia to speak at various international seminars and conferences.
Gokhale also teaches at India’s Defence Services Staff College (DSSC), the three war colleges, India's National Defence College, College of Defence Management and the intelligence schools of both the R&AW and Intelligence Bureau.
He tweets at @nitingokhale
