As the world ushers in 2025, the Indian military is poised to enter a crucial phase in its journey towards rolling out joint theatre commands. After two years of intense and across-the-board consultations, the military brass is now looking to take the first steps in implementing the plan.
In doing so, the three services, at the initiative of India’s second Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Gen Anil Chauhan, identified nearly 200 subjects that needed to be finalised in the run-up to getting the operationally ready Theaters. Top military sources said most of these building blocks required to ensure enhanced combat capacity and capability have been curated for efficient jointness and integration among the three-armed forces. A few outstanding issues are in the process of being finalised before the Theaterisation is announced, they added.
According to the aforementioned sources, to speed up the process of inculcating jointness and integration, the military leadership first identified eight key domains: Operations and intelligence, Operational Logistics, Capability Development, Communications and Info Tech, Training, Maintenance and Support Services, Human Resources, and Administrative and legal aspects.
Then, throughout 2023 and 2024, several teams drawn from the three services worked on creating structures to support and boost the functioning of these common domains. Cross-posting of junior and middle-level officers took place in crucial verticals to empower them to get used to functioning in tri-service structures. Many small steps, such as a common format for drawing up their annual reports and uniform disciplinary rules and regulations, have also been adopted.
As reported on this platform earlier, Gen Chauhan and the three Service Chiefs have hammered out the first draft—a ‘basic document’ to achieve jointness and integration of the three services. Over the past six months, two extensive briefings have also been carried out by the CDS and his Service chief colleagues to Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and National Security Adviser (NSA) Ajit Doval separately. A final briefing to the Prime Minister is likely to take place in early 2025 before the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) presents the eventual plan, sources said.
As is well known, a major step towards creating joint theatre commands was taken in 2019, and the late Gen Bipin Rawat was appointed India’s first CDS in January 2020. His death in a helicopter accident in December 2021 set the process back a bit, but since October 2022, when Gen Chauhan succeeded Gen Rawat, a consensus-based approach has marked India’s journey towards joint theatre commands.
As Gen Chauhan told BharatShakti in October 2023: “Most importantly, I have been able to achieve a kind of consensus on macro issues between all the three Service Chiefs and myself as to what kind of roadmap or transformation we want to lay down for the armed force, and there is good synergy right now among the three services to work together.”
Theatrerisation plans were also affected by the major military standoff with China along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) starting May 2020. The Chinese aggression necessitated a deliberate slowdown so the armed forces did not rush into a hasty decision to implement the theaterisation ‘early’ without getting the structure ‘right.’
Having agreed on the basic premise of the structure, the brass felt it was necessary to inculcate the culture of jointness at every level. After the cross-posting of junior officers in service other than their own in 2023, middle and senior officers have been increasingly placed in important operational appointments under the HR reforms process since mid-2024.
As the New Year begins, the three Service Chiefs have also decided to have their Aide-de-Camp (ADC) come from a different service. So far, the Service Chiefs have not only been getting their ADCs from their service but also from the parent units. Getting their ADCs from the sister services was never attempted earlier. This decision, albeit symbolical in the eyes of many observers, is seen within the services as a clear signal to the serving military fraternity that integration and the subsequent creation of joint theatre commands is now a given.
While the detailed structures of the proposed theatre commands are still unavailable publicly, one major aspect that stands out is the consensus-based approach adopted and driven by the CDS and his team.
Why was this approach adopted?
One school of thought is unlike other major military powers—the United States, China, Russia, and France, to name just a few countries—it was clear that the decisions were top-driven (see this series on BharatShakti in 2023). Since India has a set of unique challenges in the military domain because of China and Pakistan’s unrelenting aggression on its borders, it was important to let the military leadership take the lead and evolve structures that it is comfortable with instead of issuing orders from the top.
For instance, in the US, military reform was top-driven. The government brought in the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defence Reorganisation Act of 1986, which ushered in a major transformation in the US Defence Forces. It came up with the concept of ‘Warfighting commanders’ responsible for the conduct of operations, whereas Service Chiefs were divested of operational responsibilities. They now mainly concentrate on Raise, Sustain and Train (RST) functions.
India’s primary adversary, China, adopted the theaterisation concept almost a decade ago. And yet, despite an autocratic government structure, theaterisation is still undergoing fine-tuning. Russia also utilised the autocratic power to usher these changes and is refining it further.
India, as a democracy and a country that has two live borders, needed to evolve its own system that meets the unique challenges without weakening the overall security apparatus. The next 12 months will answer whether this approach will work in the long run.
Nitin A Gokhale
