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The Indian Army’s Southern Army Command is not just the biggest but also the oldest Command of the force. It covers 41% of the Indian landmass, 11 States, and four Union Territories. The Command hosts a large number of training establishments too. In a way, Southern Command is the Indian Army’s training hub.
The Southern Command also has a large and varied border to guard. There are built-up areas, the Rann, coastal areas, disputed areas, and areas where the borders have not been resolved as yet. The entire border’s length runs to about 1100 km. The varied borders pose different challenges that have to be handled differently. Two Indian Naval commands also reside in its area, making joint planning an imperative. In an interview with Editor-in-Chief Nitin A. Gokhale, Lt Gen AK Singh, Southern Army Commander, speaks about how troops under him prepare for all contingencies, knowing fully well that there are no runners-up in war.
As he says, the Army must be fully prepared to take on conventional challenges, even while absorbing technology to fight in all domains. Tri-services exercises are run based on plans evolved jointly by all three services, as was done recently. In one of the largest exercises ever, equipment failure was rare, a very heartening situation, Lt Gen Singh pointed out. Watch the full interview conducted at the Army War Memorial in Pune at the Southern Command Headquarters.
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
