Unified theatre command: Why Army and Navy support it, while Air Force is hesitant

In his Independence Day address in 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said India will soon have a chief of defence staff as its highest ranking officer in the armed forces. The decision, Modi said, was in sync with the changing nature of war and security strategies worldwide.

In January 2020, Gen Bipin Rawat took over as the first CDS. He promptly began brainstorming on how to streamline coordination between the Army, the Navy and the Air Force. After months of such efforts, the military is now preparing to implement its biggest-ever reforms—reorganising itself into theatre commands for synchronised operations in future wars. Much like the US and China, India plans to have five such commands by the end of 2022—the northern, western, peninsular, air defence and maritime commands.

These commands will have specialised units from the Army, Navy, and Air Force, and will be led by commanders drawn from the three services, depending on the function of the command. A high-level panel including vice chiefs of the three services and representatives from the ministries of finance, home affairs and law was recently constituted for wider consultation before the cabinet committee on security approves the reforms.

The Indian military functions under 17 single-service commands now. The three services, Rawat believes, discharge their duties with a marked lack of operational synergy. For instance, while India has eight commands focusing on the China front, it has just one unified command—the western theatre command, tasked with guarding its border with India.

The proposal to set up unified commands was first proposed after the Kargil war. But the three services initially feared that such a reform would lead to complicated turf wars. A former IAF chief had said that the theatre commands would increase expenditure without ensuring commensurate returns. The Air Force, which has limited assets, was also concerned that the Army will come to dominate military strategy. “The Army is huge—1.14 million soldiers—and it tends to dominate every aspect of national defence, as other two services have fewer numbers,” said an air marshal. While the Army and the Navy are in favour of theatre commands, the Air Force has differences over the division of assets.

But in 2019, prodded by the government perhaps, the three service chiefs wrote to the defence ministry demanding an integrated system for coordination, paving the way for theatre commands. Navy chief Admiral Karambir Singh recently said the nature of war had changed and that it was important to engage all adversaries in all domains—land, sea, air, space and cyberspace. “The jointness among the three services is far more important than ever,” said Singh.

Incidentally, Karambir Singh, Army chief Gen M.M. Naravane and IAF chief Air Chief Marshal R.K.S. Bhadauria were all batch-mates in the National Defence Academy. A rare coincidence that perhaps resulted in a consensus among the forces.

In May, Vice Admiral G. Ashok Kumar submitted to Rawat his report on the setting up of the maritime command. According to the document, the existing fleet of the Western and Eastern Naval Commands will come under the new command, along with the Andaman and Nicobar Command. Two brigades of the Army (the Thiruvananthapuram-based 91 Brigade and the Port Blair-based 108 Mountain Brigade), two squadrons of maritime strike jets (such as Sukhoi-30 and Jaguars of the Air Force), and assets of the Southern Air Command will give additional support to launch amphibious operations. The maritime command will be based in Karwar, India’s biggest naval base.

The proposed air defence command at Prayagraj will have air assets of all three services, apart from land-based missile defence systems like S400. Apart from multi-role fighters of the Air Force, the command will control anti-aircraft missiles and air defence guns of the Army and the Navy. The chief of the unified command will be the senior-most three-star officer of the Air Force.

Some officers have pointed out a problem: that the Air Force inventory is dominated by multirole aircraft like Mirage, MiG 29, Sukhoi and the newly inducted Rafale, which are capable of both dropping bombs and shooting down enemy aircraft. “If we put half of them in air defence and half of them in attack, we have lost out 50 per cent of assets to an air defence command,” said an officer.

The Pakistan-centric western theatre command will stretch from Gujarat to Indira Col in the Siachen Glacier. The China-specific northern theatre command will cover the entire 3,488km of the Line of Actual Control, starting from the icy heights of Ladakh to Kibithu, Arunachal Pradesh. It is expected to be headquartered in Lucknow. Since these will be land commands, they are expected to be headed by senior-most lieutenant generals of the Army. The peninsular command, tasked with guarding south India and the Indian Ocean region, is likely to be headquartered in Thiruvananthapuram.

“To deter the adversary, you need to demonstrate a capability that is complex and integrated. Therefore, we require the joint operation philosophy,” said Air Marshal (retd) M. Matheswaran, former deputy chief of the Integrated Defence Staff. “If you want to be a great power, there should be an element of power projection. Theatre commands will give India the ability to project power.”

Lt Gen (retd) Mohinder Puri, former deputy chief of the Army, said theatre commands are the first step towards a “higher direction” of war. “Such commands are very essential, as all powerful militaries have it,” he said. “Administrative modalities can be worked at a later stage.”

Puri, however, remains unconvinced about the relevance of the air defence command, since the IAF is already short of assets. “We don’t have the luxury of having a large air force that can meet both centralised and theatre requirements,” he said. “A bit of jugglery might be needed for creating the air defence command.”