Too few integrated theater commands, need for a land air command and a cutback in the role of chiefs of staff

(CDS, General Anil Chauhan, seeking blessings!)

Finally, the Modi government put an end to the smoldering resistance within the military by introducing the Inter-Services Organizations Act (ISO). I had suggested some twenty years ago to the KC Pant-chaired government committee studying reorganizations and reforms in the field of higher defense that whatever CDS/integration/jointness scheme the committee decided on, this would be done through a government diktat to the armed forces should be imposed because it would be up to the three services because of their positions to send it to the dump. But it was sent to the services and it delayed the realization of an integrated military because, simply put, the service chiefs had too much at stake, and too much to lose, not to try to do this in some way. also preventable.

Whether Modi will again allow a time gap to arise between the law and its coming into force with the actual announcement of the independent theater commands is a matter of conjecture. Hopefully there will be no foot-dragging at Services HQ, and full implementation will follow immediately.

What is not clear from the news reports: what will happen to the chiefs of staff of the services and their respective branches, and whether this most frictional issue has been resolved?

One of the main reasons why the Chief of Defense Staff system did not fully take off is that even though General Bipin Rawat was appointed the first CDS in December 2019, there was no system for him to lead – they were all Chiefs , and no Indians! The power and authority that Rawat acquired was exactly what he wanted to gain – in the early days he was assigned a single room in the basement of the South Block and virtually no staff! The CDS at the time was an accumulation of smaller roles and decision-making powers – the minimum that service chiefs felt they could dispense with while keeping most of the meaningful bureaucratic terrain for themselves, as a means of facilitating integration of the armed forces to delay or even hinder without being outright accused of delaying the process. And that was the big problem: there was no CDS system to REPLACE the individual positions of power in the army when Rawat was installed as CDS. Has that big wrinkle been ironed out?

With the (ISO) law supporting the theater initiative, the armed forces chiefs will find it harder to stop Chauhan, assuming he is driven to achieve what he has been assigned, as he now wields the whip hand.

It is reported that Chauhan has set up a slew of committees and what not, to tackle the various aspects of integration and theaterisation. That’s all fine, but it also suggests that no clear roadmap has yet been mapped out, otherwise the government would have announced it. This is bad news because it again offers elements within the old regime who hate to see major organizational changes, let alone real transformation, the time and inclination to try to use the holes in the existing system to delay the actual theaterization by obscuring things, at every bend to raise external issues and, in general, prevent rapid change. fast race to the final state.

The core of the problem is and has always been the unwillingness of the services’ chiefs of staff to give up any ground. Alone among the world’s major militaries, the Indian armed forces are still governed according to the pattern of the pre-World War II British military: strictly segregated services. This means that the service chief in India is the administrative head of the service, the planning head, the purchasing head and any other head and, the role they most covet, the operational head of the service. The separate service standard was dropped by Britain due to the demands of fighting World War II, when widespread Allied theater commands became a necessity and were quickly installed.

India has never fought a long war, and its armed forces have no idea, idea or experience of what that would entail. No conflict that India has faced since 1947 has lasted longer than twelve to thirteen days! And that is why the inefficient, wasteful and tripling of separate services persisted, because it was never really tested by sustained war fighting. In that case, the three services could get away – as far as military coherence is concerned – by arguing that the small steps taken reluctantly would get the military there, and that in any case they were not necessary, since the Air Force placed an officer in every command of the army, etc., as if that made up for anything, and certainly not the rational expenditure of manpower and financial resources in peacetime and in war. Cutting costs is apparently the main motive for the ISO; it is as good, if not better, than any other reason, as long as the purpose of integrated command is served.

But let’s keep the order right! First comes the integration under CDS, then comes the theaterization. In the media the two are often synonymous or confused.

With the ISO, CDS is now formally elevated as the sole source of military advice to the Prime Minister and Government of India, unlike the confusion faced by Prime Ministers in the past when they had to understand three service chiefs advising different matters on the same thing . subject. Hopefully it will also replace the existing farcical system where a babu, the Minister of Defense, is responsible for the security of the country! It is also reported that the 17 separate theater commands will be rationalized into three integrated operational commands: the Lucknow-based command for the Chinese front, the Jaipur command for the Pakistan front and an Oceanic Command established in Karwar. There is little else on this subject in the public sphere.

If the models of military integration in the more advanced countries are worth emulating, then integration should ensure, to the extent possible, that a theater command has combat platforms in all three media. CDS should be solely responsible for war planning, force structuring, budgetary allocation and procurement.

Moreover, for a country the size of a subcontinent, three operational commands are too few. More reasonably, the single Karwar command makes little sense, given the vast expanse of the Indian Ocean – and with the Indo-Pacific concept in mind. A more effectively divided military force would consist of two commands on the peninsula: East (Vizag) which also includes Myanmar’s land border, and West (Karwar), including the formal land border with Pakistan (up to Gurdaspur), with a smaller integrated command in Udhampur. for operations on/across the Line of Actual Control in J&K. It will reflect India’s emerging concerns that Pakistan is no more than a tertiary threat and deserves commensurate attention. That is a big change from the present, when the bulk of all military forces, to the detriment of India, are focused on Pakistan.

A third Kochi-based Southern Command would be the land-based air-heavy element, allowing two of the three aircraft carriers in which the Navy has unwisely decided to invest, to be deployed to stations in the east and west, and earn their living by deploying deep into the Indian Ocean basin in the southern tip of Western Australia and the Southeast Asian Straits – Sunda, Lombok, Malacca and Simonstown Gulf. An opponent who ventures closer to the coast can be adequately countered by land air.

As China assumes primacy as India’s main and only strategic, air, maritime and landward threat, the length of the Chinese front under one command is asking for trouble. Two of them – China Front East and China Front West with the territorial division east and west of Lucknow with headquarters as forward as possible, seem a more sensible solution given the different terrain specificities and suitable combat platforms – high altitude desert in the west, mainly mountain valleys in the east (except on the northern Sikkim plains). And the Strategic Forces Command should hopefully be retained, staffed by a specially trained nuclear cadre of officers – something the Pakistan Strategic Plans Division has done from the beginning.

In summary: 1 Strategic Forces Command, 3 Peninsular Commands, 2 land-based anti-China Commands plus the small LOC Command (for contingencies in Pakistan) and 5 support commands – Special Forces, Logistics, Cyber ​​Elite, Transport, Military Infrastructure (ascending in the Border Roads Organization), for a total of 12 integrated commands. This is a much better, more efficient and more practical use of combat and support resources.

And what should the chiefs of staff of the services do? As with most other advanced militaries, they will be administrative heads of their forces, responsible and charged with the overall facilitation of the integrated operational commands and career management of officer cadres, welfare of officers and families, affairs of retired military personnel, Agniveer program, etc.

The entire force integration undertaking will revolve around how the transition is affected, and the compensation structure and promotion program put in place to accommodate this. This will be the hardest part. To indicate the level of difficulty, how do you come up with an equalization metric to assess, for example, 6 months on a warship, 8 months in a Rashtriya Rifles counterinsurgency unit in the Srinagar Valley, and 1 month on an active ALG (advanced)? landing site) in Ladakh, with a view to promotion to the next higher rank in an integrated command?