By Ajai Shukla
The Wire, 16th Jan 2026
Addressing the nation on Independence Day 2019 from the ramparts of New Delhi’s Red Fort, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced the creation of a chief of defence staff (CDS), the military’s senior-most general who was to ensure that the three services – the army, navy and air force – would function with greater coordination. Six years later today, Mr Modi has still to take the logical next step: to announce the creation of tri-service, integrated theatre commands (ITCs). This reorganisation is anticipated to be the most consequential reform measure in the centuries-old history of India’s 1.5 million-strong military.
What does implementing ITC involve? Currently, the three services are divided into 17 single-service commands, each functioning in its own silo and pursuing often uncoordinated aims and objectives. In the proposed structure, this multiplicity of commands will be divided into six-to-seven unified, tri-service structures, each headed by a single commander, who will be allocated all the military assets he needs – including army, navy and air force assets and personnel – to achieve clear-cut military objectives spelt out by his political boss, the defence minister.
Three of the proposed ITCs are to be structured on a geographical basis, with another three-to-four structured on a functional basis. The geographical ITCs will include, first, the Northern Theatre Command (NTC), responsible for the Sino-Indian border from the Karakoram Pass in Ladakh to Kibithu at the eastern tip of Arunachal Pradesh. The second geographical command will be the Western Theatre Command (WTC), responsible for the Indo-Pakistan border from Gujarat to Siachen; and the third geographical structure will be the Maritime Theatre Command (MTC), looking after the entire Indian peninsula from its headquarters in Karwar, Karnataka. It is largely agreed that an army general should be given command of the NTC, which faces China, the gravest threat; an air force marshal be placed at the head of the WTC that faces Pakistan; and a navy admiral be given charge of India’s 7,500-kilometre coastline and the vast oceanic expanse beyond.
The functional commands will include the Strategic Forces Command (SFC), which operates India’s nuclear arsenal; the National Air Defence Command (NADC) that will be responsible for protecting India’s airspace, and the Special Forces Command (SFC) that will oversee commando units and clandestine operations.
The government allocated the vital task of implementing the new ITCs to the general they trusted the most: the army chief, General Bipin Rawat. He was elevated on January 1, 2020, to be the first CDS but fate intervened two years later with his tragic death in a helicopter crash. In the 5 years since then much work has been done, but the most crucial question remains unanswered: Who will the ITC commanders answer to in wartime? Will their boss be an empowered CDS, who will directly control combat operations? Or will they report to a Defence Council – an unwieldy committee, headed by the defence minister and populated by bureaucrats, diplomats and technocrats many of whom have only a limited knowledge of military operations.
The government, keenly aware of its paucity of expertise in running wars, is inclined to have the CDS function as a single-point operational commander. With future conflicts expected to be localised and sectoral, combat platforms, equipment and even personnel would have to be shared and transferred when required from dormant areas to active ones. Rather than leaving such decisions to the long-winded, bureaucratic procedures of a Defence Council, it would be better if the CDS exercised operational control, with the Integrated Defence Staff (IDS) functioning as his secretariat.
This juggling of roles and operational responsibilities would require major changes in the country’s civil-military structures and functional style. With the army’s Directorate General of Military Operations (DGMO) and its naval and air force counterparts playing joint roles in running the war, tri-service coordination would gain emphasis. The war would be run from a tri-service operations room, with a three-star general from each of the three services responsible for his service vertical.
The greatest diminishment of powers would be those of the three service chiefs, whose roles would be circumscribed to recruiting, training and equipping the combat elements of their respective services. However, as with all revolutionary change, resistance by those who perceive themselves as losers cannot be allowed to block an increase in effectiveness of the organisation as a whole.
In reorganising the US military, so vicious were the inter-service rivalries, as was evident from communication failures during the Vietnam war and the 1980 Iran hostage rescue fiasco, that the US government and the Congress had to legally enforce jointness within the military.
This took the form of the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 (hereafter “the Act”), which enunciated the clearest of objectives. Its preamble stipulated that it was intended to “strengthen civilian authority in the Department of Defence and to improve the military advice provided to the President, the National Security Council (NSC) and the Secretary of Defense”. The Act was also “to place clear responsibility on the commanders of the unified and specified combatant commands for the accomplishment of missions assigned to those commands”. The Act was also “to increase attention to the formulation of strategy and to contingency planning”; to “provide for more efficient use of defence resources”; “to improve joint officer management policies”, and to “enhance the effectiveness of military operations”
It has already been seen that India’s military is deeply divided on several aspects of integrated command. What remains to be seen is whether these differences can be resolved through amicable dialogue or whether India’s parliament will have to come up with our own Goldwater-Nichols.
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