Three services are split on the decision to form joint theatre commands.
What is the issue?
The chiefs of the three defence services appeared together to issue the Joint Doctrine last month.
The three forces disagreed on the proposal to create integrated theatre commands.
The Army is in favour of the proposal, while the Air Force is strongly opposed to it.
While the Navy’s view is more nuanced, it too is not in favour of implementing the proposal currently.
What is the reason behind such spat?
The recommendations of the expert committee headed by Lt General D B Shekatkar submitted its report to Ministry of Defence and have sought the views of the three service chiefs by the end of the month.
The proposal is to create three integrated theatre commands: northern command for the China border, western command for the Pakistan border and southern command for the maritime borders.
As the borders with Pakistan and China are land-centric, it is expected that the northern and western commands would have to be headed by an Army General.
The southern command would have to be headed by a Navy Admiral.
The Army’s rationale for integrated theatre commands is based on the need to have a unified direction and control of war.
This was put forth by the Army during deliberations on the proposal at the combined commander’s conference, chaired by the Prime Minister, at Dehradun in February.
The army went with the rationale that the opposing side in China has a single command while the Indian side has seven commands of the Army and Air Force for the same task.
The need of the hour is combat efficiency and economy of resources which is considerably undermined by present separate 17 commands.
With a single commander all the military assets can be brought under him.
For e.g., on the Pakistan border, there are at least three Army commands and two Air Force commands.
India needs one integrated command, as all modern militaries have, such as the United States or even China.
But the Air Force contends that foreign examples are not applicable to the Indian situation.
“The US has global roles where it can’t move assets from one theatre to another.
India has no such problems of distance and time.
The Chinese have the theatre commands because Xi Jinping wanted to reduce the power of the PLA (Chinese military).
According to the Air Force, India should be considered as a single theatre where resources can be easily moved between various areas as required.
But with only 34 fighter squadrons instead of 45 and three AWACS and six mid-air refuellers, the problem arises on how to distribute them.
Navy’s position is that there is a need for greater jointness among the three services, but it is not appropriate to move to integrated theatre commands anytime soon.
The Navy has a much wider maritime role across the seas, where a lot of coordination between various commands is done by the naval headquarters.
If these individual commands go under different theatre commanders, these assets will not be available practically.
The diversity of views means that it will require the ministry and the government to take the lead.
But, adding to the uncertainty is the fact that Defence is scheduled to retire later this month and there is no clarity on the appointment of a full-time Defence Minister.
