New Delhi: The Indian Army, Navy and Air Force will finalise the contours of Integrated Theatre Commands by the end of this month and take it to the government for further action, Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan said Thursday.
Speaking at the India Defence Conclave 2024 in Delhi, he said that the armed forces are looking at the completion of the planning process before the superannuation of Chief of Air Staff (CAS) Air Chief Marshal V.R. Chaudhari on 30 September, implying that the blueprint for theatrisation will have to be completed within the next 10 days.
CDS General Chauhan said, “Over a period of two years or 18 months, we were able to iron out most of our differences—80 to 90 percent. Some did remain. Then, of course, there was a gap because two chiefs retired—General Manoj Pande (former Army chief) and Admiral Hari Kumar (former Navy chief).”
The Army and Navy have two new chiefs and the Air Force chief is also set to retire. “But we hope to fix everything before he leaves and mostly, largely, we have been able to do that. So, we are ready. The thing is that we have got to take it to the government and various other instruments like Raksha Mantri, MoD (Ministry of Defence), NSCS (National Security Council Secretariat), CabSec (Cabinet Secretariat),” General Chauhan said.
However, he added he was not sure how long that would take. Inter-ministerial consultation is a key factor with respect to establishment of theatre commands.
The ambitious reform of theatrisation is aimed at enhancing the cooperation and synergy among the military services.
About the need for jointness, he said that the idea was to promote it in various aspects amongst the three military services. “It does not mean that jointness did not exist amongst us. We are now trying to get jointness at a different level altogether. All of this for operational efficiency, administrative efficiency and HR issues.”
Jointness lies in the cognitive domain, he said. “While it is intangible, it leads to a physical process of integration.”
Major verticals that will see jointness would be Operations, Operations Logistics, Training, Intelligence, Communication and IT, Maintenance and Support, HR, Legal and Administrative Issues.
General Chauhan explained that there is a list of 180 tasks that will have to be completed in the next few years, such as getting the networks and air defence networks together to speak to each other to command and control, and cross service postings.” According to the CDS, the services have completed work on nearly 40-45 of them.
Through theatre commands, the services are trying to separate “force generation” from “force application”. General Chauhan said, “Structures which we create should be able to take care of our immediate threats and long-term challenges.”
Operational efficiency, logistics and HR are the three main factors that the armed forces are looking at through theatrisation, the CDS said. The services are following three main processes of “restructuring, optimisation and delayering” to form the theatre commands.
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