The Indian Army recently initiated its most consequential organisational restructuring in decades by raising the first Integrated Battle Groups within the China-facing XVII Mountain Strike Corps. Leaner and faster than traditional divisions, IBGs integrate infantry, mechanised infantry, armour, artillery, air defence, engineers, and signals into mission-tailored formations supported by a dedicated corps-level Fire Support Group.
However, this restructuring has manifested in a drastically altered operational environment where pervasive drone surveillance, cyber and electronic warfare, and long-range precision fires expand battlefield depth under an information contest overhang.
Recent conflicts reveal an organisational paradox: tactical formations must shrink and disperse to survive, yet the headquarters required to integrate them are increasingly critical.
This raises a fundamental question: at what level or echelon should an army integrate the growing capabilities demanded by modern warfare? The answer depends on integration requirements and campaign functions rather than terrain or the adversary alone. While an IBG-corps structure suits a short, swift, escalation-sensitive campaign against Pakistan, contemporary battlefield dynamics on the China front strongly favour retaining a divisional headquarters above the Integrated Battle Groups.
Meaning of velocity
The Integrated Battle Groups concept directly tackles structural flaws exposed during Operation Parakram in 2001, where mobilising and assembling strike formations took nearly three weeks. This restricted diplomatic space for action and political momentum was lost. While subsequent doctrines like “Cold Start” sought to accelerate response times, the foundational challenge remained: shortening mobilisation and enhancing integration. IBGs resolve this by combining arms in advance, allowing formations to mobilise from higher readiness prior to a crisis, even as diplomacy and general mobilisation continue.
Yet, as time passed, the definition of velocity has expanded. It no longer means merely moving a formation quickly into battle; it means detecting, deciding, and striking faster than the adversary while surviving their counter-actions. Modern land warfare requires a force to disperse physically to survive, while integrating functionally to win. A headquarters must now also allocate scarce surveillance assets, coordinate electronic attacks, manage crowded airspace, and link tactical reconnaissance to operational fires. Because institutional decision cycles span years while battlefield adaptation cycles move in months, the command architecture surrounding the IBG must be continuously evaluated even after adoption.
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Lessons from global conflicts
Other major militaries are actively confronting this integration challenge. Russia’s Battalion Tactical Groups suffered severe infantry shortages and proved brittle in sustained war, forcing Moscow to rebuild traditional regimental and divisional structures.
The lesson is clear: the size of the tactical action element and the size of the integrating headquarters do not necessarily match. Meanwhile, the US Army’s Army 2030 Initiative restores the division as its primary tactical unit for multidomain operations to integrate capabilities across land, air, sea, space, and cyberspace.
Ukraine, having fought initially with independent brigades coordinated by temporary groupings, is now raising permanent corps structures.
These different paths converge on a single conclusion: removing an echelon does not eliminate the requirement for integration. This merely transfers that immense staff and coordination efforts elsewhere, thereby leaving armies to determine at what echelon capabilities can be fused without overwhelming the headquarters.
Divergent fronts
India faces this organisational dilemma on two distinct fronts, as its adversaries present different operational challenges.
Against Pakistan, the central problem is compression. The campaign paradigm is deliberately short and shallow, aiming to seize limited objectives within days under intense diplomatic and nuclear pressures. In this compressed space, a flat IBG-corps architecture is highly suitable, as a corps headquarters can directly command its IBGs while agilely orchestrating reserves and operational fires.
The China front, however, demands complex orchestration. The Line of Actual Control runs across vast, separated axes where lateral movement is restricted. Duplicating high-end surveillance, electronic warfare, aviation, and specialised logistics across every individual formation is economically and logistically unfeasible. While an Integrated Battle Group suits the opening phase of a mountain offensive where operations are canalised along roads and valleys, command-and-control becomes exponentially more complex as the offensive develops. If one Integrated Battle Group succeeds while another is stalled, fires shift, engineers are reallocated, air defence is reprioritised, and logistics follow success rather than the original plan.
The staff work essential to cater for geographical dispersion, the diversity of supporting capabilities, the frequency of resource shifting, and the degree of joint integration required, is enormous. Five formations on a connected frontage with organic capabilities are one command problem. Five formations dispersed across separate mountain axes, competing for scarce surveillance, fires, electronic warfare, air defence, and aviation, are another. The China front is where multi-domain operations need upward coordination, since space, cyber, electromagnetic and deep-fires capabilities are present above the corps level.
The theatreisation proposal before the government would make a Northern Theatre Command the level at which joint and national effects are allocated. This creates a demanding new interface for the corps to manage. A theatre headquarters may allocate effects, but a formation still has to integrate them.
The comparison across the frontier is highly instructive: the PLA Western Theatre commander exercises direct command over rocket force, cyberspace, aerospace, and information support elements, while his Indian counterpart needs to coordinate for effects held by tri-service agencies and national authorities. Multi-domain operations burden the corps headquarters at the top of its responsibilities precisely when the IBG structure adds direct tactical responsibilities at the bottom.
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The vulnerability of footprints
Expanding a corps headquarters to absorb these tactical responsibilities increases its physical and electronic footprint. The accumulation of additional staff, communication nodes, and data systems creates a dense electromagnetic emission that is highly vulnerable, as per a US study, to modern detection and precision strikes.
Because PLA operational doctrine explicitly prioritises degrading an adversary’s command and sensing networks over destroying its combat mass, disabling this single bloated corps node would instantly isolate every IBG on the front. Dispersing the headquarters into smaller nodes mitigates the physical threat but strains the underlying communication networks.
Case for a redesigned division
The division resolves both challenges and need not resemble its traditional, slow form. Designed as a lean, mobile, and disciplined battle-integration headquarters, it would command two or three IBGs, integrate the close and intermediate fight across related axes, and fuse tactical intelligence and fires while coordinating electronic warfare, air defence, engineering, and logistics. It would effectively shield the corps from day-to-day tactical management. The corps is then freed to fight the operational campaign: orchestrating the main effort, the deep battle, the Fire Support Group, joint integration, reserves, and coordinating multi-domain operations with the theatre headquarters.
Smaller manoeuvre formations and intermediate headquarters are complementary rather than contradictory; the former provides tactical agility, while the latter provides operational coherence. Publicly available details differ on whether the XVII Mountain Strike Corps comprises four or five IBGs, though they confirm that a separate Fire Support Group is grouped directly under corps headquarters. While the internal structuring of that headquarters remains undisclosed, it is feasible for a redesigned corps headquarters with specialist staff and robust data architecture to undertake these new responsibilities, a proposition to be rigorously tested through simulation and exercise.
Should echelon design be based on integration needs and campaign function? What is the lowest echelon capable of integrating the capabilities a particular theatre requires without becoming overloaded?
The theatreisation debate and the echelon debate are one question posed at different levels, namely the level at which integration should be effective. By this logic, the case for retaining the division on the China front is now stronger than the case for removing it. The complexities of modern conflict are pushing integration upward, while survivability pushes headquarters functions outward into distributed nodes. The division is placed naturally between those two pressures, ensuring that an army building leaner teeth also retains the headquarters required to command them.
Brigadier Anil Raman (retd) is a Research Fellow at The Takshashila Institution. He tweets @8Gorkhascholar. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)