Even as ‘Wings over Ganges’ showcased the aerobatic skills of the Tejas pilots, various high-tech aircraft enthralled crowds, and in between a show-stopping Ganga Aarti, the outgoing Chief of Air Staff reiterated his services’ opposition to the proposed distribution of combat air assets among the future tri-service commands.
This is not a new revelation but a repetition of a long-held position of the Indian Air Force, which has stalled the raising of joint theatre commands in India. Combat aircraft must be centrally controlled and deployed as per assessments of the most competent authority, i.e., HQ IAF. Contestable view, but stated with deeply held corporate conviction.
The low-hanging fruit
To be fair to the IAF’s combat pilots, it isn’t that they’re against theatre commands per se; they just believe that the allocation of fighter jets must not be piecemeal but centralised. Since the IAF leadership invariably comes from the fighter stream, this view carries a certain traction in the corridors of power. This, however, hasn’t stopped the three service headquarters from proceeding along the jointmanship path, even if it isn’t a full-fledged theatre command. As I recommended earlier, the three services have reached out to grab the low-hanging fruit of joint logistical management.
In a welcome development, the Department of Military Affairs (DMA) in the Ministry of Defence has started the process of raising an Integrated Logistics Structure to support theatre commands as and when they are established. Artificial Intelligence and machine learning are likely to be engaged in this process. Work is also reportedly underway to establish a National Defence Codification System, analogous to NATO’s stock number system. Joint logistics nodes, followed by joint ammunition depots, air stores supply parks, and material organisations are also being planned.
An in-house Tri-service Logistics Management App is also being developed to further enhance efficiency.
While various joint services working groups have been constituted to take the process forward, the DMA has made a commitment to see that “legacy financial architecture and procurement framework are being revised.”
This is, by far, the most daring of the steps being taken so far to integrate and better manage logistics at the tri-service level. Read between the lines, it signals that the bane of Indian procurement decision-making—the L1 mental block—can be jettisoned. This legacy of imperial India shackles executive decisions by sanctifying the lowest bidder, even when the bid is dodgy, dilapidated, defective, or even unrealistic.
However, this is not just an Indian ailment, at least in some aspects of military procurement. Across the democratic world, civilian management of procurement and dedicated procedures is the norm, as they make it easier to deal with probing government auditors. The same observation has been made about the world’s largest military alliance: “NATO’s procurement system prevents waste, increases interoperability, and maintains civilian oversight, which are reasonable in peacetime but cause friction when rapid adaptation is existential. Ukraine bypasses traditional acquisition through compressed decision cycles and flattened hierarchies.”
The commentator’s context was NATO Exercise Hedgehog 2025, which, interestingly, has vital lessons for India. In May 2025, NATO conducted a multinational exercise to simulate an attack on Estonia’s eastern border, aka a Russian incursion.
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What India can learn from NATO’s drone warfare
Ten Ukrainian drone operators with frontline experience from the war against Russia decimated a NATO armoured force centred on a British Army brigade and an Estonian rifle battalion. Clearly, NATO doctrines have yet to cater to or account adequately for drone warfare. But an important lesson for India’s DMA can be how alliance logistics took a beating during simulated combat. Integrated and centralised logistics management proved to be a capability of a bygone era in the face of a virtually instantaneous kill chain.
This means the entire gamut of logistics, from medical sustenance and spares to fuel and ammunition, is vulnerable to identification and elimination because of low-cost drones hovering overhead. Taking logistics out of the equation means that even the best-planned operations, simulated or real, can grind to an instant halt. Cheap drones can help identify the vulnerable non-combat logistics echelons in near real time, and neutralise them in the shortest kill-chain window.
‘Logistics can no longer function as a rear-echelon activity assumed to be insulated from direct threat…with sensors…real-time decision cycles.’
As the Indian armed forces foray into new logistical organisational territory, the recurring lessons from contemporary conflict, and incontestable for the future, can be encapsulated as ‘cognitive overload and logistical friction’.
So, it isn’t just ‘legacy financial architecture’ that needs revision but the very construct of logistics nodes as proposed. For mass isn’t sustainable when eyes and ears are all over the skies, and many carry enough firepower to degrade a logistics node.
The dates 16-17 June 1999 are largely forgotten, but that was when India destroyed the Pakistani logistics hub at Munthu-Dhalo, thereby effectively starving their positions on Kargil peaks.
The handful of Ukrainian drone operators who halted a brigade were using their domestically made Delta Battlefield Management System, which effectively exposed ‘NATO’s supply chains and operational sustainment’.
As it aids combat units with target acquisition, Delta also enables field commanders to ‘leverage its real-time data network to automate, track, and streamline supply chains for frontline military units…critical equipment, ammunition, fuel, and medical supplies reach the right coordinates exactly when needed’.
In India, the Tri-service Logistics Management App may serve certain regional roles, but it is worth looking at NATO Ex Hedgehog 2025 for lessons not taught here yet.
Manvendra Singh is a BJP leader, Editor-in-Chief of Defence & Security Alert and Chairman, Soldier Welfare Advisory Committee, Rajasthan. He tweets @ManvendraJasol. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)