Operation Sindoor model will not work in future wars. India must not delay theaterisation

Chief of Army Staff General Upendra Dwivedi, Air Chief Marshal AP Singh, and Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Dinesh Kumar Tripathi | Photo: Praveen Jain | ThePrint

India’s armed forces stand at a crossroads. For the first time since Independence, the question of how the military fights is up for redesign. At stake is whether India remains locked in service silos or reorganises into integrated theatre commands capable of fighting a multi-front, multi-domain, and possibly prolonged war.

The Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), General Anil Chauhan, has described theatre commands as the “next orbit” of jointness. The Chief of the Air Staff (CAS), Air Chief Marshal AP Singh, has urged caution. Speaking at Ran Samvad in Mhow, Madhya Pradesh, last month, he argued that while joint planning and coordination are desirable, there is no need for new structures as theatre commands.

He added: “We cannot pick theatre command structures from the US or China. We have to think what we need here”. Instead, he proposed a Joint Planning and Coordination Centre (JPCC) in Delhi under the Chiefs of Staff Committee, offering centralised planning with decentralised execution while preserving core competencies.

Air Marshal Raghunath Nambiar (retd), in his essay ‘One Sky, One Force‘, warned that splitting the IAF’s 29 squadrons into theatres would be like “breaking a finely honed sword into three pieces.” The metaphor is striking but misleading. The IAF already functions through five operational commands under Air Officers Commanding-in-Chief, with squadrons routinely attached and detached to different commands as required. Theaterisation would not “break the sword” but embed air power under an Air Component Commander in each theatre, as already practised in the Andaman and Nicobar Command.

The debate has spilled into the public domain where commentators such as Force Magazine editor Pravin Sawhney have amplified the Air Force’s scepticism, arguing that theaterisation risks blunting air power, confusing domains, and imposing alien models. These anxieties deserve respect, but they must be weighed against history, doctrine, and India’s operational realities.

India already has integration mechanisms in Delhi, the Chiefs of Staff Committee (COSC), Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff (HQ IDS), and the CDS. These bodies coordinate planning and procurement, but they do not command forces in battle. Operational control still rests with the service chiefs. Commanders-in-Chief (CINCs) in the field, who are the top-level operational commanders in the Indian system, issue orders to the forces under their command. The result is that unity exists at the very top, but not in the midst of operations. If all-service joint planning is confined to Delhi, inter-service unity exists only at the staff level, not at the level of the commander who must fight the battle. This is the structural gap that theaterisation seeks to address.

Strategy, operations, and tactics

Wars can be usually understood through a typical three-level framework. At the strategic level, the government sets the political aim, such as restoring a border or deterring an adversary. At the operational level, senior military commanders design campaigns that link multiple battles so that cumulative tactical actions contribute to the strategic aim. At the tactical level, battles are fought by units on the ground, at sea, or in the air.

This framework is not just analytical but also organisational. It is a management tool that ensures political intent at the top is translated all the way down to the frontline. Strategic aims are first expressed as directives, then shaped into operational designs at the campaign level, and finally issued as tactical orders on the ground. Its value lies in coherence: tactical actions by dispersed units are fused into campaigns that advance national objectives, rather than drifting into disconnected battles. In practice, it is about coordinating disparate pieces across geographical boundaries and domains into a single whole.

During the Kargil War in 1999, the strategic aim was to evict intruders and restore the Line of Control. Initially, the operational design was Army-centric. The Air Force was brought in only later, once political approval came and after ground battles had begun. That delay revealed the weakness of a fragmented design: tactical brilliance at Tololing or Tiger Hill mattered, but without timely integration of air power, the campaign took longer and cost more lives.

The role of the Air Officer Commanding (AOC), J&K during Kargil is illustrative. Air Vice Marshal (later Air Marshal) Narayan ‘Nana’ Menon coordinated air support for Army formations in the valley among HQ Northern Command, HQ Western Air Command, and Air HQ in Delhi. Instead of one commander fusing Army and Air combat power in real time, coordination had to pass through parallel chains. This slowed decision-making and delayed the application of air power where it was most needed.

The structures that facilitate such coordination are precisely what is under debate today. Current arrangements are not designed for efficiency or effectiveness; they generate cooperation by negotiation rather than by command. Theaterisation seeks to correct this gap by vesting a single commander with authority to align land, air, maritime, and emerging domains of modern warfare within a theatre. Its purpose is to ensure that tactical actions, however dispersed, are fused into coherent campaigns that serve national objectives.

Unity of command is as old as war itself. But the ability to fuse dispersed battles into a campaign plan, what we today call the operational level of war, was institutionalised in Prussia after the Battle of Jena (1806) under Scharnhorst’s reforms, and perfected by Helmuth von Moltke. Modern military doctrine and staff systems worldwide descend from this tradition.

In India, the operational level was only formally introduced into professional military education in the 2000s. By then, many of today’s senior leaders had risen without systematic exposure to its nuts and bolts. They encountered the ideas at the Higher Command Course or at the National Defence College, but not through repeated doctrinal drill. This educational lag helps explain why debates today so often reduce to metaphors and turf anxieties, rather than grounded discussion of command architecture and campaign design.

Doctrinal boundaries

Modern military doctrine draws clear boundaries. Directives are issued by the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), setting political intent, limits, and objectives; Operational instructions are issued by the CDS or service chiefs, translating directives into broad priorities; Operational orders are the responsibility of the commander in theatre, derived from his own Commander’s Estimate.

The Commander’s Estimate, central to modern operational art, is itself a relatively recent addition to Indian staff procedures. For decades, officers were trained in tactical appreciation, a method suited for battles but not for campaigns. It was only in the 2000s that the Estimate, with its focus on aligning dispersed forces to strategic intent, began to feature in Indian professional military education. By then, many of today’s senior leaders had already risen without systematic exposure to it. This gap explains why operational design often compresses into Delhi-level instructions and why the Estimate has yet to take root as the doctrinal safeguard it is meant to be.

Theaterisation is meant to restore that missing space. It would give operational commanders both the authority and the responsibility to prepare their own Estimates and issue operational orders, rather than leaving campaign design to service chiefs in Delhi. Most importantly, it would resource the operational commander with the forces and assets allotted to him, so that he can prosecute an all-services, all-arms, all-domain battle without having to look back to Delhi for constant support.

A model with limits

In May 2025, after the Pahalgam massacre, India launched calibrated air and missile strikes on nine terrorist sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Operation Sindoor was concise, targeted, and aimed at an adversary with few options.

The operation succeeded because the CDS, service chiefs, and the Cabinet Committee on Security under the Prime Minister achieved a forced synchronisation of thought. Operational direction appears to have flowed from Delhi straight to the commands, compressing the doctrinal boundary that should separate staff-level instructions from theatre-level orders. Visible naval deployments in the Arabian Sea and Army posturing along the LoC added deterrent weight, giving the operation a combined character.

This was unity by personality and circumstance, not by statute. It worked for a short and tightly defined campaign. The very fact that the service chiefs were in the ‘operational loop’ reflected doctrinal compression: a workaround that produced speed at the cost of resilience. In a larger war, simultaneity across Ladakh, Arunachal Pradesh, and the Bay of Bengal would overwhelm such a Delhi-centric system. Forced harmony cannot substitute for institutional unity of command.

The model functioned for four days against Pakistan only because the objectives were narrow and the target sets were limited. It would not have sustained a full-fledged war, nor would it have endured weeks of simultaneous pressure from both China and Pakistan. The CAS issuing operational orders directly to CINCs cannot be evidence of institutional strength, but instead a doctrinal shortfall. War is not a staff college exercise. Battles are messy, losses mount, and the fog of war thickens. The safeguard is not temperament at the top but resilient institutions rooted in unity of command.

The Sawhney critique

Pravin Sawhney underscores real anxieties. He highlights the strategy–operations–tactics divide and cautions against jargon inflation: ‘multi-domain operations’, ‘informatised warfare’, ‘AI war’. He is right to warn that such terms are often used loosely in Indian discourse.

However, his analysis has several missteps. He conflates doctrine with organisation, treating coordination and theatre commands as mutually exclusive. He argues that cyber and space are merely multipliers, not distinct domains, unless contested by a peer. In fact, domains are defined by the medium of action and the need for dedicated command, not by whether parity exists. He treats platform speed as the test of which service should lead, ignoring that leadership at the operational level is about integration of effects, not velocity. He suggests India must build capabilities first and reform command later. In truth, unity of command is itself a capability. Theatre command reform is, in itself, a strategy. It is designed to ensure scarce resources are concentrated at decisive points. Waiting for abundance before reform is self-defeating, because unity of command is precisely what allows scarcity to be managed.

Lessons from history

History punishes disunity. At the Battle of Midway in 1942, Japan’s divided air and naval commands produced disaster. In North Africa the same year, US land-based and naval aviation clashed until General Dwight D Eisenhower imposed a single air commander. In the Falklands in 1982, Admiral Sandy Woodward’s unified control of both carrier aviation and RAF Harriers proved decisive, while Argentina’s fractured command was costly.

Marshal of the RAF Arthur Tedder, General Eisenhower’s deputy during the invasion of Normandy, consistently warned that unity of command was not optional. In his 1947 Lees Knowles Lectures, later published as Air Power in War, he argued that air power, and indeed any power, is wasted unless air, land, and sea are brought together under one commander in a single campaign design (also see General William W Momyer’s Air Power in Three Wars, USAF, 1978).

Britain institutionalised that lesson with the Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ) in 1996. China and Russia have done so with theatre commands. India remains the outlier.

Why the issue must not be deferred

Resistance to theaterisation is not only about doctrine; it is about authority, careers, and billets. The fear that one service, particularly the Army, might dominate postings is rarely voiced but deeply felt. Yet history shows reforms succeed only when political leadership enforces them. The Goldwater–Nichols reforms of 1986 in the US were imposed over service objections. India’s own Kargil Review Committee (1999), Group of Ministers (2000), and Naresh Chandra Task Force (2011) each identified the same ailment and prescribed theatre commands. The cure was deferred.

The way forward

General Henry H ‘Hap’ Arnold, the first five-star US Air Force officer, emphasised that unity of command alone is not enough; unity of planning, procurement, and doctrine is equally essential. This principle reflects his conviction that for air power to be effective, it must be integrated comprehensively under both structural and doctrinal alignment.

India’s answer lies in a hybrid model. Strategic missions, nuclear deterrence, long-range strike, and deep interdiction can be maintained under a national air command. Tactical air for close support, air defence, and surveillance should be embedded in theatres under Air Component Commanders. Chiefs would generate forces and set priorities. Theatre commanders would conduct Estimates and issue orders. Political leaders would give directives.

Such clarity would restore doctrinal boundaries and ensure that the unity of command principle endures by design, not by chance. Operation Sindoor showed that harmony can deliver success for four days. However, the next war could require unity across multiple fronts and weeks. Theaterisation is not about copying the US or China. It is about understanding why all major militaries do it, learning from the Red Army theory, and fixing India’s own doctrinal gap.

India cannot afford to delay the reform that makes that possible.

The author is a former Flag Officer Naval Aviation, Chief of Staff at the integrated HQ Andaman and Nicobar Command, and Chief Instructor (Navy) at DSSC Wellington. He tweets @sudhirpillai__

Views are personal.

(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)