INDIAN MILITARY THEATER COMMANDS - FUTURE

Jointness at the top is a need that is long overdue.

But Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) is just the beginning. At present there are 19 total commands in Indian Defence Forces including the two tri-services commands as below:

1. Strategic forces 

2. Andaman & Nicobar

Rest of the India and military is handled by the Army, Air Force and Navy operating as separate entities and the operations are executed independent of each other, at least in peace time.

Normally there are three broad situations in which the military operates:

1. Peace - One can at least dream about it.

2. Constant warfare - Small scale conflicts and skirmishes as in the present situation of 2020.

3. Full scale war - Law of averages making it more and more possible.

 

Indian history started with full scale war with Pakistan, followed by brief peace, more wars and now constant warfare situation with both China and Pakistan.

This has made creating and optimizing the theater commands a necessity as logistics becomes difficult to satisfy operations for Army, Air Force and Navy separately. The capability to start or respond to a conventional war must be maintained and upgraded vis-a-vis enemy in all the three situations. With future wars expected to be disruptive and blitzkrieg being the guiding word, it is imperative the response time should be in minutes if not in seconds. That cannot happen with different communication and decision-making channels of each force.

But it is possible only with the theater commands. The next question to come to mind is:

How should the theater commands be organized? To answer that first we need to look at the constraints:

• All theaters including maritime theaters would have responsibility in the hinterland with boundaries not necessarily dependent on state boundaries. This will help to defend against remote threats like missiles, UAVs of the enemy in a much more optimized way. Any future large-scale conflict will involve missiles and differences between border and civilian hinterland will diminish. 
• Basing the theater commands structure on the security threats which will always be dynamic will make the command itself a hindrance. As its communication, leadership, decision making, resource allocation and structure will be predetermined and will fail in a chaotic threat situation. 
• The natural geography of India should be used as an advantage rather than as a handicap in constructing theater commands. It is important to separate the problem from the solution while analyzing the possible choices. So, talking about policy, strategy, operations and tactical along with commanders responsible for them will only confuse the audience.
• So, we need to look for a theater command structure dependent upon something permanent like terrain of India. Both its maritime and land boundaries should be considered without regard to internal political state boundaries.
• Also, to maintain resilience, the concentration of any kind of policy planning, operational, strategic, tactical and logistics centers should be refrained from. So, each theater should operate in clusters of command centers and logistics hubs.
• Distribute the headquarters along the central axis of India straight from Kanyakumari to Indira Col. Also, they should not cluster around the political centers for providing better missile defence and to maintain secrecy and tactical independence during a conflict.
• Air Defence Command will have to be integrated so that the best response can be executed to an enemy threat in a time-bound manner. Here response paradigms should be mathematically analyzed and proper execution control of neutralizing the air threats should be delegated to the respective theater operational commands quickly within seconds-minutes with integrated air defence center.
• Present critics of integrated air defence commands are not considering the wrong firing of defensive missiles by low level theater commanders if the air defence remains segregated with army, air force and navy commanders deciding about any threat observed/detected by them. The present system of segregation will increase procurement costs and maintenance headaches as India's indigenous defence shield takes shape in coming years.
• ITBP and BSF should be treated at par in respective theater commands. Assam rifles should be completely part of Easter theater command with some units playing the role of BSF/ITBP. Rest should be main divisions with full training on mechanized warfare.

With above points in mind there should be Five theater commands

1. Northern command - Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh to West Bengal. Mountain warfare divisions.
2. Eastern command - Sikkim, West Bengal to all N-E states. Mountain & Jungle warfare divisions.
3. Central command - Special Forces, Cyber-Aerospace defence, Intelligence, NTRO and Strategic Forces command
4. Indian Ocean command - Southern peninsula, islands and Indian ocean region.
5. Western command - Gujarat to Punjab with plane area and Thar desert. Desert warfare with mechanized divisions involved.

Advantages of the Central theater command:

1.    Reduces the channels of communication for logistics. e.g.  In an urgent need situation, instead of going to other theaters or CDS for requesting resources the individual four theater commanders can raise a request to a single point of contact in the central theater command. With a single evaluation mechanism, the limited resources can be allocated to have optimum utilization and achieve best operational outcome.

2.    Differences in peacetime and war-time allocation can be judged better by Central command reporting to CDS and ultimately RM (Raksha Mantry). 

3.    Each theater will not have to keep high level of separate reserves near the enemy eyes. So, duplication of logistics effort can be avoided.

4.    Separate battalion headquarters can still be maintained in the four other theaters as it is. e.g. Madras Sappers. But with specialization the key they probably will have to consider marine force on top of engineering division as their specialization.

5.    CDS can concentrate on the policy and strategic decisions while day to day tactical decisions, which might still be under the purview of CDS, can be taken up by the central theater command.

6.    To maintain secrecy of strategic decisions central command will be away from the borders.

HR, Training, Logistics, Intelligence, Communications, Air Defence, Cyber and Space should be under the Central theater command. This will make sure the common resources are intelligently utilized and operational details of other commands are hidden from enemy too. By having common logistics, the reserves can be shared among different theaters quickly and efficiently. Also, no individual theater will be hogging up the resources while keeping other theaters wanting of bare minimum necessities needed.

Operational theaters except for the central theater will have highly specialized forces within the corps, divisions, brigades and battalions, having in-depth skills in operating in that terrain. e.g. Rashtriya Rifles specializes in LoC management and CI/CT operations in north. 

On a similar paradigm, marine force for ocean theater command will specialize in defensive and offensive operations to defend our maritime assets like islands and coastline.

Jungle warfare will be the specialty of Eastern theater command by building upon the experience of Assam rifles and Cobra commandos.

Desert warfare special units can be concentrated under Western theater command.

So not only distribution of theater responsibility, but respective specialization can be achieved to achieve high level of efficiency with theater commands.

The intelligence, training and learning from individual theaters can be shared with the three services operating in each theater and also with other theaters using Central Theater Command.

From above we can see Indian Navy assets will be mostly concentrated within the Indian Ocean Region command. While Army and Air Force assets will be distributed among all the theaters.

Central command will play a pivotal role to enable each of the other 4 theater commands in their operations. To our enemies, the four theater commands will be the only one visible along the land and maritime borders. While policy, strategy, tactical, training, air-defence, cyber, intelligence and logistics will be handled by Central command under Joint Operational Command (JOC), Joint Commanders and Staff Committee (JCSC), and ultimately under CDS.

So, specialization will be key for the four theater commands, who will see constant active action. While generalization will be forte for the central theater command.