India’s most ambitious and totally outdated military reform ‘Integrated Theatre Commands (ITCs)’ appears to be dead and one wonders if it was ever a serious proposition.
ITCs meant that elements of the three military services (two, the army and the air force, in case of land wars on the Line of Actual Control with China and the Line of Control with Pakistan) would be brought permanently under a single commander for jointness and synergy in operations.
Jointness in operations implies that all services fight together as a ‘joint force’, and synergy means that they should be able to complement one another. For instance, army assets in the land domain should have the capability to hit the enemy’s assets in the air domain, such as fighters or incoming missiles. Thus, for land war, the ‘joint force’ would comprise army and air force assets with cross-domain capability and with the army as the lead service since boots on the ground are essential for occupation of territory.
Behind the veneer of ITCs which involved major structural reforms, the real purpose for the Modi government was to kill two birds with one stone: retain superannuating army chief, General Bipin Rawat in uniform to ensure that the military served the ruling political party’s agenda rather than the national interest that it was constitutionally sworn to do. And to project the government’s commitment to national security by ostensibly undertaking long pending military reforms to strengthen war preparedness. Never mind that those reforms were past their expiry dates.
The two overdue reforms were: the post of Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) as suggested by the 2002 Group of Ministers recommendations following the Kargil review committee report, and the recommendation of the December 2016 Shekatkar committee report to create ITCs to fight better on the military lines with Pakistan and China. These committees were constituted by the Vajpayee and Modi-led BJP governments respectively.
General Rawat was ideal?
A bit on why General Rawat was ideal for the post of the CDS as envisioned by the Modi government. This was mostly as he was past master at projecting military victory where there was none.
During his three-year tenure as army chief, Rawat planned the so-called 2016 surgical strikes and the 2019 Balakot air strikes against Pakistan. He also flexed military muscle against the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) during the 2017 Doklam crisis which resulted in projecting Prime Minister Narendra Modi — by unscrupulous mainline media — as the sole leader with the courage to challenge both adversaries at once.
Bipin Rawat, Former Chief of Defence Staff of the Indian Armed Forces. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Integrated Defence Staff/GODL License.
The reality was all three episodes were disastrous for India as they exposed the operational shortcomings of the Indian Army and the Indian Air Force (IAF). This led China to conclude that India did not have the political will to escalate to hot war beyond grey zone operations. Confident of its assessment, the PLA may have ended up occupying nearly 2,000 square kilometres of Indian territory by multiple incursions in east Ladakh in April 2020.
Thus, towards the fag end of his tenure, Rawat made the case of how his continuation in service as India’s first CDS would make the military strong and resilient for modern warfare. This was a good reason for the Modi government to anoint Rawat as the CDS with a three-year tenure from January 2020 to December 2022 where his declared mandate was to raise ITCs for optimal operational outcome through jointness and synergy amongst the three physical services on land, air, and sea. His real job was to align the military leadership (especially the army, being the largest of the three services) with the government’s right-wing ideology.
It was not accidental that emulating the PLA’s example of its loyalty to President Xi Jinping (who wore combat fatigue in his two roles as the chairman of the Central Military Commission and the commander-in-chief) rather than the nation, Modi became the first Indian prime minister to don military uniform to assert that he was the topmost field commander.
Modi discharged his duty as India’s senior-most commander by making it clear to the armed forces early in his tenure that its focus should be preparedness, not for a hot war, but grey zone operations on both military fronts. Grey zone operations terminology was first enunciated by US Special Operations Forces in 2015 to describe all hostile activities below the threshold of war.
For militaries, these operations comprise intimidation, coercion, and cognitive confrontation by non-kinetic means like cyber-attacks, counter space capabilities for satellites disablement, information warfare, cutting of internet subsea cables and so on with the only rule for these operations being no rules. The PLA calls grey zone operations Military Operations Other Than War (MOOTW). It has refined these operations since China believes that they help in negotiations with an adversary as well as dent his will to fight.
Thus, addressing his first combined commanders conference in October 2014, Modi told the military leadership that ‘the threats may be known, while the enemy may be invisible.’ The ‘threat’ meant the Pakistan military and the ‘enemy’ were terrorists. With this operational directive, Modi formalised the military’s role in counter terrorism (CT ops), which are grey zone operations.
The 2016 surgical strikes qualified as grey zone operations since to avoid an escalation into war, the Indian Army informed the Pakistan Army even before it announced to the people of India that its mission of CT ops across the LC was over. Similarly, when the Pakistan Air Force reacted to IAF’s Balakot strikes the following day with precision air attacks near Indian Army installations, the IAF conceded that Pakistan’s action was an act of war, but there was no retaliation.
In both cases, the objective was to use the military to contribute to the ruling party’s electoral campaigns. Similarly, during the 2017 Doklam crisis with the PLA, India declared tactical victory when latter events proved that China had probably outsmarted India by amassing thousands of its soldiers without being labelled as aggressors since the onus of escalation was on the Indian Army which was the first to bring its forces close to the LAC. Thus, the politicisation of the Indian military under Rawat was accomplished.
While starting his term as the CDS on January 1, 2020, Rawat made two things clear regarding the ITCs: one, the army would be the lead service in the ITCs. And two, the IAF would be in a support role to the army. Both his assertions betrayed his poor understanding of modern warfare where the PLA (identified as India’s primary threat) is at the cutting edge of both, the science of war (technology) and the art of war (war concepts). It also remains well versed with military art which is about the exploitation of new technologies with new war concepts for optimal favourable outcome in war.
Counter-terror ops detracted from the main role
Given its deep involvement in CT ops in Jammu and Kashmir since 1990, the Indian Army lost sight of its primary task of preparedness for hot war.
To this date, the Indian military follows the outdated US military’s ‘Air-Land battle’ war concept of the eighties. Given two war domains or battlespace of air and land, the IAF and the army focus on their core competencies for war while coordinating their war plans with one another.
The army’s core competencies are combined arms operations where its combat (infantry, armour, engineers) and combat support arms (artillery) complement each other on the spatial battlespace. The latter is an artificial construct divided into tactical and operational level with the focus on ‘winning the first battle’. Meanwhile, the core competencies of the air force are speed, range, flexibility, and precision strikes.
Representational image. Indian army soldiers. Photo: Facebook/Northern Command-Indian Army
In all wars, including the last full-scale war between India and Pakistan in 1971, the air force was in support of the army’s operations since boots on the ground for capture and holding of territory were essential. The winner and the vanquished were determined by tactical battles of attrition where assets like tanks, guns and so on with each side mattered. Victory in such tactical wars necessitated that each service first and foremost concentrates on its core competency in its battlespace.
Things changed with the infusion of technology into both services, faster in the IAF since aviation always has the cutting edge technology of the time. So, by 2000, the IAF started talking of strategic reach with its limited combat assets implying that it should do independent operations, and not be tied to supporting army’s war plans. Thus, it was natural for the IAF to not accept Rawat’s archaic ITC concept which necessitated it to permanently part with some limited assets to commander ITC or to agree to a support role to the army.
Tracking the competition: What are we up against?
Before proceeding further, it would be instructive to understand through the PLA’s military art why India’s ITCs reform was outdated.
By 2010, the US military, which was closely watching the PLA’s rise, concluded that it had become its peer competitor. By the infusion of technology, the PLA had acquired capabilities to fight in the three (two virtual and one physical) domains of cyber, electromagnetic spectrum and outer space in addition to the three traditional domains of land, air and sea.
Capability to fight in a domain meant the ability to combat, confront and compete as well as manage the best options in it against a peer adversary. This is distinct from a ‘force multiplier’ which, as the name suggests, is meant to boost fighting capability in an existing domain like land, air and sea. By this time, China also became the world’s largest shipbuilding nation.
Moreover, in the traditional domains, the PLA had shifted the focus to areas which for lack of technology were unexploited earlier. For example, in the air domain (up to 20km altitude from ground) where fighter aircraft and drones could fly, the PLA created a new space called ‘near space’ from 20km to 100km altitude above ground beyond which ‘outer space’ was used by satellites.
The ‘near space’ was to be exploited by PLA’s hypersonic cruise missiles and hypersonic glide vehicles, a capability the US military lacked. Similarly, in the sea domain, the ‘deep sea’ at depth of 300meters and below was to be preferred for war fighting with sea drones and submarines.
Once Chinese President Xi Jinping assumed power in November 2012, he decided to roll out the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) across Eurasia, Africa, Latin America, and Oceania-Pacific islands. This required the PLA to take on two additional roles: protect Chinese assets, infrastructure, and interests in the BRI nation, and create deterrence for safety of its commercial trade through the Sea Lanes of Communications across the Asia Pacific region. China is also determined to re-unite claimed Taiwan and Tibet with the mainland. The latter refers to south Tibet or the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. And after India created the Union Territory of Ladakh following the abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir, China announced that Indian Ladakh being part of the Aksai Chin also belongs to it.
The added PLA tasks and its grown capabilities necessitated development of new war concepts along with appropriate structural reforms to optimise its war outcome. So, in 2014, the PLA announced its new military strategy with three highlights: Three new war domains of cyber, outer space, and electromagnetic spectrum; naval warfare; and the concept of Joint Integrated Operations (JIO). In the JIO, the PLA decided not to follow the US military concept of ‘joint force’ (which is being blindly emulated by Indian military as part of ITCs) but to create ‘mission sets’: strike packages specific to missions.
Also read: Over-Ambition and Half-Baked Ideas Plague the Military’s Plan for Integrated Theatre Commands
Regarding structural changes, after three years deliberations, the PLA announced in 2015 military reforms where Western Theatre Command (WTC) was raised specifically for war with India. These reforms were to be accomplished in five years, that is, 2020, the year it occupied Indian territory in east Ladakh. In four years since, the PLA has collected data and identified targets in combat space and the whole-of-nation to unleash its doctrine called ‘systems destruction warfare’. China, today, has the capability to shut down Indian civilian life as well as destroy communications (the lifeline of command and control) in the combat zone or battlespace.
Thus, unlike the Indian military which talks of a border war with China on the LAC, the PLA has prepared for a war of sovereignty to wrest Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh from India. Not prepared for an occupation war by China, the Indian military has instead conflated it with grey zone operations on the LAC. Following the worst grey zone operations in recent memory on June 15 2020 in the Galwan valley where Indian army lost 20 soldiers with hundreds made prisoners by the PLA, Indian military leadership has told the nation that it has done re-balancing of forces from the Pakistan front to the LAC to take on the PLA challenge. The added benefit for the army leadership in believing that a border war with China is the worst-case scenario is that it continues to retain its status as lead service for a border war.
Grey zone ops being prioritised?
The cue for military leadership to focus on grey zone operations on the LAC has come from the prime minister who in September 2022 told the Russian President Putin that ‘this was not an era of war,’ notwithstanding that it is the opposite of it. In great power contestation where the global geopolitics has shifted from Europe to Asia Pacific with US’ superpower status under challenge by China and Russia, the world has entered the unprecedented phase of wars, struggles, and strategic competition to reshape the world order.
Moreover, since grey zone operations are manpower heavy as on the LC with Pakistan, every bit of Indian territory on the LAC must be guarded against enemy transgressions and incursions. Hence, the army is on a spree to raise new formations. The latest is the raising of 18 corps (which has under it a division and three independent brigades) in February this year for guarding the middle sector in states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.
The Indian Army now has seven corps (namely, 14, 18, 33, 3, 4, 1, and 17) on the LAC, with two of them — 1 and 17 corps — called strike corps. Never mind that (a) land domain will have minimum role in war with the PLA, and (b) strike corps with counterattack capability will be meaningless against China which will start and end the war by total domination of strategic and operational levels of war. Once this is done, the PLA has AI powered drones with facial recognition systems to take out hundreds and thousands of Indian soldiers with their communication potentially snapped at all levels of command.
Furthermore, since China has vibrant defence-industrial complex, it would have prepared required land-based missiles under its organisation called Rocket Force, and long-range precision artillery to threaten identified Indian targets with intense rates of salvos.
Coming back to ITCs, they are of little help when the Indian military has limited assets, imports specialised ammunitions, has a frugal inventory of land-based missiles, and importantly, it has capability to combat only in three physical war domains. Without domain capabilities in cyberspace and electromagnetic spectrum no modern war can be won. Thus, the need is to study PLA’s ‘systems destruction warfare’, create new war domains instead of seeking force multipliers, and for the military leadership to understand that politicisation undermines war-preparedness.
Pravin Sawhney is the author of The Last War: How AI Will Shape India’s Final Showdown With China.
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