Originally published at : https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/indias-military-reforms-must-begin-at-the-top-not-with-theatre-commands-14057433.html
India needs a comprehensive study of its Higher Defence Organisation that examines competing designs against real force levels and simultaneous contingencies The proposed Integrated Military Strategic Headquarters follows a hybrid theatre architecture wherein the Northern, Western and Maritime Theatres command their assigned forces, supported by joint national enablers for air, cyber, space and logistics that are allocated centrally without creating a parallel chain of command.
The contemporary environment is increasingly polycentric, with power dispersed among major states, technology companies, financial networks, regional powers and non-state actors.
The world today is characterised by simultaneous conflicts (more than 120 armed conflicts, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross), spanning wars, crises and grey-zone contests, which are challenging crisis-management mechanisms, nuclear risk reduction and even arms control. Most international engagements are shaped by technology, resources, demography, identity and sovereignty.
Most importantly, the character of warfare has changed, with grey-zone and hybrid methods achieving effects just below the threshold of declared war. Nations pursue their strategic interests by combining cyber disruption, information activity, precision fires and manoeuvres, all within one operational window. Therefore, merely placing service formations under common headquarters does not create multi-domain capability; rather, integrating domains and compressing decision cycles does.
It is in this context that India’s plan for integrated theatre commands should be assessed, as it is still awaiting a final government decision. Theatre commands cannot substitute for an integrated Higher Defence Organisation (HDO); they must be its operational expression. Integration cannot begin only at the operational level.
The need of the hour is for integration to originate at the strategic apex, where national objectives are translated into military strategy, capability priorities and command arrangements.
Rather than simply redistributing Army, Navy and Air Force formations among new headquarters, the task is to establish an HQ that provides integrated military advice, designs and generates forces, commands joint operations and allocates scarce national capabilities when several theatres make competing demands at once.
What must a Higher Defence Organisation Do?
A Higher Defence Organisation connects political authority, national-security institutions and the military instrument of state power. It must answer four questions: what political outcomes military power should support, what capabilities the force needs, how those capabilities are organised and commanded, and how military operations interact with the other instruments of national power. Theatre commands primarily address the third and cannot independently answer the other three.
The HDO, therefore, functions as a cumulative sequence in which strategy determines force structure, force structure informs command architecture, and command architecture enables integrated operations.
For India, this sequence has run in reverse, as India has worked on settling theatre boundaries before articulating a national strategy. Many military experts argue that the charter of these commands and the roles they have to play must come from the top.
What India needs, therefore, is a strategic planning bridge that would link a periodically reviewed National Security Strategy to a National Military Strategy and onwards to joint force design and planning, under civilian political supremacy and with whole-of-nation coordination exercised by the political leadership.
An Integrated Military Strategic Headquarters
Conceptually, the HDO should keep political direction with the Prime Minister and the Cabinet Committee on Security, exercised through the Defence Minister and the Ministry of Defence. The National Security Adviser and National Security Council system would provide advice and coordination without forming part of an operational chain.
Beneath them, the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) and a proposed Integrated Military Strategic Headquarters (IMSHQ), situated within the Ministry of Defence system, would provide integrated advice, joint force design, planning and prioritisation for three parallel branches: Service headquarters that generate and sustain forces, theatre commands that employ them, and national enablers that are allocated to provide support.
Technically, this foundation already exists. The post of Chief of Defence Staff was created in 2019, with the CDS also made the head of the Department of Military Affairs (DMA), as its Secretary.
The mandate of the DMA included restructuring military commands for optimal utilisation of resources by establishing joint/theatre commands and bringing about jointness in operations. Yet, HQ Integrated Defence Staff continues to coordinate operational matters while the DMA conducts government business.
What sets the IMSHQ apart is that it brings the functions of HQ IDS and DMA together. It is not a fourth Service but integrates HQ IDS and DMA under the CDS, who would serve as the head of the proposed IMSHQ.
An evolved HQ IDS would form the military-strategic staff under a Vice CDS or Chief of Strategic Staff, responsible for strategy and joint force design, joint planning and readiness, operational coordination and cross-theatre allocation.
The DMA would retain its departmental identity, with a senior departmental deputy managing routine business under delegation from the CDS, covering military-affairs policy, government business, personnel and establishments, and the implementation of approved reforms.
The IMSHQ would deliver in three areas:
– Advising and planning, through military strategy, contingency planning and joint doctrine;
– Designing and preparing the force, through force design, capability priorities and joint readiness;
– Setting priorities, through intelligence integration, cross-theatre allocation and the coordination of authorised effects.
Generate, employ, allocate
A governing principle of an integrated HDO is the separation of force generation from employment, wherein the Services would raise, train, equip and sustain ready forces, theatre commanders would plan and conduct assigned operations, and the strategic apex would set priorities and allocate scarce capabilities.
The need is for administrative command, operational command, operational control and tactical control to be defined in formal orders because clear authority matters more than the number of headquarters.
Therefore, the proposed IMSHQ follows a hybrid theatre architecture wherein the Northern, Western and Maritime Theatres command their assigned forces, supported by joint national enablers for air, cyber, space and logistics that are allocated centrally without creating a parallel chain of command.
Additionally, strategic forces remain under their designated authorisation arrangements, and nuclear authorisation would not be absorbed into any theatre by implication. But the question is how such capabilities interface with conventional structures.
The decisive test of this predicament is a simultaneous contingency in which all three theatres need the same scarce assets at once. There must be one recognised mechanism to assess urgency, effect and availability, then approve, allocate and reassess, combining central strategic direction with decentralised execution.
Way forward
Foreign higher defence structures offer principles rather than templates. Each nation organises its apex in a way that reflects its own political system. For instance, the reforms of 2015 and early 2016 in China created a Joint Staff Department under the Central Military Commission, in addition to the five new theatre commands.
This move strengthened the centre. On the other hand, in November 2025, Pakistan abolished the post of Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee and made the Army Chief the Chief of Defence Forces as well. This move led to a concentration of authority in one Service rather than an institutional apex under civilian authority.
For India, a deliberate course of action is pertinent because implementation should be phased in a way that protects readiness throughout the transition. While theatre commands are critical, the path runs through the apex. India, therefore, needs a comprehensive study of its Higher Defence Organisation that examines competing designs against real force levels and simultaneous contingencies.
