India’s theatreisation debate has brought renewed attention to a layer of the battlespace that most armies once treated as a doctrinal afterthought: the air littoral. This low-to-medium altitude zone, where drones, loitering munitions, attack helicopters, MANPADS teams and SHORAD networks collide in real time, now shapes outcomes on the ground far more directly than traditional air superiority at medium or high altitudes. For India, whose primary military challenges lie on the land frontier, this zone is no longer peripheral. It is the critical extension of the land battlefield.
The Air Littoral as a Land-First Battlespace
Nowhere is this clearer than along India’s northern borders, where steep Himalayan valleys compress aerial corridors and force unmanned systems, helicopters and air-defence units into tight battlespace grids. The PLA’s expansion of UAV squadrons, electronic warfare units and air-mobile brigades has been designed precisely to dominate this environment. On the western front, Pakistan’s growing reliance on drone-enabled reconnaissance and loitering munitions challenges the Indian Army’s forward defences along the IB and LoC. What happens a few hundred feet above ground level increasingly determines what happens at the line of contact itself.
This shift is not unique to India. Ukraine has shown how much of the modern land battle is decided by who can see first, strike first and deny first in the littoral. The defeat of Armenian forces in Nagorno-Karabakh similarly demonstrated the consequences of failing to anticipate the swarm of low-cost drones and precision munitions saturating the lower airspace. Israel’s urban operations in Gaza revealed that even highly mechanised, technologically advanced militaries cannot manoeuvre on the ground unless the tactical sky above each block, alley and approach route is controlled in real time. These cases consistently demonstrate that the air littoral is shaped predominantly from the ground: by ground forces, ground sensors and ground-triggered engagements.
Why the Indian Army Must Sit at the Heart of Littoral Doctrine
Given its operational environment, India does not have the luxury of treating the air littoral as an air force–centric problem. In the mountains, where aviation corridors are narrow, almost every drone flight, helicopter insertion or air-defence action overlaps with a ground formation’s zone of responsibility. In deserts, the vast visibility enables extensive UAV reconnaissance but also exposes armoured columns and artillery lines to FPV drones and loitering munitions. In counter-terror grids, quadcopters have already become routine tools for convoy overwatch, area surveillance and route protection. The Indian Army is therefore both the primary target in the littoral and the most frequent user of unmanned and manned platforms within it.
As UAVs, ground-based radar, electronic warfare units and loitering munitions proliferate across all services, the distinction between air and land responsibilities dissolves. The tactical sky above Indian ground operations is no longer an auxiliary space. It is the immediate battlespace where infantry, armour and artillery now fight with and against aerial systems.
Global Models Reinforcing Ground-Centric Control
Militaries grappling with similar transitions have placed littoral management closer to ground commanders rather than farther away. In Ukraine, brigade commanders gained far greater autonomy over drones and air-defence responses because centralised control proved too slow for a 15-second engagement cycle. NATO’s enhanced forward presence battlegroups in Eastern Europe have adopted integrated air-defence cells that sit with land formations, fusing data from sensors, drones and SHORAD systems while feeding the broader theatre air picture. China has pursued even more comprehensive restructuring: the PLA’s Western Theatre Command integrates Army air defence brigades, UAV units, EW detachments and PLAAF assets under unified theatre-level control, designed specifically for contested low-altitude environments in complex terrain.
These examples differ in their political and organisational contexts, but they share a single conclusion: control of the tactical sky cannot be distant from the ground forces expected to operate beneath it.
Why Theatreisation Brings This Tension to the Fore
India’s proposed theatre commands seek to unify planning and execution across the Army, Air Force and Navy. The air littoral, however, exposes a fundamental contradiction. The IAF has consistently argued that air power must remain centrally commanded to preserve flexibility and optimise the use of limited fighter squadrons. The Army, facing persistent tactical threats from drones and air-defence engagements, requires immediate responsiveness and integrated authority at the theatre level. The disagreement is not merely bureaucratic. It arises from a technological reality: the littoral compresses engagement times to the point where response must be instantaneous, and responsibility must sit close to the ground units that absorb most of the risk.
What This Means for India’s Theatre Commands
For theatreisation to be meaningful, India must build structures that allow the Army, Air Defence units, Army Aviation, UAV squadrons, IAF controllers and electronic warfare detachments to share a continuously fused air picture. Deconfliction between drones, helicopters, artillery trajectories and SHORAD grids must occur through mechanisms that empower theatre commanders rather than dilute control. Littoral engagements—whether tracking a swarm of quadcopters, neutralising a loitering munition, conducting an air-mobile insertion or cueing artillery via UAV—cannot remain dispersed across disconnected command chains.
The risk is clear. If India creates theatre commands that look joint on paper but are functionally fragmented in the tactical sky, the reform will falter at the precise point where emerging warfare is most unforgiving.
The Littoral as a Distinct Combat Space
Mastery of the air littoral is central to India’s long-term land warfare posture. It influences mountain operations, border security, armoured manoeuvre, artillery survivability, counter-infiltration grids and any future limited-war scenario under nuclear thresholds. It shapes whether Indian ground forces can manoeuvre without prohibitive risk and whether India can deter or punish aggression effectively along its frontiers.
The tactical sky is now a combat domain in its own right—neither purely air nor purely land, but a hybrid space where success depends on rapid decision cycles, real-time sensor fusion and joint command structures that acknowledge the primacy of ground realities. If India can design its theatre commands around this truth, theatreisation will emerge as a transformative reform. If not, the air littoral zone will remain the soft spot that adversaries exploit first.
