Gen. Anil Chauhan, the next Chief of Defence Staff, faces the challenging assignment of getting the three services to agree on theatre commands while also keeping the military Bureaucracy research community accountable for developing gear within the allotted time frame.
Defense minister Rajnath Singh with CDS General Anil Chauhan and IAF chief Air Chief Marshal Vivek Ram Chaudhari.
Air Chief Marshal V R Chaudhari, head of the Indian Air Force, stated on Tuesday that his organization was not opposed to any integration or theatre command procedure but had concerns about the planned military architecture. There is a doctrine for each service. The Chief of Military Bureaucracy said that the formations shouldn’t violate the IAF’s doctrinal principles in any manner.
This remark has two sides to it. First, it makes sense for the IAF to have concerns about distributing its sparse aviation assets among the many suggested military theatre commands. The Air Force does have a point of division of its resources, even though the so-called IAF’s sanctioned strength of 42 squadrons was never approved by the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), but was just proposed by the Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee (COSC).
However, this logic conceals the fact that the Air Force is truly concerned about the elimination of its current command structures, which are led by no fewer than seven commanders-in-chief, all of whom are three-star officers and Air Marshals with access to significant establishments.
Despite having an officer cadre of the same size as the senior service of the Indian Navy, the Indian Air Force (IAF) has roughly ten times as many commands as the Indian Army. The Indian Navy, in contrast, only has three commands: West, East, and South.
The Air Force is opposed to armed drones and supports human fighters:
The upper echelons of the IAF are most concerned about being left to manage one Air Defence Command, one marine theatre command for the Navy, and two operational commands for the Army, one in the west and one in the east. Similar to the Andamans and Nicobar Command, the northern command will be a tri-service command that answers to the Chief of Defence Staff.
Even though the outspoken pronouncements made by Air Chiefs in the past and present have complicated the task, the Narendra Modi government will only move forward with the establishment of military theatre command after having frank discussions about it with all parties involved. The Air Force is opposed to armed drones and supports human fighters, which are already seriously threatened by modern air defense systems like the Iron Dome and the S-400.
The IAF chief has discussed a revised and updated force doctrine, which he worries the new structures may compromise, but it is important to consider how an individual force doctrine might differ from the national war doctrine and why the government would be interested in weakening it by force by imposing a superstructure.
The military theatre commands, such as the US Indo-Pacific Command or the Central Command, solely operate under an aggressive war strategy. The national security planners are aware that before the theatre commands are operationalized, numerous conflict scenarios will need to be anticipated. The administration is considering establishing the cyber, space, and missile command before moving toward the theatre commands precisely for this reason.
The military bureaucracy is just as strong as the civilian bureaucracy
Even though the military theatre commands are currently being debated in the wake of the Kargil conflict, the IAF’s public posturing has added rigidity and military bureaucracy barriers to the task at hand.
As demonstrated by the obstacles the military scientific establishment constructed in the acquisition of an Israeli anti-tank missile system in 2018 and the choice of Safran aircraft engines over GE-414 engines in spite of the French company’s offer of joint development and complete technology transfer, the military bureaucracy is just as strong as the civilian bureaucracy.
Due to these obstacles, India had to pay more for the same Spike ATGM after the PLA attacked East Ladakh on May 5, 2020, and there will be a delay in the AMCA fighter, which was originally going to feature a GE-414 engine. Only if the military bureaucracy of the three armed services and the scientific establishment are held accountable will India be able to implement military reforms and develop a military-industrial complex.
