Theaterisation: Not in the Year of Reform
In a recent interview, a retired general informs that single service commands that were to be consigned to the dustbin of history when integrated theatre commands (ITC) are raised would instead persist, with the ITCs being an additional rung in the ladder of formations.
The general makes clear that at least some of the service commands are being retained, saying, that instead, ‘one more rung (ITC) is being added.’
This is intriguing since one of the reasons touted for the raising of ITCs has all along been that there are some 17 single service geographic commands, that could, consequently, do with some integration, either doing away with them – jointness demanding it - or reducing their numbers – since the defence budget requires it.
The discussion has been prompted by concurrent mention in the media of a policy tweak to the annual reporting on three-star rank officers of the army.
Using the opportunity, here I revisit the theaterisation muddle, covering not only the tweak in question but, further, how the ITCs could shape up and what the implications are for apex level professionalism and command and control.
The quantification bug
The new policy step requires annual reports for lieutenant generals to be written up for selection to apex level three-star billets in forthcoming ITCs, either as commanders or chiefs of staff. It’s uncertain if this is also applicable for selection for single service commands.
The step has mostly found favourable reception in terms of furthering meritocracy. It certainly appears useful to sift out the commanders with the background of service in inter-service organisations and yen for tenanting theatre commander appointments.
Already, measures in terms of upgrading professional military education and for officers gaining experience in joint service thematic commands and also of cross postings. The defence staff college has even started an experimental course on joint staff duties, preparing its latest cohort to tenant middle piece staff appointments in soon-to-go-live ITCs. The legal regime has been modified to allow command and disciplinary authority to flow without regard to colour of the uniform.
The introduction of rating is useful, if only for the army to catch up with the other two services, that apparently are a step ahead.
Admittedly, more clarity on the step is necessary.
One report has it that the grading system will help identify the most suitable candidates for corps and army commanders, including for ITCs, based on performance rather than only seniority at the time of commission and residual age.
While another media report says that the policy does not specify if it is also applicable for selection to single service command-level appointments.
The former may be accurate since it makes the step inclusive, allowing for the whole set of eligible three-star officers to be considered in order to cull out those with an additional flair and capacity for placement in ITCs and field armies.
The more significant reform pending
The quantified grading system is to be in place as early as this spring. This has resulted in the expectation that ITC rollout is close at hand.
The government – as is its wont – might yet thrust another surprise on the strategic sphere in what the defence minister promises as a ‘Year of Reforms’.
Admittedly, the press release does not mention any such rollout, unambitiously stating: ‘Reforms should aim to further bolster Jointness & Integration initiatives and facilitate establishment of the Integrated Theatre Commands (emphasis added).’
The Media has been set to interpret this more boldly, creating the by now familiar hype around trivia.
One outlet states: ‘The policy comes at a time when the blueprint for the three theatre commands for China, Pakistan and the Indian Ocean Region has been finalized to ensure an integrated war-fighting machinery (emphasis added).’
Nevertheless, the discussion on the promotional aspects must not be allowed to obscure the more important point: Both rungs – the separate commands and the ITCs - will apparently be present in a post-reforms structure.
This begs the question: Why separate command headquarters are not being jettisoned and are instead being subordinated to the ITC?
One of the reasons for service foot-dragging on jointness was their reluctance to give up multiple billets for the brass as commanders-in-chief of the several geographic commands.
If the interpretation of the policy that at least some service commands are to be retained, it implies that the military’s hesitance anchored on institutional considerations has carried the day.
Prima facie and in light of preceding din against geographic commands, their retention – or that of some - sounds somewhat regressive.
It may be an interim measure, till ITCs come into full gear.
Since their twin presence – ITC and service commands - was not contemplated earlier, a fuller discussion on this has been absent in the strategic discourse.
It is possible to visualize ITCs assuming command over service commands, even if the latter are reduced in number, with some being sacrificed for the ‘jointness and integration initiatives’ called for in the press release.
When the German Army invaded Russia in Operation Barbarossa, it had three group armies operating along the front, each of which subsumed more than one field army, each of which sequentially had on respective order of battle (orbat), a set of corps.
The two rungs are also visible in the operations of the Coalition of the Willing in the first Gulf War. Under the combatant command Central Command (CENTCOM) were land, air, naval and marine components commanders. For instance, General Schwarzkopf, commander CENTCOM, had General Yeosock, as the field army level land component commander of the Third Army, who in turn had the VII and XVIII Corps reporting to him.
Thus, for an army group to have within it field armies and equivalent formations from sister services, as fleets or wings, has eminent precedence.
An unofficial blueprint
A think tank informs that a ‘blueprint’ for the ITCs was presented to the Raksha Mantri at the Joint Commanders Conference (JCC) at Lucknow last September.
From this it can be inferred that initially perhaps only the South Western Command of the army will be wound up for emplacing the Pakistan facing, Western Theatre Command (TC).
Under it may be placed the Pakistan facing proportion of Northern Command; the Western Command, other than its elements in Himachal Pradesh (HP); and the proportion of the Southern Command not hived off to the maritime command.
This makes for three field army level headquarters, which are themselves liable for merging and a rejig of their areas of responsibility (AOR) and boundaries. Indeed, Southern Command AOR on the Pakistan front can revert to Western Command, as it was in 1965 War.
In particular, attention would be required for the manner Northern Command is divvied: whether it should remain whole to take on the two-front threat that will be most significantly manifest in its AOR or should it be divided into east and west facing halves under the two ITCs, Pakistan and China facing.
The latter is more likely since an ITC facing China not having Ladakh within its AOR makes little sense. In such case, the Western Command would require taking on 15 Corps AOR, itself stretched to include Siachen.
If the former is reckoned reasonable, then the Northern Command will require upgrade to an ITC of its own – a matter that has not found mention in the latest bout of policy transparency.
As with Jaipur changing hands, the army’s Central Command at Lucknow would likely require to make way for the China oriented Northern TC.
While the Eastern Command can be easily slotted, the front from Daulat Beg Oldi to the Nepal border would require a command headquarters level supervision.
Maybe it can be under a reconfigured and re-sited Northern Command, with 14 Corps in Ladakh, less Pakistan’s Northern Areas facing elements; the strike corps relocated from the plains during Covid times to Ladakh; the Sugar Sector in HP; and the erstwhile Uttar Bharat Area, now 18 Corps, under it.
This would make for two field armies under the Northern TC.
The Maritime TC will then have the Southern Command for overseeing all land force operations in the AOR; the Andaman and Nicobar Command; and the two naval Commands at Vishakhapatnam and Mumbai.
This leaves the Indian Air Force (IAF) to be reckoned with.
In the debate on jointness, the IAF energetically held its own, determined not to have its strategic role wrested away by being split into penny packets.
In the ITC rubric, the IAF can have its cake and eat it too if it amalgamates itself into one Air Command per ITC, with the planning, coordination and operational control of air assets under it, but in service of jointness mandated by respective ITC.
The model for this could be the ‘Chuck’ Horner led air component to Shwarzkopf’s CENTCOM during Iraq War I.
This is one manner the ITC reform can be proceeded with, mitigating the two road bumps that have held it up so far: the threat of reduction in geographic commands and the IAF’s not unreasonable argument against institutional harakiri.
The case for perpetuation of geographic commands is easy to see.
Even though the China front is under the Northern TC, the stretch requires an intervening headquarters between it and operational corps. The challenges on the Ladakh and Arunachal fronts may be similar, but cannot be handled individually from Lucknow – as seen in the 1962 War. Additionally, Eastern Command may require to oversee counter proxy war operations.
Likewise, in the Western TC, spatial contiguity, operational connectedness and proxy war dimension of the area from Siachen to, say, the Sialkot Bulge liable to be overseen by one field army headquarters. The remainder of the border can be under another field army, especially since the possibility of a conflict going nuclear is highest in that area.
Thus, there is no wishing away geographic commands. As for the need for ITCs, it is now past the discussion stage, so is not gone into here. The service training, logistics and maintenance commands can be subsumed by thematic joint commands.
Back to the new grading system
The reform is predicated on professional ability of a demanding order.
An example of how not to go about it is in the manner the women officers were thrust hastily into command positions on orders of the court, without the requisite training and socialization necessary, resulting in the infamous case of a missive from a mountain strike corps commander ruing the resulting deficits.
For operational effectiveness, the military would require the ability to cruise at the below given levels:
· Integrated Defence Staff headquarters (HQ) and Service HQs – Grand strategic
· ITC – Grand strategic and Strategic
· Service geographic commands – Strategic and Operational
· Corps – Operational and Tactical
· Integrated Battle Groups – Tactical
An ITC handling the strategic level and the service commands restricted to the operational level, owing to their expertise in Operational Art, makes the two rungs complementary.
In this case, the corps would be operating mostly at tactical level, with integrated battle groups under command, and only minimally at the operational level – if and when on/in/as a separate axis/theatre/expeditionary force.
Given that the nascent three-star grading system is soon to be operationalized, it must not merely restrict itself to considering earlier service in and potential for command of joint organisations, but must include those not so destined by ascertaining capability of officers’ comprehension of the grand strategic and strategic levels.
The assumption is that those at three-star rank have received their third star based on their competence in operational art.
However, at the upper rungs it’s breadth of outlook, catholicity, critical thinking, character and - as the since-censored Western army commander observed last Army Day – a ‘secular and apolitical’ perspective.
Since these traits are applicable for all three-star command billets, whether single service or joint, the grading system must be applicable across the board.
The assessment of more than a technical and managerial proficiency must begin at one-star rank.
This, not so much because there is any pressing need for that at the tactical level, but because such officers would tenant spear-shaft appointments at command/ITC level and would help spur them on to acquire felicity with higher order issues.
This will also reduce the premium on the grading at three-star level, mitigating the reservation that that officers will end up more politically pliable (in the parochial sense) if they are judged on this score solely at the final hurdle.
The most troubling aspect – C2
Any command and control arrangements discussion must be considered in light of the Indian political system and national security establishment.
A cardinal feature of this is a jealous guarding of relative power positions by civilians. While politicians want coup proofing, bureaucrats don’t want to be upstaged.
Any hold up from the brass-hats feeling shortchanged by reduction in command opportunities – with reduction in commands – appears to have been balanced by the military seeking an upgrade to four-star rank for ITC commanders.
This would reduce casteism within the three-star rank that otherwise has staff, command and staff, PSOs and army commanders nested in it.
An upper grade, formalized as colonel general, can be adopted for all command positions above corps - field armies, both geographic and thematic, and ITCs – to make the upgrade saleable.
It wouldn’t do to have the reform of the century held up by sparring over ranks.
Two C2 options that have done the rounds of are: one, ITCs reporting to the Chief of Defence Staff and, two, are under the RM.
The latter is a non-starter, given that perhaps the last credible RM was Jaswant Singh, who held on for all of six months a quarter century ago. Thus, emulation of the Americans gets automatically ruled out.
The former would require empowering the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) and the Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff, not so much to breath down the neck of the ITCs as much to handle the two-front threat and the nuclear dimension, input the grand strategy and supervise the war-making thematic commands.
However, a CDS with command authority over ITCs in the Indian political system – either democratic as it was once or authoritarian as now - is unlikely.
This increases the attractiveness of the third model: of TC commanders reporting to a Chiefs of Staff Committee, as was the British committee system of World War II. It could emerge more like the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) than an Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH), with ITCs likened to army groups commanded by generals, such as Rommel’s Afrika Corps or, later, Army Group B. The CDS must be like General Marshall to the ITC’s Eisenhower and MacArthur.
Not an idea whose time has come
The Chief only this Army Day during his annual meet-the-press rued that the authorization for two sets of battle groups is pending, hinting at abandoning the idea itself. Recall the idea is now two decades old.
If a mild ‘reform’ as that takes so long, it might take till India gets to Viksit Bharat to get ITCs on road.
And we know that getting to that requires an ‘era not of war.’ ITCs signal an avoidably offensive intent for one suddenly stricken with adulation for Ashoka and the Buddha.
Knowing this well, Rajnath Singh has called on the Services to, ‘(D)evelop a shared understanding of operational requirements and joint operational capabilities through inter-service cooperation & training.’
Since that could take a generation, he throws the gauntlet back at the military.
It allows him to get back to more significant pursuits, such as an impending one of changing the name of Army War College to hindi, to make it easier to roll off the tongue.
In any case, the final word is with National Security Adviser, Ajit Doval.
Doval is handicapped by Jaishankar and Amit Shah not wanting the military to intrude on their respective - external and internal - turf, which ITCs – resonant with the combatant command phraseology – inevitably herald.
In the interim, the regime is happy with orchestrating periodic media eddies over cosmetic steps as setting three-starers to chase nine-pointers. It would keep them juvenile and on drip. It would incentivise shedding of the spine.
It would help the regime identify the pliant, and the ideologically compliant.
All this makes theaterisation just another jumla – to borrow Amit Shah’s eternal phrase for campaign promises.
Blame the VK Singh et al for taking the military up the garden path and the nation down the drain.
