OUR 16 OPERATIONAL COMMANDS ARE DOING JOINT OPERATIONS THEN WHY THEATRES? - By Group Capt A. G. Bewoor VM(G)

Date:- 13 September 2026

1. A few articles on Theatres have been published in The Print and they were reproduced on the MVI portal and therefore this advisory about Print. The Print is a powerful media station, it is influential, whether it will be considered valuable by government, academia, educationists, corporate moguls and Think tanks etc is debatable. Why this preamble, because many veterans find Print a very willing avenue to write their strategic thoughts and evaluations. In my view, Print is not neutral, their conclusions and deductions are made first, and the narrative must marry that endgame, happily.

2. Recall the devastatingly conclusive deductions that emerged from the Armenia-Azerbaijan war of 2020 where swarms of drones were used for the very first time. Many writers across the globe including India, concluded that all future wars will be fought with Drones, nothing else need be done. Concentrate efforts in drones alone, the rest has become irrelevant and secondary. Russo-Ukraine conflict continues sans swarms of drones. But veterans have drawn lessons for India from both these conflicts. The USA-Iran war has not seen swarms of drones. In the writings of that era of early 2020s, Indian writers found the Indian military leadership of that time, wanting in preparations for new conflicts against Pakistan and they always threw China into their stories, for good measure. Let’s put all this phobia about China in perspective. Recall that our skirmish with China at Depsang in Eastern Ladhak happened in Apr-May 2013, again in May 2020, and was resolved only in Oct 2024. During this time from 2013 to 2024 India has made massive infra increments in Eastern Ladhak. The whole military geography of that region has been strengthened on the ground and for air operations. I make this point to emphasize that the politico-military-intelligence-bureaucratic-corporate combine in India has collectively and effectively achieved this monumental change. China has noticed this and accepted what Indian leadership can do. The same can be said about Doklam which erupted in Jun to Aug 2017 and has been settled between the two nations. Diplomatically today, India is engaging closely with Chinese leadership in full public view and with intense negotiations behind closed doors. So, the constant irritant that the political and military leadership in India is neglecting Chinese threats needs to be tempered. Our leaders are fully seized by China's postures, intentions, capacity and desire along the LAC. They gave names to our villages we have renamed our villages and regions and ignored their actions. It is a poor sense of judgment to keep inserting China into all analyses about Pakistan, as though Indian leadership has forgotten that China shares a 3500 Kms border with us with many glaciers and rivers impacting India.

3. Let us get to the matter of Pakistan upgrading itself for the next round. In truth it is not the next round, it is revenge. The invincibility of Pakistani armed forces has been shattered by Sindoor. Unlike in India, their media and ordinary public do not have reels on a subject like Sindoor, where they can freely criticise and even condemn what Pakistani military does. Witness how severely people castigate and even abuse our leadership and Armed Forces, distasteful as it is, and such talk is common from ordinary people. But not so across the border. So, no one in India has an inkling on how the majority of Pakistan's public viewed the Kargil war, Pahalgam murders, terrorist activity in Kashmir, Sindoor, Baluchistan, Afghanistan, Iran-US war, shortages, inflation, and bad governance. That being so, it would be correct to assume that most of our fauji authors also have very miniscule data on these matters. To be sure, the element of revenge and restoring the izzat of Muslim Pakistan for the acts done by Kafir-Hindu-Bania-Hindustan is supreme. And this is widely taught across the full spectrum of Pakistani population, and will continue to be so. It is not new and this factor has become an integral part of all planning for war / battles / skirmishes against India. Which brings us to the Kargil Committee (KC) as the fountainhead for the concept of Theatre. One often ignored fact about the KC is that, only one member from the armed forces was integral to the committee, he was Lt Gen KK Hazari, Arty. The KC report states that many armed forces officers were interviewed and consulted. I would hope that those officers' views, observations, comments, recommendations, critiques, frustrations, anger, were heard dispassionately and patiently, and recorded. But sadly, I am constrained to say that it could not have been so, because such committees do not have the time nor the terms of reference, to indulge in such compassionate and cooperative activities. Additionally, how many of those Faujis interviewed were from the IAF, who were they, and what did they have to do with Kargil? Thus, and I will possibly say it often, the IAF element was absent within the KC, and possibly outside the committee too, even though air power was used very convincingly and successfully on the Kargil heights with all its limitations and mistakes. All analysts who vouch for and fervently promote the concept of Theatres, quote KC as the firm basis. But do observe that the absence of the IAF inside the committee, during its deliberations and recommendations, is where the intrinsic flaw about Theatres emerges. There could have been no input about how air power would be deployed, used, divided, exchanged, constrained and controlled when Theatres would come into being. Which is why the IAF has consistently resisted the breaking up of its staggeringly elastic air support capacity, into insignificant 'havai tukdis', to be confined and restrained within the geographical boundaries of a theatre. We will come back to this vexing problem many times.

4. Many writers frighten their readers about the preparations that Pak is making to overcome their deficiencies during Sindoor. As a Tongue-In-Cheek, are they making up their deficiencies to kill many more Hindus somewhere in India, just 26 at Pahalgam was a poor show? These analysts list many actions by Pakistan on restructuring, creating new centres of power, new acquisitions, upgrading of sensors, intelligence, eyes-in-skies, latest weaponry and so on. This information with names, places, sources, lethality, limitations with dates are given in stark sequence as would be in a military staff paper, and it is as perfect as it can be, and in my view it must be true. Why should these authors give to the Pakistani armed forces more than they are worth? Yet there is a very famous saying that all military commanders like to give their enemy more than he actually has, so that when they defeat that enemy, the victory will be all the more valiant. Military Appreciations have to be cautious that they do not give the enemy greater capability than he deserves. Thus, allowing for full correctness of what Pakistan is shoring up to extract their revenge for Sindoor, the quantum must be significant to take on an enemy such as the Indian Armed Forces. It is here that I am foxed with this list and capabilities enumerated by many, where the implication appears to be that the Indian state is oblivious and strangely ignorant of what Pakistan is doing since May 2025. That India keeps saying Sindoor is Paused not Concluded, gives Pakistan the very cause to upgrade & update weaponry and associated support services. My submission is straightforward, if our veteran faujis have this long list of Pakistani activities to wage war against India, it is legitimate to ask, how did you get this data? You have no inside links with arms suppliers, weapon manufacturers, drone vendors, radar producers, Air to Air missiles companies, satellite photo sellers and so on. Your information has to be available in open sources across the world, and thus your sources are in the public domain. That being so, most surely everybody in India who is responsible to prevent Pakistan from doing what it wants to do, must also be privy to what has been stated about the upgrade / updates of Pakistani armed forces. Surely these writers do not want their readers to believe that they know, but the Indian State does not know? I close by saying that India and her serving Faujis are already engaged in countering every upgrade / update that Pakistan has got and is getting. If you know, and all your readers know, yet the Indian Armed Forces leadership does not know? How can anyone say that? Kya baat hai ji, bewakoof kiskoo banaya?

5. Which brings me to the Theatres and how the Kargil Committee (KC), suggested it along with the need for a CDS. Truth is that KC never used the word Theatre anywhere. Apart from creating CDS, KC recommended Integration of Armed Forces and creation of Joint Operational Commands. Naturally, how these Joint Commands were to be created was left to Armed Forces HQs and MOD. Integration was also critically identified to create commonality in equipment, weapons, training and so on, there being stress on savings in defence expenditure. The terms of reference of the KC were very specific and precise. The KC was formed on 29 July 1999, three days after victory at Kargil. The report was finalised in Dec 1999, in five months, given to the PM in Jan 2000 and tabled in parliament on 23 Feb 2000. All done within six months, speedily, swiftly and precisely, its terms of reference being so direct and exact. It would be natural to observe then, that prolonged deliberations and multitude of opinions moving forward-backward and being debated at length would not have been the hallmark of the KC. Its members were Mr K Subramanyam, Lt Gen Hazari, Mr BG Verghese a journalist and Mr Satish Chandra a Foreign Service officer, then Secy of the National Security Council. It is not for me to question the competence and integrity of any of these persons. But how much Verghese and Satish Chandra knew about reorganisation of our military commands and what these two could have contributed towards this subject must attract our attention. The restructuring of Higher Defence Management and Intelligence flaws were also critical aspects for the KC. But nationwide geographical operational theatres were never in the thought process of the KC. Those who use the KC as the firm base from which to launch the concept of Theatres are misleading their readers and India in general.

It is blasphemy. For three and half years, from Jan 2000 till May 2004 a CDS could not be appointed. Nor could a group of experts be gathered to deliberate how to integrate Indian Armed Forces and create joint operational commands. During the 10 years of UPA rule from 2004 to 2014, the KC files remained dormant, in 2015 the Shekatkar Committee (SC) was formed for a host of matters but not for integration of Forces and making Joint Operational commands. Many try to allude that SC also recommended theatres, it was not in their charter. Mr Modi declared that a CDS will be appointed on 15 Aug 2019 and Gen Rawat was made CDS on 31 Dec 2019. Look at the time frame readers, KC tabled in Feb 2000, the CDS appointed in Dec 2019. Speculations of how to implement the KC report and who would translate it into action on ground were rampant and full of misleading articles and in debates in the electronic media. By 2015 Tv debates had become very prominent and smart phones adorned millions of Indian hands. It was in these early years of this millennium, that the word Theatres found space in our lexicon and turned military thinking upside down. Can we reinvent the suggestion of Joint Operational Commands (JOC) into Theatres? How do we do it? What did KC mean by those words? How was Joint Operational Commands transmuted into Theatres, and by which group of experts? Who all constituted that group? Was a Joint Staff Paper made by the three services, as a fall out of the KC report? Did the three Vice Chiefs / Deputy Chiefs / concerned PSOs get to study that Staff Paper, if written at all, before it was sent to CDS / DMA and then MOD? These and many more imponderables remain unknown on the Theatre Concept. Now, we do not have Mr Subramanyam around to ask him what truly did he and his group have in mind about Joint Operational Commands.

6. Now onto the use of air power within that theatre to win the battle that the theatre commander is fighting. Even if we had 42 sqns and divided all our offensive air power into three or four theatres, the actual distribution would be determined by geography along with tactics. How much of the terrain is desert, hills, mountains, jungle? What are the weather imperatives that will decide how air support would be delivered? Where is the battle expected to be fought? Which airfields will become active and which will be in reserve? How much of air defence will be allocated to each Theatre and where will it be stationed to give max effect to both air forces' and ground forces' assets, both static and mobile. Such are the unknowns that will become contentious matters when offensive and defensive air power is to be parcelled out. The next issue will be how to parcel out Transport and Heptr forces. There are too many factors to enumerate here, but certainly air forces of all kinds must not be limited within the geographic boundaries of a single Four-Star theatre commander's AOR. Has adequate thought been given to what kind and type of land forces and air forces will be encapsulated within the Maritime Theatre? When our active and live threats are everywhere except in the Maritime arena, this becomes a difficult option since these land / air forces will remain idle. They cannot be engaged at the LAC / LOC and insurgency areas. Nor can they be exchanged between other Theatres as a standard Turn-Around. And if we do that, then it is exactly what we are doing now between Commands is it not? As very well thought through by our founding fathers, all air force training facilities are in South India, far away from enemy locations.

These training facilities and infrastructures cannot be usurped by air force operational units that will be kept in the Maritime Theatre. Brand new airfields will have to be created for them, so the element of cost saving gets nullified if not reversed. The same applies to the Army operational units that will be based under Maritime Theatre. These fighting units cannot take over buildings, accommodation, training infrastructures that are currently occupied by the incumbents. New cantonments will have to be created, thus nulling and neutralising the belief of cost savings. But there is another ingredient that is ignored when it is vehemently stated that air power by itself cannot win a war / battle. That ingredient is that land forces cannot hope to get significant gains on ground without air forces engaging targets in depth as well as those in close proximity to own ground forces. And these include both airborne as well as ground-based targets. The neutralisation of enemy air defence and surveillance capacity has to be a primary task in any battle, as was done in Sindoor. The Four-Star Theatre commander cannot do it using land or even sea forces. For that task to get done effectively, and for a reasonably long time, the small 'havai tukdi' that exists inside a Theatre cannot do it. Even when engaged in a Two Front war, our air forces will have to be repeatedly relocated to tackle the situation as it keeps emerging and changing. Here we are talking of the possibility of a war being fought by Three Theatres at the same time. Transport aircraft and fighters must be under command and control of a central authority to achieve the task of supporting all Three Theatre Commanders. Which is what we are doing now, and successfully at that. Sindoor, IPKF, Cactus, Depsang, Eastern Ladhak, Covid, Afghanistan, Sudan are examples.

The Command-to-Command exchange of air power, executed by Air HQs who have the complete picture, cannot be made any better by creation of Theatres. Because it will still be a Theatre-to-Theatre exchange that can only be executed by Air HQs. Again, if air power within that Theatre cannot win its war or battle for that Theatre; how will the Theatre commander get victory in his AOR? Without achieving some control over the air space, his land forces will get hammered day and night, he must get additional offensive air power from outside his Theatre which will come, deliver weapons, and go back outside his Theatre.

That is precisely what we are doing right now are we not? It is granted that any air power, including Indian air power, cannot win a war by itself. Air power is not designed to do that. But why encourage us to create smaller elements of air power that cannot even win a skirmish, within a Theatre’s geographical boundary. All because some thinkers / planners misinterpreted and misused the words in the KC, to mean self-contained Theatres with elements of the three services under one Four-Star commander. And they mathematically proved that it would bring about huge savings. Today, after having engaged with both adversaries since 1999, under the umbrella of 15 operational Commands very successfully, how can we dismantle what works so effectively and devastatingly against our adversaries? Beware, Pakistan is just waiting for us to dismantle our Commands and convert them into Theatres. He knows how our lethality and cohesiveness will diminish and break during the change-over. Observe that he is not altering and dismantling his ORBAT while creating new organisations. Learn lessons from what the enemy is doing, as well as from what he is not doing. This is wisdom.

7. Till early 2005 we had Western Army Command and Southern Army Command defending our border with Pakistan. Both commands were led by a Three-Star general with a huge staff and large bodies of troops to defend his AOR, and take offensive action as planned. Then in April 2005 we created South Western Army Command, with a Three-Star general and a huge staff just like what existed in Western and Southern Army Commands.

Obviously the AOR of both Western and Southern Army Commands was too large for one Three-Star man with his big staff to guide, instruct, monitor, train, inspect and supply. This is the soundness of thought that demanded the creation of SW Army Command. The Air Force had already done it in July 1980 by creating SWAC at Gandhinagar and had taken away a large portion of AOR of WAC. Recall that Northern Army Command was created in 1972 taking away a good part of Western Army Command, once again to make it manageable for one Three-Star man and his staff to handle. This is termed as military erudition, enlightenment and common sense. But observe what we are doing? We want to make Theatres with many more forces and place it again under a single man with a huge staff. This Four-Star man is the same fellow who was till yesterday a Three-Star man, all that has happened is, you have given him an extra star. His staff officers are the same guys except they work in a Theatre HQs and not Command HQs. The training, induction and orientation of all these staff officers and their ORs will remain exactly as it has been for Commands. They will have come from NDA / IMA / AFA / NA and the Regimental Centres of all our paltans. Then how can these very same people who found it cumbersome to manage huge Commands, manage even huger Theatres? So was the creation of South Western Army Command, South Western Air Command, Northern Command, Sothern Air Command, Southern Naval Command and Andaman Command, collective foolishness? Those generals / air marshals / admirals were intellectual pygmies to have created these Commands? Most of them are still around.

Does this clumsy, impulsive, serious blunder of creating Theatres not stare us in the face? The concept talks of only three Theatres, Western, Eastern and Maritime. It is baffling that Nine Army & Air Force Commands are to be encapsulated within Western and Eastern Theatres. Nine Commands to be coalesced into Two Theatres? What is operated, controlled, administered by Nine 3 Star officers will be taken care of by just two 4 Star Officers? What characteristics, properties, attributes, distinctions will these two Four-Star men have to achieve their goal? After all, you are placing the burden on one Four-Star Theatre commander, to do what four to five Three-Star C-in-Cs were doing? Irresponsible thought process at its best. It would be improper to labour this issue further. I humbly assert that IAF has been asking such questions again and again, without any answers from anywhere.

8. Air Forces cannot win any war by itself, proven across the World. The Indian Air Force subscribes to this thought. Which is why the IAF closely integrates with the Indian Army across India. The two services integrate seamlessly because both have put systems in place to ensure that integration. Much more work is being done, and newer threats and even newer technology will create an even tighter integration and consolidating calculus to defeat the enemy. This constant training for making joint planning and joint thinking intrinsic to our daily working, is what integrating the training ecosystems of the three services is all about. It is happening, we fought with this ethos at Kargil and at Depsang and during Sindoor. Pahalgam happened in Apr 25, Sindoor followed in May 2025, for anyone to think that the Indian Air Force selected their Sindoor targets between 22 April and 07 May, 16 days, and only then trained to attack them must be an ignoramus. And to believe that all this was done in isolation without integrating with the Indian Army adds insult to injury. Of our 19 Commands, three are functional and one is Strategic Forces. Without changing the structure of our operational Commands, their communications Staff, lifelines, camaraderie, intense faith in each other, belief in the Other's honesty and integrity; and in their affection for each other, India's Faujis unleashed a coordinated and integrated attack of proportions not witnessed in South Asia.

We need air power to defeat the enemy, and that air power needs to be agile, flexible, all pervasive, integrated with ground forces C-3 architecture, and has to be centrally controlled. This does not need repetition, the IAF's offensive doctrine incorporates this truth. As do the doctrines of all Air Forces in the world. The IAF also knows that the existing operational infrastructure of 15 Operational Commands of the three Services works jointly even though they are separate. The reality is that this unique jointness without amalgamation, is the most potent combination of military power, East of Hormuz, South of Mt Everest, West of the Irrawaddy, and North of Colombo.