Sindoor -One : Lessons ,Theatres ,Enemy & Beyond --Gp Capt AG Bewoor
- Group Capt A G Bewoor VM(G)
- 18 hours ago
- 6 min read
Updated: 37 minutes ago
Date :- 09/05/26
Editor's Note
The article by Brig Advitya Madan published by MVI on 8 May 2026 spontaneously produced this piece from the pen of Gp Capt AG Bewoor. It acknowledges and appreciates Madan's article and even goes beyond to bring forth some more valuable lessons that India and its armed forces must learn from Operation Sindoor-1. This would prevent us from often being caught off guard and surprised by our adversary .
The link of Brig Madan's article is given below for your reference :
---Col Vinay B Dalvi, Editor MVI
1.Brig Madan's article is the very first one where he so correctly says what every military person should: Dig deep and find out all the lessons from Sindoor. That is what we should have been doing from the day the Sindoor ceasefire was announced. He must be commended for writing this statement, which has not come from the higher military levels, as it should have. Of-course not one armchair strategist and defence expert has said it so coherently. Unqualified felicitations to Brig Madan.
2. I am sure there is very serious activity among the top brass to do much of what Madan says needs to be done. Pakistan is not sitting idle and they too are scratching their collective chins to take revenge. It has always been their unmitigated compulsive drive to seek revenge against India. And they will link it to their religion so that no one can contest their stated aim. This mindset cannot be changed from outside. The Pakistanis have to do it themselves. There are once again Back Channel meetings happening between Pakistanis and Indians, so say some reports. The last time it was an utter failure, and why India entered into such a venture will remain a mystery to most of us. How we allowed pacifism to take birth against a lying untrustworthy enemy who has sworn by his faith, to hate the very air we breathe and the ground we live on? Indeed, the inescapable need to maintain uninterrupted Direct One to One Line of communication between us cannot be allowed to break. It has always been the final route that created cease fire agreements. Yet, how can we forget the innumerable times that Pakistan has let India down. What their terrorists did in Pahalgam has not disgusted even one Pakistani, man or woman, to condemn it?
3. China and Turkey too will want to get their pound of flesh, with or without blood, because India proved that their equipment could and was defeated. There are enough spies working for Turkey / China / Pakistan within India to tell them what and how we are progressing. Pakistan will once again do something that will evince a Sindoor type of response. Most surely, they will be better prepared with greater technology and sophistication. So what? But I am certain that our planners, both civilian and faujis, are working out a fresh and totally unexpected set of rules of engagement. That the same game of Sindoor 1 will not work is known to us is it not? How to neutralise the Turk shadow in this equation is what India has to develop, and there are many options for that activity. Never again should we let the Turks enter our land, seas or airspace, they first came with Ghazni in 1000 AD, now they are trying through Pakistan, Indians must recognise this perfidy. A dangerously nation with full unreliability. Our proclivity to forgive has hurt India terribly over the centuries, Pahalgam and Sindoor has shown us how this attitude has changed, and must remain so.
There is also heartburn in many forums in India that Pakistan is brokering a ceasefire, and has left India behind and embarrassed. What absolute mental retardation this shows. The extreme hardlines that all protagonists have taken is so convoluted and tortuously perverted, that to enter the labyrinth of resolving the crisis is a fearsome venture. India has been extremely wise and not entered the quagmire of Iran-USA-Israel-UAE-Saudi-Bahrain-Quatar-Oman-Israel quicksand. Indeed, the Indian engagement with all is happening in the shadows, which is how it should be done. How many Pakistani fingers will get singed if not burnt is yet to be seen. Besides, if Pakistan succeeds, then it also means that she is capable of serious negotiations with India, and we should welcome that achievement of our neighbour.
4. The use of the word Silos to describe absence of cross - Service coordination is a poor diversion to once again bolster the Theatre concept. The demand for Theatres from different sources and different authors keeps popping up in disparate and assorted portals / magazines / talk shows / podcasts and so on. Does it not look akin to the disinformation campaign Pakistan wages against India? Amazing to see our own people cutting our own throats? I have written this earlier, the Command structure is solid and time tested under very strenuous and difficult conditions. The coordination achieved during Sindoor may not have been as good as we wanted it to be, but it was very effective to defeat the enemy. Is that bad? Madan's article seeks to find out what did not work? What new weapons the enemy can deploy? What our country can and must do to effectively counter & destroy future enemy deployments. The idea is not to shake up the infrastructure and fiddle with our foundations and firm bases for planning and war gaming. The system is working well, our coordination is good, we know it. Turf wars between the three Services are disappearing. It is not like in 1965 when the Army Chief did not tell the Air Force chief of his offensive plans. Those two men did not train together, did not fight any war together, did not eat together, they flourished independently of each other.
That era has gone; we are a different Indian Armed Forces today with free flow of information and implicit trust. Each Service knows what it can do and more important, what it cannot do. The coordination between the Armed Forces offensive and defensive Command Centres, was also integrated with our civil air surveillance network. Sindoor did not just happen, it was made to happen, by design, practice, rehearsals, integration. All done using the existing and robust infrastructure in the time-tested Command system. It works, do not make spoiling immature attempts to dismantle it, you will not be forgiven by generations that follow us.
5. Once again, Kargil was a Theatre under the Western & Northern Commands of Air Force & Army with unlimited support from all other Commands. It worked. IPKF was a Theatre of Ops under our three Southern Commands. Other Commands gave full support. But IPKF was a Theatre of Ops. Iraq was a theatre of Ops under Central Command of the USA. Iran war is again a Theatre of Ops, under more than one Command. The Covid campaign was fought using our Commands and the brilliant and dedicated support it received from all sectors, military and civilian, was singularly noteworthy and striking in its success. Do not upset an established and working system just because a new concept was thrown up; without deeply imagining and studying the impacts, salutary and deleterious, of changing over. It is very obvious to even a casual reader and listener that; sober and concentrated debates involving all the affected people has not taken place, before forcing the powers to the change over from Commands to Theatres.
There is far too much haste that clearly shows a fear, that the concept may get thrown out and taken off the table, because it does not have adequate merit. That injury would be too much. Remember, accepting that you were wrong is never a problem; it admitting that the other was right that hurts. Therein lies the problem with abandoning the Theatre concept.
6. There is a danger in restructuring our higher defence organisations at the present juncture. The enemy and his allies are waiting and wanting to take revenge and humiliate India. Pakistan has never abjured, even by mistake, from their stated aim on Kashmir. Their stated aim of Ghazwa E Hind has never been withdrawn and repudiated. Their hate for the Hindu faith and its followers persists, and they teach that hate to their children and adults with equal fervour. We cannot wish away Pakistan, but we can and have to be abundantly cautious and equally suspicious of her stated intentions. Pakistan and her dubious allies, are just waiting for our organisational cohesion to get broken to be rebuilt. The breaking can happen swiftly, but the rebuilding will take years to reach the hardiness of our existing Commands to withstand intellectual, technological and physical challenges and invasions that will start. That is when the enemy will strike and we will be at our weakest and most disorganised state while traversing those critical crossroads. Cannot everyone see it? We have to strengthen what we have now and fortify and protect our integrated networks and its links which are the targets.
The ego and turf wars are from a forgotten time and everyone has learnt their lessons. Once we can reduce the enemy threat to an insignificant proportion, which will take time; and when their nasty violent probes can be easily neutralised, then, and only then, should we examine how to restructure our Commands. To do so today will be tantamount to wilful neglect, and will be punishable and unforgivable. Can we do this to ourselves? Should we? I again place before everyone the truth that, character is the thing that counts most; yet most people are worried about their reputation, what others think about them. Commands & Theatres is just that, Character & Reputation.