Future-Ready Forces

As the three-day biennial 16th Combined Commanders’ Conference (CCC) kicked off in Kolkata this week, the Modi government and the armed forces face some hard choices over defence reforms. With this CCC theme being “Year of Reforms—Transformation for the Future”, the choices confronting the government are not easy. They are likely to be compounded by monetary resource and supply-chain constraints, weaknesses in India’s defence industrial base and bureaucratic resistance from the armed forces about the scope of the reforms. The prime minister in his address to CCC, which is the most significant agglomeration of apex-level policymakers and military commanders since Operation Sindoor, clearly emphasised the importance of augmenting “jointness, atmanirbharta and innovation” to effectively deal with contingencies, crises and war. There are three key reform areas which the government needs to be serious about accelerating—theatre commands, domestic defence supply chains and civil-military fusion (CMF).  

While the services undoubtedly will need to push ahead with organisational reforms, embrace technological innovation and change, forge deep synergy between themselves and enhance readiness levels for multi-domain operations, the government also has to reiterate to the leadership of the armed forces the importance of its own agenda. One key area where fissures between the services or at least resistance to government directives remains is the issue of Integrated Theatre Commands (ITCs). ITCs are fundamental to the deep integration and jointness that the prime minister emphasised in his speech at CCC. In an earlier edition of CCC, the prime minister had made it clear that he wanted to see the services break free from their entrenched silos and fully embrace theatre commands and greater jointness. However, the Air Chief Marshal of the Indian Air Force (IAF) AP Singh recently expressed his reservations about proceeding with the establishment of ITCs and sought the creation of a joint planning and coordination centre in New Delhi as the mechanism to prepare and fight “future wars”. Now, the government needs to underline its prerogatives and that its directives on ITCs cannot be scuttled or undermined even as it solicits the advice and suggestions from the services that can be reasonably adopted or accommodated to make the ITCs function more efficiently and effectively. IAF cannot remain a holdout, while the other services, namely the Indian Navy and the Indian Army, seem more ready to forge ahead with the implementation of theaterisation. 

The second area which needs urgent attention is the issue of defence supply chain. Indigenisation or “self-reliance” cannot crystallise without much stronger generic industrial reforms, but more critically, the government must work intensively to create and cement defence supply-chain resilience. This may seem obvious, but for a state such as India with heavy import dependencies confronting two active military threats from China and Pakistan, the Modi government has no option but to double down for the remainder of its third term to make India resilient to defence supply-chain shocks. Two recent events have underlined the adverse consequences for military supply chains—Covid-19 and the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Up until these two events exposed the chinks in defence supply chains, India and many other countries were not fully cognisant of the need for resilience that is mandatory to withstand disruptions in defence supplies. However, Covid and the Russian invasion severely exposed the comfort level for New Delhi, which was made worse with China exploiting the Covid pandemic to precipitate the boundary crisis in April-May 2020 with India. The challenge along the Sino-Indian border has only marginally abated. 

From a domestic defence industrial standpoint, military supply chains will remain distinct from civilian supply chains in that they are required to balance efficiency during peacetime with the capacity to scale up rapidly during a crisis or wartime. Doing this is not going to be easy because the defence industry, especially the private sector, will focus on cost-based development and procurement. Consider how dependent the US has become on China to supply rare earth metals so vital to the American defence industry, to the point that Washington has literally ceded leverage to Beijing. This is a direct consequence of a combination of two factors: American private defence industry not wanting to incur the cost of extracting rare earth metals and environmental sensitivities, which has effectively given China a monopoly on controlling the supply of rare earth. Europe’s defence industry faces an even more daunting task than its American counterpart due to lack of capacity to scale up, which it is now addressing. Thus, as India allows greater private-sector participation, it must make sure the private industry as much as the Defence Public Sector Units (DPSUs) are responsive to scalability during crises and war. In order to obviate disruptions and limit vulnerabilities, private defence industry as well as DPSUs will also need incentives in the form of compensation for stockpiling reserves.

Finally, CMF remains critical to the readiness of the Indian armed forces and their capacity to fight future wars. Since the armed forces need to adapt to accelerating technological change, the full embrace of CMF is imperative. China, which is India’s primary adversary, is doing exactly that, because it sees the targeted development of quantum technology, artificial intelligence, big data, semiconductors, 5G and 6G, advanced nuclear technology and aerospace technology. China is not merely investing in these technologies, it is actively acquiring them by compelling transfers of technology, extensive espionage, and theft. China aims to become the first country to transition via CMF to “intelligent warfare”. India will be a key target of this capability and India’s armed forces will be targeted directly or indirectly through Chinese transfers of CMF technologies to Pakistan. India’s DPSUs and defence private sector companies will be required to invest more deeply in research and development related to CMF technologies. Thus, the government’s tasks are clear: asserting civilian primacy on ITCs, ensuring resilient domestic defence supply chains, and deep investment in CMF technologies. 

While daunting, these defence reforms are critical to ensure that Indian armed forces are capable of meeting the challenges of the 21st-century battlefield.  

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