New Delhi: Having recently assumed office as India’s third Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), recommissioned General N.S. Raja Subramani is expected to push ahead with the country’s long-delayed Integrated Theatre Commands (ITCs) proposal by presenting its final blueprint to Union defence minister Rajnath Singh later this month.The ITC proposal, finalised by his predecessor, General Anil Chauhan, shortly before demitting office on May 30, now falls to Gen Subramani to guide through the government’s approval processes and, ultimately, oversee its implementation during his undefined tenure.The most sweeping reorganisation of India’s higher military commandRecent media reports indicate that, once endorsed by the defence minister, the proposal will be forwarded to the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) for prime minister Narendra Modi’s approval, potentially setting in motion the most sweeping reorganisation of India’s higher military command structure since Independence.According to Monday’s (July 13) Hindustan Times, quoting “people familiar with the matter”, Gen Subramani will present a detailed roadmap for creating three Integrated Theatre Commands (ITCs) – Northern, responsible for operations along the Chinese border; Western, focused on Pakistan; and Maritime, overseeing operations across the Indian Ocean Region – alongside a Vice CDS.The report further states that four-star ITC commanders would exercise operational control over military operations and, in wartime, receive their operational directions directly from the defence minister rather than through the chiefs of staff of the Indian Army, Indian Navy (IN), and Indian Air Force (IAF).The broad contours of the ITC reforms are by now well known, having been debated at seminars, on television channels, on social media, and in newspaper columns for several years. In essence, India’s existing 17 single-service commands – seven each for the Army and IAF and three for the IN – would coalesce into three ITCs, managed and overseen by a four-star Vice CDS.Under the proposed arrangement, operational control of combat forces would shift from the three service chiefs to the ITC commanders. The former would thereafter function merely as force providers – responsible for raising, recruiting, training, equipping and sustaining their respective services – while the latter would become the designated force employers in military operations.As the character of modern warfare rapidly evolves, few defence planners or security analysts dispute that India requires far greater jointness between its armed services. Recent wars and armed confrontations – from Ukraine to the Israel-Iran hostilities and the wider US military intervention in West Asia – have underscored the need for the seamless integration of land, air, maritime, cyber and space capabilities rather than the compartmentalised, service-centric operations that have characterised India’s defence structure for decades.Hence, theoretically, ITCs for India promise unified planning, faster decision-making and the more efficient employment of increasingly scarce military resources, but whether the reality proves as uniform as the organisational diagrams drawn up by the CDS’s secretariat remains another matter entirely.Where does the CDS stand?Yet the Hindustan Times report raises another fundamental question. It states that the proposed four-star ITC commanders would receive their operational directions directly from the defence minister in times of conflict. If so, where precisely does this leave the CDS? And, under these circumstances, does the CDS become far more than the Defence Minister’s principal military adviser, as originally envisaged when the appointment was created in late 2019? Or, more notably, does he evolve into the country’s de facto operational commander without Parliament ever explicitly redefining his powers?These questions are not merely academic but go to the heart of India’s evolving higher defence architecture. When Gen Bipin Rawat became India’s first CDS in December 2019, he was designated the government’s principal military adviser and secretary of the newly created Department of Military Affairs (DMA). But his founding charter clearly and deliberately denied him operational command over the armed forces.But, under the command arrangement outlined by the Hindustan Times, that carefully drawn distinction appears far less clear. Would the CDS merely coordinate between the defence minister and the theatre commanders, or would he inevitably become the pivotal figure in directing military operations despite possessing no formal command authority? Such a distinction is far from academic as it could create a powerful new centre of military authority around the CDS and his Department of Military Affairs – one that Parliament never explicitly envisaged when it created the office.The proposed ITC arrangement also revives another question that has received surprisingly little public attention.If theatre commanders – all four-star officers-exercise operational command, while the CDS remains merely first among equals, should the latter continue to hold the same star ranking? Several military analysts argue that an officer expected to coordinate multiple four-star theatre commanders and serve as the government’s senior military adviser ought logically to outrank them in a strictly hierarchical system, perhaps through a permanent five-star – Field Marshal appointment.Critics, however, counter that such a step would excessively centralise authority and fundamentally alter India’s long-standing civil-military balance. Either way, theatreisation appears destined to reopen questions that extend well beyond organisational charts.Also, beneath this seemingly broad consensus of ITCs lies a series of unresolved institutional questions that successive Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) governments have largely avoided confronting over the past decade.Foremost amongst these is India’s decision to model its higher military command system on the United States’ Goldwater-Nichols reforms of 1986, which reorganised America’s military into a joint command system. On paper, the similarities appear logical: operational commanders report through the civilian political leadership, while the service chiefs focus primarily on raising, training and sustaining their forces. But this comparison obscures a fundamental difference.The US system functions within an elaborate institutional architecture comprising the secretary of defence, the joint staff, the National Security Council, powerful civilian policy offices and a deeply embedded strategic planning process developed over decades. India’s defence establishment possesses no comparable institutional ecosystem. Successive governments have attempted to replicate the American command relationships without creating the institutional mechanisms that make them work.Important institutional and somewhat awkward questionsConsequently, directing theatre commanders to receive their operational directions from the defence minister too raises important institutional and somewhat awkward questions. Traditionally, Indian defence ministers have functioned as the political head of the armed forces, supported primarily by Ministry of Defence (MoD) bureaucrats, rather than an integrated strategic headquarters.Equally significant, with the notable exception of Jaswant Singh, India’s defence minister for a few months in 2001, all those who occupied this position have been career politicians without any prior military service, many assuming office with only limited familiarity with armed forces organisation and their command arrangements.So much so that senior military veterans privately acknowledge that some defence ministers have initially struggled even with the armed forces’ rank structures and higher command arrangements. Critics therefore question whether transplanting a command model that places theatre commanders directly under the defence minister can succeed without simultaneously creating the institutional machinery, professional military staff and decision-making processes needed to support it.“Command structures cannot simply be transplanted like imported military hardware,” remarked a retired two-star Indian Navy officer, requesting anonymity. “They have to be underpinned by the institutions, processes and expertise that make them function” he added.Nor is this India’s first attempt at fostering greater jointness.The Integrated Defence Staff (IDS), established in 2001 in the aftermath of the Kargil conflict, was conceived as an interim arrangement – a halfway house towards creating a CDS – and intended to become the institutional nucleus for integrated military planning and tri-service coordination. Following the creation of the CDS, HQ IDS was placed under his authority, yet its role and powers remained largely unchanged.Over two decades after its creation, IDS continues to function principally as a coordinating headquarters with limited executive authority, unable to overcome entrenched inter-service rivalries or fundamentally alter the compartmentalised functioning of the armed forces.Theatreisation therefore represents less a fresh beginning than the latest – and by far the most ambitious – attempt to realise reforms first envisaged nearly a quarter of a century ago. Whether it succeeds, where the IDS fell short, will depend less on creating another layer of headquarters than on addressing the deeper and more inherent institutional weaknesses that have long impeded genuine jointness.Remarkably little preparatory work undertaken before appointment of CDSPerhaps one of the most telling indictments of India’s higher defence reforms is that, despite nearly two decades of official committees, strategic studies and institutional debate, remarkably little preparatory work had been undertaken before the CDS was appointed. The IDS and a range of services sponsored think tanks-Centre for Joint Warfare Studies (CENJOWS), Centre for Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS), Centre for Air Power Studies (CAPS), National Maritime Foundation (NMF) and even the MoD-funded Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA) generated no shortage of conferences, papers and discussion.Yet, when the CDS eventually assumed office, there remained no settled doctrine defining his powers, no agreed operational chain of command, no legislative framework governing his authority and no consensus on his relationship with the service chiefs or future theatre commanders. Many of the institutional dilemmas now confronting theatreisation are therefore not new problems at all, but unresolved questions that should arguably have been settled long before the office of CDS was ever created.Perhaps the least examined consequence of theatreisation lies in its eventual impact on the standing of the three service chiefs. In military organisations, hierarchy is not merely ceremonial; it defines authority, influence and professional stature. However carefully the new arrangements are described, transferring operational command to ITC commanders, with the same number of stars, denoting rank, inevitably alters the traditional pecking order.A wide cross-section of retired senior officers privately acknowledge that creating four-star commanders who exercise combat authority over forces raised and sustained by four-star service chiefs risks generating the very institutional friction, bruised hierarchies and competing loyalties that integration is intended to eliminate.The IAF’s continuing reservations over theatreisation illustrate these underlying tensions.Unlike land or maritime forces, which generally operate within defined geographical areas, air power derives much of its effectiveness from centralised control and the ability to concentrate scarce combat assets rapidly across multiple theatres. Fragmenting an already depleted fighter fleet among geographically defined commands, the IAF has argued, risks undermining the very flexibility that gives air power its greatest operational advantage.“Organisational charts alone do not create military effectiveness,” observed a retired three-star IAF fighter pilot, declining to be identified. Successful reform depends just as much on accepted command relationships, coherent civil-military decision-making and institutions capable of supporting them as it does on structural redesign, he added.The under-review command system also risks reopening another long-standing inter-service sensitivity.Complicating the spirit of trust and inter-service confidenceWhen the office of CDS was instituted, it was widely understood that the appointment would rotate between the three services, ensuring thereby that no one force would permanently dominate the new higher defence structure. But given the Army’s numerical preponderance, its institutional weight within the armed forces, its visibility and the likelihood that it will continue to produce most future CDSs, sections of the IN and the IAF fear that theatreisation could gradually acquire an unmistakably Army-centric character. Even if unfounded, such perceptions could complicate precisely the spirit of trust and inter-service confidence upon which successful theatreisation ultimately depends.Gen Subramani therefore inherits far more than a mammoth military restructuring exercise, and securing Cabinet approval for it may ultimately prove the least difficult part of his endeavour. The far greater challenge will lie in building ITCs that command the confidence of those expected to serve within it, resolve lingering questions over authority and accountability, and avoid creating fresh institutional rivalries in the very process of seeking greater jointness.Ultimately, theatre commands will succeed only if they produce a more effective fighting force. Otherwise, India will simply have exchanged one set of headquarters for another while calling it reform.