As India has officially declared 2025 the ‘Year of Reforms’ in Defence, and the CDS has unveiled a book on India’s theaterisation trajectory, how the country’s theater commands may be different and more innovative merits a discussion. Globally, militaries have two types of theaters – region-oriented, and domain-specific. China and Russia operate on the former model, as exemplified from Russia’s far eastern and south-western commands (among others), and China’s central, northern, southern, eastern, and western TCs. Subsequently, they also created support arms for domain specific jointness, such as cyber units under Russia’s FSB and SVR, and China’s Information Support Force & Cyber force. These are individual bodies, however, designed to assist theaters but are under direct command of the commander-in-chief (Putin/ Xi). Nonetheless, each geo-theater will also have a ‘Joint Command Center’ and academic entities for R&D on mobilising tech and digital spaces for war.
In the US’s case, we see both geographical and functional commands, ranging from AFRICACOM and INDOPACOM in the former category and SOCOM and CYBERCOM in the latter category. The functional combatant commands provide resources to all geo-theaters as needed.
India’s Dilemma
While India is sure to deploy geographical theaters with twi-service/ tri-service integration in each, how best to integrate tech warfare mechanisms for success in multi-domain warfare? And how to stay innovative in this approach, w/o exactly replicating the US and China’s models?
One way could be the creation of tech fusion pods in each geo-theater and dismantling unified commands like DCA and DSA. While the main “cyber-commander” could be the CDS and HQIDS could coordinate fusion pods, each theater should be responsible for cyber and info defence in its own theater of operation – especially in terms of protecting critical infrastructure in their region. Fusion pods could combine R&D and tactical and operational planning for both defence and offense, and on the latter front, these pods could expand the ambit to include ethical hackers, cyber intelligence firm consultants, commercial drone swarm operators, and AI-enabled “staff” for dogfighting practices and other decision-making simulations. All of these, of course, will require security clearance reforms and sustained military oversight.
Each theater, subsequently, could also create academic institutions for training in tech integration for warfighting. Today, we have a single SIGINT training institution at Mhow, for example. Regionally, such training centers could be decentralised and diversified in focus.