Innovate and integrate

The future of war is based on mastering the flow of information and conducting combat operations jointly. There can be only one national operations room and one operational plan. Anybody who believes that the three services can conduct the next war without joint training, planning, strategic and tactical operations is ignorant of the far reaching changes that have taken place the world over and are continuing apace on a daily basis. Military operations of the future will be won by that side that can best synergise the efforts of its armed forces furiously and jointly. The revolution in military affairs (RMA) is based on the thesis that dominating the ability of the enemy to collect, collate and disseminate information will determinate the victor, as distinct from the vanquished. The RMA is an application no service can conduct individually, for parochialism goes against the very grain of this thesis. The battlefield of tomorrow is certain to be a lot more complex than it is today, and for success to beguaranteed, the entire edifice of the current decision-making process shall have to be upgraded to that of today; at present it is structured in order to conduct operations in North Africa, the Battle of Britain or land troops at Normandy. The days of dreamy-eyed cavalry charges and aerial dog-fights are long gone, now it is driven by highly intricate technologies and harnessing the energies latent in that little chip.

That said, the Defence Minister’s speech at the combined commanders conference calling for integrated command structures has to be welcomed. For the first time a political leader has ventured into this territory, but he must not pause there. The armed forces have to move into the direction of jointmanship, of that there cannot be any doubt. For that to be achieved, they would have to be willing to sacrifice some of their parochial service interests. If the army man can come under the command of a flier, so can the air force pilot serve under the direction of the officer in olive green orwhite. India’s armed forces suffer from these perplexing postures. The Defence Minister must push them out of this intellectually debilitating attitude, and into the structures of the future. But for that to happen the government must, firstly, put the other decision-making arrangements in order. There has been an inordinate delay in setting up vital systems.

The country still awaits the constitution of a National Security Council (NSC). It has been some months since the task force report was submitted, and it is high time the structure was instituted. It is only after the NSC comes into place will the equally awaited strategic defence review (SDR) get underway. One follows the other, and they would be charged with the responsibility of analysing the country’s strategic interests, be they political, diplomatic, societal, cultural and economic. It is the SDR that will tell the government what kind of armed forces we need, at what level of readiness and under what decision-making structures. Fossils are onlygood for teaching children history and biology, not managing the fourth largest armed forces in the world. The SDR will say all that, and it will also suggest that the armed forces integrate and demonstrate jointmanship today, for tomorrow.