Without complete involvement of the political leadership, India is not likely to have a credible joint doctrine, which necessitates joint-ness for war-fighting amongst the three services. The notional tri-service command which now exists is not working to expectations
The 62-page second edition of the Joint Doctrine Indian Armed Forces-2017 (JDIAF-2017) prepared by the Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff (HQIDS), Ministry of Defence, was released on April 20 by the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee (COSC), Admiral Sunil lanba, in the presence of Air Chief Marshal BS Dhanoa and General Bipin Rawat.
According to the foreword by Admiral lanba, “the doctrine, pitched at the military strategic level, is meant to guide all members of the Armed Forces on the necessary concepts, principles and ideals under which to achieve the higher goals set upon by the political leadership as deemed in the Indian Constitution”. He added that “this edition (JDIAF-2017) remains aligned with the existing service doctrines”, thereby confirming that the three services will continue to have their own operational doctrines.
The JDIAF-2017 is nothing more than generic war-fighting principles and not the joint doctrine that it has been called. Joint doctrine or war-fighting doctrine is an operational issue meant to be dealt with by the three defence services headquarters through the Chiefs of Staff Committee (COSC). The JDIAF-2017, therefore, should have been prepared by the Chairman COSC and not the HQIDS which is an administrative — and not an operational — headquarters and serves as the secretariat of the Defence Ministry.
The fundamental requirement for JDIAF-2017 was to have the National Security Strategy (NSS) spelt out by the present political leadership. Based upon the NSS, the National Military Objectives (NMO) should have been framed by the COSC, leading to the joint doctrine. The joint doctrine also necessitates the need to have joint intelligence, joint training, joint logistics, joint communications and joint planning which are associated with war-fighting and hence are best left to the services’ headquarters (and not HQIDS), which in India’s case are the highest operational headquarters.
Unfortunately, the little involvement of the political leadership in the writing of the NSS has been explained by Admiral lanba, who writes that the NSS is based upon national objectives defined in the Constitution of India. The JDIAF-2017 explains them as “primarily revolving around safeguarding our nation from any type of internal and external threats/ aggression”.
This approach to NSS formulation makes a travesty of the joint doctrine. Since India has two military lines — line of Control and line of Actual Control — with Pakistan and China respectively, the political leadership should decide how these lines are to be handled, by full blown conventional war, hybrid war or irregular war. This has never been done. Worse, a joint threat assessment of Pakistan and China has never been attempted within the COSC.
Making a joint doctrine before knowing what is to be defended and by what means is putting the cart before the horse. India fritters away huge finances on defence procurements without wondering as to why our adversaries are not deterred by us.
The next issue which needs to be questioned is how the three defence services can tackle the entire spectrum of conflict with full attention against two conventionally powerful, nuclear-armed neighbours who have achieved excellent interoperability or the ability to fight together for common war objectives.
The matter requires further deliberations since the three services’ operational priorities are dissimilar. Both the Army and the Navy are deeply involved in internal security operations. Over 30 per cent of the 12-lakh strong Indian Army is fully committed in Jammu & Kashmir either in anti-infiltration or counter-insurgency roles, and an equal number readies itself to replace them. Then there is counter-insurgency in the northeastern states, and unabated law and order situations which regularly engage the Army. It is for this reason that the Government had appointed General Bipin Rawat as Army chief, superseding two officers; the official press release had mentioned Gen Rawat’s experience in counter-insurgency operations as the main reason for his selection.
Since full-blown conventional war and the present operational tasks of the Army are as different as chalk and cheese, does the Army have time and energy to do hot war-fighting trainingIJ A serving Army commander recently told me that the joint-ness between the Army and the Air Force for the hot war was ‘notional’. This explains why the three defence services have their own war-fighting doctrines, which is antithesis to the short, intense and swift war (with Pakistan) that Army chiefs are used to expounding.
The Indian Navy’s case is no different. Since the November 26, 2008, terrorist attacks in Mumbai, it is heavily involved in coastal defence tasks where expensive and limited warfighting platforms are being routinely flogged. Add to this the need for the Navy to support the Government’s Act East policy with a show of muscle; this is done through the innumerable exercises that the Navy does with friendly foreign Navies. While building tactical level interoperability with friendly Navies is good naval diplomacy, this unfortunately, is at the expense of the Navy’s primary warfighting tasks, especially when the People’s liberation Army Navy's (PlAN) threats have increased in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR).
The Navy has been given the responsibility of being the net security provider in the IOR. However, it has not been told by the political leadership what is meant by this. The Navy leadership itself has different views on what it implies; few retired Admirals are fond of saying that the Indian Navy is robust enough to threaten Chinese commercial interests in the IOR. Ironically, few are perturbed by India’s modest warship building capability as opposed to Chinese capabilities (China has emerged as the top shipbuilding nation in Asia). China is already speaking about six aircraft carriers — two each for the Western Pacific and IOR, and two in reserve. Add to this the bases that it has acquired — in Djibouti on the Bab el-Mandeb and Gwadar — and those it plans to acquire in Sri lanka, Bangladesh and the Maldives.
Given this, the issue is much more than Chinese strategic encirclement of India. Today, India’s hundreds of islands in the IOR especially the Andaman and Nicobar Islands — despite the notional tri-service command — are extremely vulnerable to Chinese growing threats.
Without complete involvement of the political leadership, India is not likely to have a credible joint doctrine, which necessitates joint-ness for war-fighting amongst the three services.
(The writer is co-author with Ghazala Wahab of the recent book, Dragon On Our Doorstep)