Army Chief May Be 1st CDS — But Institutional Framework Is Needed

PM Modi announced on I-Day 2019 that India would soon have its own Chief of Defence Staff. What does this mean?

Image of Army Chief Bipin Rawat used for representational purposes.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

In his address to the nation on the occasion of the 73rd Independence Day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, inter alia, announced a much-awaited defence reform: “To further sharpen coordination between the forces …. India will have a Chief of Defence Staff – CDS”.

It is well known that in 1962, the Indian Air Force (IAF) was not assigned any role; in 1965, the Indian Navy (IN) was kept oblivious of the Army’s attack plan.

Even the 1971 War saw poor coordination between the three Services. Ditto for IPKF operations in Sri Lanka. While 1999 Kargil did see some good Army-IAF coordination, this conflict was limited to a small sector. Thus, a CDS – and joint planning staff – are ideas whose time had come a few decades ago.

The post of a CDS, along with a tri-Service joint planning staff HQ, was first formally mooted by the Kargil Review Committee and the associated Group of Ministers (GoM), as a fundamental defence reform to usher much-needed synergy among the Indian Armed Forces. While tri-Service joint planning was established in the form of the HQ Integrated Defence Staff (IDS), the appointment of a CDS continued to be held in abeyance due of lack of consensus among the political leadership and the armed forces.

Need For A CDS

In the past, war was often a contest between specific units of individual services, and achieving dominance in one or two of the physical domains (land, sea, air) was sufficient for a victory. For example, the armies fought each other on land, and the navies fought each other on the seas — and there was sparse cross-over into the other’s domain.

With the availability of new weapon platforms, this construct has changed, with each armed forces service requiring other services for successfully prosecuting defensive and offensive operations.

Besides, modern wars are industrial and “total’ in nature.

Given that the “logical purpose of war is to make the opponent comply with one's will …”, the amount of destruction that can be wreaked in a short period, as also the apparent fore-shortening of time for decision-makers in view of enhanced information flows, contemporary warfare has thus become an intense contest between the operational systems of each adversary.

This mode of fighting, often referred to as ‘Systems Confrontation’, is waged in the physical domain, as well as in the space and non-physical domains (cyberspace, electromagnetic, psychological).

Systems Confrontation requires “comprehensive dominance” in almost all domains for a victory.

For this, armed forces require a capability for working together, i.e. Integrated Joint Operations (IJO). These are distinct from Joint Operations (JO). The latter lays emphasis on "jointness" within the individual service with vertical linkages, whereas IJO envisions unifying different commanders and fighting forces of different services down to the tactical level. A capability for IJO requires five pre-requisites, namely:

• professional, well-trained manpower;
• modern equipment;
• jointness within each service and horizontal integration with other services;
• seamless, networked information systems;
• importantly, suitable military command & control structures.

This is where a CDS comes in, with each service in the joint planning staff contributing its expertise to the operational plans, and the CDS formulating a plan that best synergises the individual capabilities of each service.

The US’ Jointness Model

Many cite the US military’s jointness model to justify the appointment of a CDS. Created by the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defence Reorganization Act of 1986, it was one of the most sweeping reorganisations of the US military, and vastly improved its capability for IJO.

Even at the beginning of WW-I, the US had found it difficult to coordinate operations, acquisition and logistics between the Army and Navy (each branch reported to different Cabinet-level Secretaries).

Building on the lessons of WW-II, the US combined the Army, Navy and the newly-established Air Force under a single Secretary of Defence in 1947.

However, vicious turf wars and inter-service rivalries continued to disrupt coordination, leading an illustrious chief of the US Strategic Air Command General Curtis LeMay to comment that “The Soviets are our adversary; our enemy is the (US) Navy”.

What US Joint ‘Combatant Commands’ Mandated

There were even cases where individual services, using the clout of their service chief, moved out their respective forces from a region without the knowledge of the region’s commander. Such mixed lines of command had contributed to problems in the Vietnam War, and the catastrophic failure of Operation ‘Eagle Claw’ (1980 attempt to rescues hostages in Iran).

They also led a frustrated US Congress to draft legislation to reform the US military.

The 1986 Act, deeply resented by the US military brass over its five year implementation period, completely revamped the US military's operational chain of command. The US’ joint ‘Combatant Commands’ are the outcome of this Act, which mandated that:

• Respective service chiefs would be only responsible for “organising, training and equipping” personnel – but with no operational control over their forces.
• The troops of each service would be deployed in, and support the commander responsible for a specific function (Special Operations, Strategic, and Transportation) or a Combatant Command.
• The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff would be the principal military adviser to the US President, the National Security Council, and Secretary of Defense.
• The military chain of command would run from the US President through the Secretary of Defence directly to Combatant Commanders, bypassing the Service chiefs — although they have an advisory role to the President and Secretary of Defence.
• All flag-officers must serve in a joint-service position outside their own military service.

The outcome of this Act — and the status of the US military as a leader in IJO — was clearly evident in the 1991 US-led invasion of Iraq, the intervention in Kosovo (1998), 2001-02 invasion of Afghanistan, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The Foundation That Is Needed For CDS To Be Effective

Similar euphoria on ‘jointness’ and ‘single-point advice’ were expressed when HQ IDS was raised. However, the fact is that efficacy of a CDS — or joint staff — is contingent on the higher defence structure, an enabling environment and associated eco-system. While past decades have seen tremendous improvement in tri-service cooperation, the Indian Armed Forces yet don’t seem fully reconciled to inter-services integration. Besides, the Service Chiefs continue to have an operational role and full control over their forces – along with a reluctance to let go of their forces, support non-integral forces, or let their forces be commanded by other services.

Further, the timing of the announcement seems to suggest that COAS General Bipin Rawat could be appointed as the first CDS.

Given his personal and professional equation with the powers-that-be, it is well possible that he would be able to quickly operationalise the post of the CDS.

However, for the post of CDS to deliver well into the future, what is needed is an institutional framework.

It therefore remains to be seen how the government will address such issues – as also whether the CDS would be a five-star rank, or a primus inter pares four-star. In sum: to optimally utilise the CDS, India needs to undertake additional military reforms.

However, the political control and institutional constructs in India are not the same as those prevalent in the US, while India’s future threat environment is also far different from the dynamics that had shaped the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986. In sum: reformation of the Indian military cannot be a copycat model — it requires deep, strategic thought, and appropriate institutional structures.

(Kuldip Singh is a retired Brigadier from the Indian Army. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)