CDS with command and confusion: India’s military reforms, unfinished agenda

By Manish Kumar Jha

 When India created the post of Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) in 2019, it was projected as the most consequential military reform since Independence. The office was meant to end decades of inter-service rivalry, streamline military planning, drive integration among the Army, Navy and Air Force, and most importantly, establish unified theatre commands suited for modern warfare.

Nearly seven years later, the promise remains largely unrealised.

General Anil Chauhan, India’s 2nd CDS who just retired, has repeatedly spoken about transformation, jointness, cognitive warfare, cyber capability, space militarisation and emerging technologies. His recent remarks outlining plans for theatre commands, Defence Space Agency expansion, cyber warfare structures, cognitive warfare institutions, drone forces and data-centric military organisations indicate ambition.

Yet ambition alone cannot substitute clarity of authority, institutional coherence, or strategic execution. Execution remains for the future task. Apart from forging a space agency and doctrine, there are unfinished concurrent agenda, long overdue, lost in speeches and ambitions too often.

What is needed for the CDS is a bold visionary, not a nice man from the military. Because the task is really difficult—define the role, get the role, and execute that role—gradually and tangibly. That will set forth a new journey, first and foremost, out of ambiguity.

The central problem is also increasingly visible: India created a CDS without fully defining the office’s powers, command authority, or relationship with the civilian bureaucracy in the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

The result is a system caught somewhere between bureaucratic overlap and strategic ambiguity, at the moment, at some points.

The office of the CDS was intended to become the principal military adviser to the government and the driver of joint military reforms. The CDS, despite holding a four-star rank and heading the Department of Military Affairs (DMA), remains constrained by a fragmented decision-making architecture where authority is diffused and accountability diluted.

While this institutional contradiction has slowed the reform momentum, there is no denying the delays over the fundamental mandate—jointness, theaterization or integrated commands in various avatars. It should have been out in full bloom despite difficulty in mapping capability and asset management.

Theatre commands — arguably the most significant restructuring of India’s military since Independence — remain stuck in endless deliberations. The proposal envisages geographically aligned unified commands integrating assets from all three services under a single operational commander: a northern theatre focused on China, a western theatre for Pakistan, and a maritime theatre for the Indian Ocean.

The idea is strategically sound. Modern wars are joint by nature. China has already reorganised its military into integrated theatre commands. The United States perfected unified combat structures decades ago. Even smaller militaries increasingly operate through integrated operational systems.

India, however, continues to debate fundamentals.

General Chauhan insists reforms are not waiting for theatre commands. Technically, he is correct. Agencies for cyber, space, communications and geospatial warfare are being expanded. Files have moved. Financial approvals have been obtained. New verticals are under discussion.

But these are enabling institutions — not the reform itself.

The real litmus test of jointness is operational integration. That requires unified command structures, shared doctrines, integrated logistics, interoperable systems and, above all, clear authority. Without theatre commands, India’s military modernisation risks becoming a collection of disconnected bureaucratic projects rather than a coherent warfighting transformation.

The deeper concern is whether the CDS has possessed the political backing and institutional authority necessary to impose difficult reforms.

Jointness cannot emerge through seminars, announcements or committees alone. Every major military reform worldwide has involved bureaucratic resistance, inter-service turf battles and political intervention. In India, resistance from within the services — particularly concerns over operational autonomy and resource allocation — has been visible for years. Yet the CDS has appeared more as a coordinator than an empowered integrator capable of enforcing structural change.

This raises uncomfortable questions.

Was the CDS model inadequately conceived from the start? Or has the government sought to test the office’s functionality and efficacy before empowering it? That is not true. The government has given enough “broad mandate” to decide the course of action. The CDS must dig out substance from such a mandate and execute it with firepower. That is the leadership, faith, and courage expected of the CDS.

Importantly, the CDS must choose his advisors who are already aligned with his vision, not based on ranking. I recall General Rawat once told me: Leadership is about having smarter people in your team, taking, and supporting bold ideas. Did the outgoing chief have such a set of advisors? A routine job is not for the CDS. The CDS is for breaking beyond, driving military modernisation with pace and passion.

Either way, the halfway approach has created confusion rather than transformation.

India today faces simultaneous challenges from China, Pakistan, cyber warfare, unmanned systems, information conflict and grey-zone operations. The nature of warfare is evolving faster than India’s military structures. In such an environment, fragmented command systems are not merely inefficient — they are dangerous.

To be fair, General Chauhan inherited a difficult institutional landscape following the untimely death of General Bipin Rawat, the country’s first CDS and the original architect of theatre command reforms. But after years of consultations and deliberations, the absence of visible structural outcomes is becoming harder to justify.

Military leadership must not operate through overlapping jurisdictions and competing centres of authority. Democracies require civilian control of the military — but not the technological control.

The government now also appears to have taken a decisive call, choosing a technologically oriented successor, a smart strategist and someone who is ready to go beyond the routine and ranking—General NS Raja Subramani, is the man of the hour. What are the recommendations? Not yet! He also has commanded a fearsome strike corps of the Indian Army, and he knows how to lead from the front, which requires joint warfare and weapons that you build yourself to fire with conviction.

So, empowering the CDS is now more about searching within for gradually defined operational and institutional authority to implement integration reforms, or acknowledging that the current structure is incapable of delivering genuine jointness.

Continuing with ambiguity will only prolong delays while adversaries modernise at speed.

India’s military transformation cannot remain trapped between vision and veto.

The nation created the office of the CDS to end precisely this kind of institutional confusion. Unless authority, accountability and reform timelines are clearly established, the grand project of theatre commands may become yet another unfinished strategic experiment.

Now the hope is much higher.

About the author: Manish Kumar Jha is a national security expert and the founder of the military think tank Strategic Insights. As an editor, his coverage spans globally over 40 countries. He is associated with India’s leading military think tank, USI and CAPS and was awarded an International Press Fellow from Oxford University /KPF.