Jointness in India's Armed Forces.

I have just learned that I have been fortunate enough to have been granted a Visiting Fellowship at IDSA(http://www.idsa.in/), one of India's premier strategic and security think tanks. For three months this spring, I will be working on a research project, destined to be published in their journal Strategic Analysis(http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/rsan), as well as helping out in the daily activities of the think tank (organizing seminars etc). Here is the brief outline of my research project which deals with the Indian Military's fitful quest for jointness since the Kargil war. When the article is eventually published I will put the link up here.

Jointness, or jointmanship, as it is often referred to in Indian strategic writings, has come to be considered as an integral and essential component of the RMA, or Revolution in Military Affairs, along with other major modern concepts such as network-centric warfare and fourth and fifth dimension warfare.

Jointness can be succinctly characterized as cross-service synergy in all stages of the military process, whether it be tactical (through the direct planning and conduction of military operations), strategic (through the production of joint doctrines), or planificatory (through procurement, as well as research and development). The advantages to be drawn from greater jointness are manifold, whether it be in terms of more effective inter-service communication, inter-service operability or the dispensing with cost overruns during the procurement process.

Joint command during military operations does not and should not impede on the notion of service specialization, and has been likened by some, “to doctors concentrating on healing the sick and fire-fighters focusing on rescuing people from burning buildings[1]”. The military theorists pursue their analogy by stating the following; “ Such an approach means joint force commanders have at their disposal the ability to both put out fires and cure sick people, no matter which is needed where-and both of these important tasks are being performed by specialists in their field. The unfavourable alternative to interdependence is to have fire-fighters also attempting surgical procedures, and physicians darting in and out of blazing structures between seeing patients[2].”

While this analogy may seem somewhat schematic in nature, it does have the advantage of painting a clear picture of the operational chaos that can ensue, absent a clear form of inter-service communication and coordination during a conflict.

While India’s military leadership has long recognized the need for a joint approach, it will be argued that the structures put in place from independence to 2001, were largely cosmetic in nature, and did not translate into genuine jointness whether it be on the battlefield or in terms of procurement. This is due in large part to the fact that immediately after independence the government abolished the Raj era post of commander-in-chief of the Indian Military, and the service headquarters were downgraded to become “attached offices”, organizationally external to the MoD and therefore removed from major decision-making[3]. The absence of an overarching joint military command structure led to an empowerment of the three service heads who gained the habit of fiercely defending their turf, squabbling over issues ranging from budgetary attributions to the allotted annual number of two and three star ranks in each service. On an operational level, while it is indubitable that there were some successful cases of inter-service cooperation in times of war (the 1971 Indo-Pakistani war comes to mind), there are, unfortunately, far more historical cases bearing witness to the drastic consequences of India’s glaring lack of tri-service synchrony on the battlefield.

This was starkly brought into light in the wake of India’s pyrrhic victory at Kargil in 1999. Indeed, during the Pakistani incursion across the line of control into Kargil in early June 1999, the Indian Army’s request for air support was not honoured by the Indian Air Force for a full two weeks and not until the Prime Minister himself had to intervene. This demurment on the part of the Indian Air Force, which the Indian Army leadership subsequently claimed was directly responsible for hundreds of casualties amongst its jawans, can be explained in large part by the wildly divergent strategic perspectives held by the Army Chief V.P Malik, who requested air support from the get-go, and then air chief A.Y Tipnis, who feared that the introduction of fighter jets into the combat theatre would lead to a dangerous and unnecessary escalation[4].

Since Kargil, and over the past decade, the Indian Armed Forces have made substantial progress towards jointness. The Integrated Defence Staff, or IDS, was set up on the 23^rd of October 2001, and this joint structure has proven instrumental in the heightening the awareness amongst India’s top brass of the need for greater jointness, most notably by releasing a number of visionary, articulate joint doctrines, ranging from the more general Joint Doctrines for Armed Forces, to the more specialised Joint Amphibious Warfare Doctrine and Joint Special Forces Doctrine. Other Joint Doctrines yet to be unveiled include the Joint Sub-conventional Warfare Doctrine, the Joint Psychological Operations Doctrine, and Joint Space Doctrine[5]. Independent Service doctrines have also laid greater focus on jointness. Tri-service commands have been established, such as the Andaman and Nicobar Command (2001), and the Strategic Forces Command (2006). Major joint exercises have been undertaken in an attempt to validate the joint doctrine. AMPHEX 07, a tri-service amphibious exercise, serves as a prime example. Defence procurement procedures emphasize ever more heavily the benefits of tri service coordination.

Despite these encouraging steps, much remains to be done, however in order to fully implement jointness in an Indian Military still deeply permeated by a tenacious tradition of service parochialism and inter-branch rivalry.

The IDS serves as an ideal illustration of this enduring ambivalence towards jointness which still pervaded much of India’s civilian and military leadership. Almost a decade after its creation, the IDS is still bereft of a CDS of chief of defence staff. The present head of IDS is thus currently subordinate to the chiefs of the Indian Army, Navy and Airforce.

This prolonged absence of a CDS, ascribable to a unsavoury blend of bureaucratic and political infighting, means that the prime forum for inter-service discussion continues to be the COSC, or Chief of Staff Committee, which continues “to be plagued by the ills inherent to a committee”.[6]

Turf battles regularly erupt into the public arena and are reported with a certain degree of delectation by the Indian Press, as in 2007 when a row over allotted numbers of two and three star ranks in each service during the initiation of phase II of the AVS Committee Report was made public[7]. The unwelcome side-effects of over-cohesiveness are not only made apparent via inter-service declarations of rivalry but also, in some more extreme cases, via intra-service turf wars. Mrinal Suman thus recounts that when, a few years ago, due to an absence of command vacancies in the armoured corps, some AC officers were transferred to Army infantry battalions; they were greeted with “brazen hostility”[8] by their troops. These attitudinal issues will take a long time to resolve and can only be overcome gradually.

Similarly, while some progress has been made when it comes to joint procurement, there is still a severe lack of coordination and inter-service communication regarding GSQR (General Staff Qualitative Requirements), which frequently result in the same equipment being purchased from the same source at a different cost by two different branches of the Armed Forces. This occurred, for example, when the Indian Army purchased helicopters without consulting the Indian Air Force[9].

The IDS has managed to impose a greater degree of jointness in the training curriculum of young officers, most notably through the prime tri service institute, the Defence Services Staff College (DSCC). Much remains to be done, however, on the ground. While joint exercises have been implemented they remain still too few and far between. Furthermore, not all joint exercises have been as seamless as AMPHEX O7. Preeminent analysts have thus pointed out that the Dig Vijay and Divya Astra exercises of the Indian Army, which also included elements of the IAF, revealed certain enduring interoperability deficiencies, with both services still operating more sequentially than synergistically[10]. This can be attributed, in part, to the fact that the individual service doctrines each have their own specific versions of joint warfare, which are rarely compatible. The Indian Army’s Cold Start Doctrine, for instance, calls for the attachment of IAF fighter jets to specific ground units, primarily as a form of air support, and under the unified command of an Indian Army officer. The Indian Air Force’s concept of joint warfare, for its part, is at odds with that proned in the Cold Start doctrine, as it envisions war as a endeavour ideally led by services working in concert, but separately. It also believes that the attachment of aircraft to ground units is counter-productive as it stymies the Air Force’s range and mobility while reducing its numerical advantage over its Pakistani counterpart.

All this shows that despite many efforts in favour of establishing greater jointness, much remains to be done.

The main goal of my article, which will hopefully be published later on this year, will be to discuss how the Indian Armed Forces can move towards jointness while avoiding inducing greater inter-service rivalry or major identity crises within each service’s officer corps.

In short, how can the Indian Armed Forces reconcile their evolving strategic imperatives, which call for greater jointness, with a history of inter-service segregation and/or even rivalry?

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[1] Lt.Gen.David A. Deptula, Harold ‘Buck’ Adams, « Joint’s true meaning », Armed Forces Journal, April 2009, http://www.afji.com/2009/04/4013296/

[2] Ibid.

[3] Col.YVK Mohan, SM, « Concept of Jointness and its Implications for our Armed Forces », Articles by Officers of Headquarters of Integrated Defence Staff, http://ids.nic.in/art_by_offids/Concept%20of%20Jointness%20by%20Col%20GS%20DSSC.pdf

[4] « Kargil Review Report Stokes Army-IAF Rivalry », The Indian Express, 8 June 2004.

[5] Colonel S.A Rehman, “Jointmanship-The IDS Way”, Articles by Officers of Headquarters of the Integrated Defence Staff, http://ids.nic.in/art_by_offids/Jointmanship%20-%20The%20IDS%20Way%20%20by%20Col%20SA%20Rehman.pdf

[6] Ibid.

[7] Rajat Pandit, « Ministry may intervene in Services Feud », The Times of India, 18 September 2007.

[8] Mrinal Suman, « Jointmanship and Attitudinal Issues », Journal of Defence Studies, IDSA Publications, Vol 1, Issue 1, August 2007.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Walter C. Ladwig III, “A Cold Start for Hot Wars ? The Indian Army’s New Limited War Doctrine”, International Security, Vol.32, No.3 (Winter 2007/08), p.189