Lt Gen Harwant Singh (Retd)
Centralised operational control and conduct of war by the Chief of Defence Staff is projected as an impingement on political control. Operations are invariably conducted within the framework of political direction and policy. Fears of relegation of political authority if the CDS system is adopted are ill founded and mischievously raised to scare the ignorant
CONSEQUENT to the Kargil conflict in 1999, Arun Singh and K Subhramanyam committees were constituted. The latter was required to essentially look into the Kargil conflict in its varied aspects. This committee at one point in its lengthy report, made a preposterous observation that the Prime Minister and the Raksha Mantri did not have the benefit of getting the advice of army commanders and their equivalent in the navy and air force, meaning thereby that they must seek advise from them. The number of such commanders in the three services is more than a dozen. Obviously our expert on national security was oblivious of the imperatives of the chain of command in the military!
Arun Singh had asked this writer to give his committee a presentation on the future shape of the army, etc. Besides recommending the raising of a mountain corps for operations along the border with Tibet, the inescapable requirement of adoption of the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) system was projected. To start with, two theater commands were suggested by the committee -- one for the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and the other for Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). To alley misgivings of the air force, the first commander of the proposed J&K theater command (the most active command) could be an air force officer.
Disjointed Command
- Creation of the post of CDS was recommended by the Kargil Review Committee in 2000
- A cabinet committee on national security under LK Advani approved the recommendation. However this was later pushed under the carpet
- The Naresh Chandra Committee moots a permanent Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee as a single point of advice to the government, but is no better than the present arrangement as the operational control of each service still rests with the respective service chief
- More recently the Integrated Defence Staff was created as an adjunct to the MoD. Such cosmetic dressing up of the defence operational systems is of little avail
- The possibility of a two front war haunts military planners. While there have been efforts to work out systems and organisations to attend to larger issues of national security, the conduct of operations is being glossed over
Under the CDS system there is a single point of military advice to the government and the overall operational command rests with the CDS as well. Operational command of various theaters rest with theater commanders whose forces may be from two or all three services, depending on the geographical details of their theater. The theater commander could be from any service. The CDS would exercise overall operational command over various theater commands, as well as over intelligence directorates of the three services through the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA). In this system the staff functions would rest with the service chiefs in regard to their respective service.
Later a cabinet committee on national security under former Home Minister LK Advani approved the recommendations of the Arun Singh committee with special emphasis on adopting the CDS system. However these recommendations were pushed under the carpet and later the Naresh Chandra committee was constituted. One of the recommendations of Naresh Chandra Committee is that the post of Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee should be permanent and function as a single point of advice to the Prime Minister and the Raksha Mantri. This proposal is neither here nor there and is no better than the present arrangement because the operational control of each service still rests with the respective service chief and this permanent chairman will be stumped when confronted with conflicting views from the other service chiefs.
The main opposition to the CDS system has been from the air force over the imaginary fear of being overwhelmed by its larger sister service, the army. The bureaucracy too has been against adopting this system on the ill founded fears that the CDS will become too powerful and the present position, where the defence secretary is designated as the person responsible for the defence of India, will be eroded. At some point of time even army chiefs have not favoured this system on fear of losing operational control over the army. It all boils down to narrow parochial interests and of turf tending.
Antiquated defence apparatus
No major democracy in the world has as antiquated and obsolete operational defence apparatus as that of India. The present system was bequeathed to us at the time of Independence by Lord Hastings Ismay, a British general who was Winston Churchill's chief military assistant during the Second World War and later Lord Mountbatten’s Chief of Staff in India, and has remained more or less unchanged. Subsequently defence services headquarters were designated as departments of the Ministry of Defence (MoD rather than part of it. A dysfunctional Chiefs of Staff Committee (COSC) was created with the senior most amongst the the three service chiefs being its chairman. The difference between “jointness” and unity of operational command has never been fully grasped or may have be purposefully ignored. More recently, the Integrated Defence Staff (IDS) was created as an adjunct to the MoD. Such cosmetic dressing up of the defence operational systems is of little avail. While there have been efforts to work out systems and organisations to attend to larger issues of national security, the conduct of operations as such is being glossed over.
The dysfunctional character of Indian defence apparatus first surfaced during the 1962 war against China, where due to lack of any central control in the conduct of operations, the air force stayed out when it could have played a decisive role in that conflict. In the 1965 war against Pakistan, the IAF aircraft came in to halt the enemy advance in the Chhamb Sector of J&K and instead destroyed our own vehicles carrying artillery ammunition and supplies. During the Kargil conflict, the air force’s procrastination in joining the battle is all too well known, as also its lack of training in high altitude warfare. Even so advocacy of “jointness” rather than unity of command continues to this day!
Unity of command
A battle is so much like an orchestra, where a hundred instruments of varying tone and tenor may strike their own notes and yet have to play the same tune. To coordinate and mesh the sound of varied musical instruments there is only one conductor. So also, in battle there has to be only one overall commander who must work out and coordinate the application of various instruments of fighting in all their varied forms, scale and timing to achieve the right outcome. Unity of command is an important principle of war and as such all successful battles have had only one commander who employed and controlled various components of his force. In modern times some more instruments of war have been added such as aircraft, missiles, etc.
In the military, unity of command has been an important principle of war and a historical determinant. It is with the advent of the air force that this concept of unified command saw a discordant note, more so in India. Often two and sometimes all the three services may be grouped to achieve a common goal of defeating the enemy in a particular theatre. Command of such a grouping has to devolve on a single commander, who may be from any of the three services. At higher levels advisers are available from the other service(s) to provide inputs to the overall theatre commander on technical and tactical aspects of employment of the components of their respective service.
To have large defence forces at enormous expense and not be able to optimise the potential of their combined capabilities is inexplicable and inexcusable. Modern warfare demands not only unified command but an organisation fully responsible for operational control, which should determine the range of equipping of the forces, the type of weaponry, be these of navy, army or air force and the same being in consonance with the nature of threats, type and scale of operations envisaged, tactics to be employed and future developments in weapons and equipment etc. The full potential of a unified command and collective application of forces otherwise cannot achieve the desired results.
Blame for Defence Research and Development Organisation’s (DRDO) failure to deliver squarely rests with the MoD under whose control it operates, with no interaction with the army at the stage of developing equipment. This isolation from the army at this stage also leads to absence of essential inputs from the user. If the navy has done better, it is because it exercises control over that component of DRDO which works for the development of weapons and equipment for that service. Of the three DRDO laboratories dedicated to the navy, one to two of them are invariably headed by senior naval officers. In the case of the army, DRDO brings in the user only at the final stage of trials. Similarly Defence Public Sector Undertakings and the Ordinance Factories are controlled by the MoD. They regularly overcharge for the items supplied to the forces (BEML’s TATRA vehicles being one such recent example) and deliver shoddy equipment.
The possibility of a two front war haunts military planners. Such a situation will require a well thought out strategy and careful and judicious distribution of resources for each front. It is near impossible to adequately meet such a national security challenge with the existing arrangement of the Chiefs of Staff Committee system, even with “jointness” and a permanent chairman of this Committee. Centralised operational control and conduct of war by the CDS is projected as an impingement on political control and policy. Operations are invariably conducted within the framework of political direction and policy. Fears of relegation of political authority if the CDS system is adopted are ill founded and mischievously raised to scare the ignorant. “Jointness” does not work under periods of great stress and war does produce some very stressful moments. Finally “jointness” is an India innovation and one may rightly term it as a “Jugard.”
The writer is a former Deputy Chief of Army Staff
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