At an Indian Air Force seminar in Subroto Park on Tuesday, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh used the hard-won lessons of Operation Sindoor, India’s large-scale punitive strikes earlier this year, to make a powerful case for genuine tri-service integration, the one true ‘faraway castle’ in Indian defence planning.
The minister called the operation a “living example of jointness delivering decisive results,” but his words also underscored the delicate politics of military integration at a time when the Indian Air Force has been cool on the government’s marquee plan to reorganise India’s armed forces into integrated theatre commands. Operation Sindoor’s overwhelming emphasis on air power to meet India’s military objectives has only galvanised the IAF’s view that ‘theaterisation’ is, as such, worth resisting.
“During Operation Sindoor, the tri-services synergy produced a unified, real-time operational picture. It empowered commanders to take timely decisions, enhanced situational awareness, and reduced the risk of fratricide,” Singh told the audience of serving and retired top brass. “This success must become the benchmark for all future operations.”
The Defence Minister was speaking at a day-long conclave titled Fostering Greater Jointness — Synergy through Shared Learning in the domain of Inspection and Audits, Aviation Standards and Aerospace Safety. Chiefs of all three services, the Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan, senior officers from the Indian Coast Guard and Border Security Force, and veterans filled the auditorium. The minister’s central theme was clear: jointness is no longer optional. It is, he said, “a matter of survival in the fast-changing security environment.”
“Jointness has become a fundamental requirement for our national security and operational effectiveness today. While each of our services possesses the capacity to respond independently, the interconnected nature of land, sea, air, space and cyberspace makes collaborative strength the true guarantor of victory,” he said.
Operation Sindoor, India’s largest punitive action against Pakistan in decades, had already been hailed for its speed, surprise, and precision. What Singh spotlighted was the digital backbone that allowed Army, Navy, and Air Force formations to see and fight the same battle in real time. The IAF’s Integrated Air Command and Control System (IACCS) was fused with the Army’s Akashteer air defence network and the Navy’s Trigun maritime surveillance and strike grid. The result was a single operational picture stretching from high Himalayan battlefields to the Arabian Sea, a first for India in an actual shooting war.
“IAF’s IACCS worked in unison with the Indian Army’s Akashteer and the Indian Navy’s Trigun, making a joint operational backbone during the operation,” Singh said. “It empowered commanders to take timely decisions, enhanced situational awareness, and reduced the risk of fratricide.”
Fratricide, the accidental killing of friendly forces, has haunted modern militaries. India has suffered its share of friendly-fire incidents, particularly in congested airspace. The minister’s emphasis was clear: the Sindoor networks proved that shared awareness can save lives and shorten wars.
Singh’s address, however, came at a moment of institutional friction. Since before the pandemic, India has debated converting its separate Army, Navy, and Air Force commands into joint “theatre commands”, integrated formations each responsible for a geographic or functional domain. The Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) was created partly to drive this reform. But progress has slowed, both in the wake of its original architect (and India’s first CDS) General Bipin Rawat’s shock demise in a helicopter crash, as well as other priorities taking over. The Indian Air Force has repeatedly signalled discomfort with certain theatre concepts, arguing that air power is by nature flexible and centrally controlled, not something to be parcelled out into geographic silos. Air Chief Marshal A. P. Singh, present on the dais, has publicly argued for a model that preserves air power’s ability to swing rapidly between theatres.
Tuesday’s speech was therefore being read as an attempt by the Defence Minister to reframe “jointness” beyond the narrow theatrisation debate and to reassure the IAF that integration does not mean erasing service identities. “Integration must respect the uniqueness of each force,” he said. “The cold of the Himalayas is not the same as the heat of the desert. The Navy faces challenges different from the Army and Air Force. We cannot impose uniformity where it does not fit. Our task is to create a shared baseline that preserves uniqueness while building interoperability and trust.”
He went further, acknowledging the legacy silos each service has built: “If the Army developed something, it remained with the Army. If the Navy or Air Force developed something, it remained within their own walls. This compartmentalisation has limited the cross-sharing of valuable lessons.” The remedy, he suggested, lies not in diktat but in “dialogue, understanding and respect for traditions.” “We will face challenges as we move towards Jointness. But through dialogue, understanding and respect for traditions, we can overcome these hurdles. Every service must feel that the others understand their challenges, and every tradition must be honoured as we build new systems together.” That language — respect, dialogue, preserving uniqueness — appeared aimed at easing Air Force worries that integration equals subordination.
Beyond the combat networks proven in Sindoor, Singh highlighted logistics and safety as urgent frontiers for joint reform. Each service has digitised supply chains in isolation: the Army with its Computerised Inventory Control Group (CICG), the Air Force with IMMOLS, and the Navy with its Integrated Logistics Management System. “These have already transformed logistics by bringing automation, accountability and transparency,” he said, announcing that work has begun on a Tri-Services Logistics Application to give commanders shared visibility of stocks, optimise cross-service resources and reduce redundant procurement. He also warned that fragmented inspection and safety standards could be dangerous in an age of complex air and space operations: “Even a minor error in inspection can create cascading effects. And if our cyber defence systems differ across services, adversaries can exploit the gap. We must close these vulnerabilities by harmonising our standards.”
The seminar devoted special sessions to joint aerospace safety, a domain where differing norms between Army aviation, naval aviation and the Air Force have previously led to duplication — and sometimes conflicting risk assessments.
Defence planners say the minister’s timing is not accidental. After Operation Sindoor, the public and political appetite for faster, seamless joint action is high. Yet the blueprint for theatre commands remains unresolved. One senior officer present at the event (speaking off record) put it bluntly: “Sindoor showed that when the services really want to integrate, they can — without waiting for formal theatre structures. But it also showed how much of this is ad hoc. The question is whether we institutionalise it or go back to peacetime silos.”
Singh’s speech appeared to argue for institutionalisation — but without triggering the Air Force’s worst fears. Instead of pushing the word “theatre,” he leaned on “jointness,” “shared learning,” and “respect for traditions.” He invoked Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s remarks at the recent Combined Commanders’ Conference in Kolkata, framing integration as a national survival imperative rather than a bureaucratic turf war. “Our government’s objective is to further promote Jointness and integration among the Tri-Services. This is not only a matter of policy but a matter of survival in the fast-changing security environment,” he said.
Singh also advised a measured borrowing of global best practices. While nations such as the United States and China have aggressively reorganised into theatre commands, India’s geography and threat profile are unique. “We can learn from others, but our answers must be Indian answers shaped by our geography, our needs and our culture. Only then can we build systems that are truly sustainable and future-ready,” he said. That remark was seen as another olive branch to the IAF and Navy, both wary of “copy-paste” models from foreign militaries. It also echoed the Army’s argument that India needs hybrid structures rather than wholesale import of the U.S. Goldwater-Nichols model.
Perhaps the most striking part of Singh’s message was that technology alone cannot fix jointness. He said structural reforms would fail without mindset change. “Achieving jointness requires not just structural reform but also a change in mindset. Senior leadership at all levels must continuously communicate the value of integration to their teams,” he said. “Such change will not be easy and will involve overcoming legacy habits and institutional silos.” This is a familiar refrain in India’s integration journey. Successive committees — from the Naresh Chandra Task Force to the Shekatkar Committee — have recommended jointness, but turf protection and service pride have slowed progress. Singh’s call for respectful persuasion rather than coercion may be an attempt to break that deadlock.
Interestingly, Singh’s integration pitch extended beyond the Army, Navy, and Air Force. He called upon the Indian Coast Guard (ICG), Border Security Force (BSF) and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to join the jointness journey. “Only when our Armed Forces operate in unison, in harmony, and in perfect coordination can we counter adversaries across all domains and lead India to new heights of glory,” he said. This reflects the multi-domain nature of threats India now faces: grey-zone maritime incursions, drone swarms, cyber attacks on civil aviation networks, and border transgressions that blend military and paramilitary forces.
Singh began his address by paying tribute to Lieutenant General Raju Baijal, Director General of the Territorial Army, who passed away earlier in the day. The gesture was symbolic: reinforcing continuity and institutional respect even as the government pushes for change.
The day’s seminar concluded with consensus on common inspection processes and new initiatives to standardise aviation safety across services. But the bigger question — India’s path to formal theatre commands — remained unaddressed. By leaning on Operation Sindoor’s success, Singh effectively argued that jointness works when the stakes are high. But he also signalled that forcing a one-size-fits-all theatre model may be counter-productive.
For defence watchers, this is a nuanced moment. The government is clearly committed to integration, but the vocabulary is evolving. The CDS and the Department of Military Affairs may have to recalibrate their approach: from top-down redesign to coaxing consensus among wary services, especially the Air Force. As one analyst put it: “Sindoor is now the gold standard for joint ops. The challenge is to bottle that magic in peacetime without triggering another round of inter-service trench warfare.”
Operation Sindoor’s battlefield success has handed India’s defence establishment a rare proof of concept: that seamless data fusion, shared command pictures, and real-time collaboration across land, sea and air can deliver swift, decisive results. Rajnath Singh used that proof to press his case that jointness is existential, not aspirational. But he also sent a message to the services — and especially the IAF — that integration will respect identity and tradition, and that India will craft its own model rather than blindly import one. Whether that nuanced approach accelerates or slows India’s decades-long quest for true joint war-fighting remains to be seen. For now, Operation Sindoor stands as both triumph and test: a glimpse of future wars India must be ready to fight — together.