Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh said on Friday that the government has prepared a blueprint to create integrated theatre commands that will bring the Indian Army, Navy and Air Force together under a single command for operations. The proposal, Singh told a seminar organised by KPMG in New Delhi, is awaiting approval “at the highest level”.
“The political leadership is very clear that we have to move towards the integration of the three services into theatre commands,” Rajesh Kumar Singh said.
Singh characterised the move as an effort to ensure national power is applied in a strategic manner across multiple domains — land, sea, air, space and cyber — and said “that process is underway”. He was speaking at an event where officials and industry representatives discussed defence preparedness and supply-chain resilience.
What Singh told the seminar
At the KPMG event, the Defence Secretary said the government seeks both operational integration and greater self-reliance in defence production. He noted that the armed forces have submitted a proposal for the theatre-command structure in recent months and that the decision now rests with the Cabinet Committee on Security, the authority that must clear the plan.
Singh also highlighted recent figures on the Indian defence industrial base, stressing the growth in domestic capability and exports. Those figures, given at the seminar, included domestic defence sales and the scale of licensed industry participation.
| metric | figure |
|---|---|
| large and medium licensed defence companies | 840 |
| small companies and startups | 17,000 |
| domestic defence sales | ₹1.78 trillion |
| defence exports | ₹38,000 crore |
Context and status
The integrated theatre commands concept has been debated in India since at least the late 1990s. Officials and military leaders have revisited the idea repeatedly, most recently after the appointment of the first Chief of Defence Staff, and the current statement from the Defence Secretary confirms the government-level work on a concrete blueprint. Singh made clear that while the blueprint exists, formal approval by the highest authorities is still pending.
The Defence Secretary linked the theatre-command effort to broader goals of applying national power coherently and of strengthening India’s defence industrial ecosystem through trusted partnerships. He framed the reform as a strategic necessity in an era of multi-domain operations.
- Blueprint status: prepared and awaiting approval at the highest level, Defence Secretary said.
- Objective: integrate Army, Navy and Air Force for coordinated, multi-domain operations.
- Related focus: defence self-reliance and resilient supply chains, with industry figures cited at the seminar.
Any formal decision to create theatre commands will require clearance by the Cabinet Committee on Security and subsequent implementation steps that would redefine command relationships, force structures and joint operational planning across the three services.
