Our Bureau
New Delhi
This Friday, on September 5th, the Chief General of the Indian Army, Upendra Dwivedi was at the launch of a book titled ‘Operation Sindoor: The Untold Story of India’s Deep Strikes Inside Pakistan’ at Manekshaw Centre. While at the event, the Chief General made a statement asserting that ‘theaterisation’ is bound to happen sooner or later.
The Chief General highlighted that if you wish to deal with multiple agencies, theaterisation is the answer and stated that it is just a question of when and how long it will take for it to materialise. He stated that jointness and integration of the Army, Airforce and Navy capabilities it will eventually happen.
“Theaterisation will come, today or tomorrow. We just have to see how long it will take. We have to go through certain steps to bring in theaterisation, which includes jointness, integration. A lot of things need to be discussed over for that,” the Army chief said.
Explaining why ‘Theaterisation’ is important, Army Chief General Dwivedi highlighted that the Army doesn’t fight battles alone, there are a lot of agencies like the tri-services, defence cyber agencies, defence space agencies that are involved in a war. To incorporate all of them while still maintaining unity of command, theaterisation is the key moving forward.
“When we fight a battle, an Army doesn’t fight alone. We have a Border Security Force and Indo-Tibetan Border Police. Then there are the tri-services, defence cyber agencies, defence space agencies, and now we are talking about cognitive warfare agencies. Besides, there are agencies such as the ISRO, Civil Defence, Civil Aviation, Railways, NCC, state and Central administrations… If one has to deal with so many agencies, theaterisation is the answer. Because unity of command is more important. You need one commander to achieve coordination in execution. Theaterisation is absolutely necessary,” he noted.
