Jointness among the three services is a prerequisite for theatre commands. Assess the progress and challenges.

Jointness means the Army, Navy and Air Force plan, train, buy equipment and fight as one force. A theatre command puts all three under one commander for a region, so it cannot work without jointness. The legal and institutional groundwork for it has largely been laid since 2019. Integration in day-to-day operations is still unfinished.

Progress: building the base

• Higher defence reform: the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) post was created in December 2019. The CDS is Permanent Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee and heads the Department of Military Affairs (DMA). The DMA's mandate includes jointness in procurement, training and staffing, and restructuring commands, including through theatre commands [1].
• Legal enabler: before the Inter-Services Organisations (Command, Control and Discipline) Act, 2023, commanders could not discipline personnel from other services. The Act lets them do so. It also treats existing joint bodies such as the Andaman and Nicobar Command, Defence Space Agency and NDA as inter-services organisations [2].
• Operationalisation: the Act came into force in May 2024 [3]. Its rules were notified in May 2025, making it fully operational and speeding up the disposal of disciplinary cases [4].
• Visible synergy: Navy and Army aircraft flew in the IAF's 94th-anniversary display, "Wings over Ganges" (2026) [5].

Challenges: from paper to practice

• Limited command authority: the CDS does not exercise military command, including over the three Service Chiefs [1]. This leaves the integrating authority weak.
• Separate service laws: personnel in joint organisations remain governed by their own service Acts [4]. Discipline is joint, but service cultures and conditions of service stay separate.
• Symbol is not substance: a joint flypast needs one shared plan for one day. A theatre command needs shared plans, budgets and chains of command every day [5].
• Mixed equipment: the fleet combines indigenous (Tejas, LCH Prachand), imported (Rafale) and licence-built (Su-30MKI) platforms [5]. This makes common logistics and communications harder.
• Doctrinal differences: the services disagree over how scarce assets, especially air power, should be shared across theatres.

India now has the institutions and laws that jointness needs. What it lacks is integration in everyday operations. The way forward is common doctrine, integrated logistics and communications, and joint training and staffing as the DMA's mandate envisages. Theatre commands should then be phased in on this base. That would turn legal readiness into real combat synergy and strengthen national security.