Dnyanada Palkar

Defence preparedness entails a lot more than just having the latest armaments and technologies. Ideally, defence preparedness should be the shared responsibility of the military and the polity. The military’s responsibility is the physical defence of the nation, while the polity’s is to aid the military’s ability to do so.

A term that is repeated in the Joint Doctrine as well as the individual doctrines of the army, navy and air force is ‘strong, well-structured combat capability’. This is a succinct definition of the primary responsibility of the armed forces. Combat capability can be developed and improved when both military and civilian policies are geared towards it. With this in mind, equipping the armed forces is the foremost priority of the current administration.

Equipping the forces is secondary to the planning required for the same. Planning for the future is best done by focusing on the present and a good start has been made in this direction with the reforms in defence procurement and production policies. Decision-making continues to be conventional and is rooted more in the past than in the present. Established institutions and processes are not subject to review and reforms are very slow in the making. Even if convention and hierarchy are accepted as integral to the defence establishment in India, economic calculations are conspicuously absent from all decision-making processes.

The debate over integrated planning, coordination and even hybrid warfare has raged on for quite some time now. Since the introduction of the revolution in military affairs (RMA) concept, the focus has shifted from the present to the fut