The bitter turf within the armed forces over the four proposed theatre commands escalated further with the Indian Air Force (IAF) Chief Air Chief Marshal RKS Bhadauria rejecting Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat’s views that the IAF remains a supporting arm just as artillery or engineers support the fighting forces.
Speaking to India Today TV, Air Chief Marshal RKS Bhadauria said, “It’s not a supporting role alone. Air power has a huge role to play. In any of the integrated battle areas, it’s not an issue of support alone. A whole lot of things go into any air plan that’s made. And those are the issues that are under discussion.”
“CDS was a big reform. The next biggest reform is the integrated theatre command. And it is much more complex. We’re for establishing integrated theatre command. But the issues that we have raised are in our internal discussions, and it’s to do with how we should do it. We must get it right. It’s the most important reform that has an impact on war fighting,” Air Chief Marshal RKS Bhadauria said.
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He gave his vision for the integrated theatre command. “We already have a functional system today. But when we do an integrated theatre command, we should reach the next level of ability to protect our comprehensive national power. We should be able to synergise, we should be able to put up a power that is more synergistic and has more flexibility. We cannot have more boundaries,” Air Chief Marshal RKS Bhadauria said.
He said he would not like to share the issues under discussion but denied the IAF was putting any spanners.
Big military turf war explodes!
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“So there are issues in terms of some of the options being discussed and those are issues we’re internally discussing. I would not like to go to…