Indian Army’s Tactical Communication System (TCS), which should have been fielded in year 2000, seems to be finally get-ting ready to kick-start early next year; after 17 years. In 1996, the existing Plan Army Radio Engineering Network (AREN) system, earlier designed as the backbone of army’s communication that was designed to roll forward, came up for urgent review having become outdated. The TCS was born out of realisation that AREN had to be replaced and an upgrade would not be sufficient, as was envisaged earlier especially since legacy radio systems were not designed to connect to broad-reaching IP-based networks. The extraordinary delay of over a decade-and-a-half in TCS was on account of excessive ‘red tape’ befitting a case study, in that the TCS had been approved thrice by the Defence Ministers but every time the whole case was worked afresh after closing the previous case file – an extreme in red tape-ism and lackadaisical approach to vital issues.