Why 2026 matters for India’s military

The push for reform will shape the next phase of modernisation

- MOHAMMAD ASIF KHAN

At last year’s edition of the combined commanders’ conference, Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) Gen Anil Chauhan urged the armed forces to treat military reform as “a continuous, institutional process”.

Expectations around reforms did not grow overnight: The last few years have seen a steady convergence of pressure from China's military infrastructure, disruptive technologies that have changed the nature of war, and a recognition that India’s command structure needs to evolve with the times.

At the heart of India’s defence reforms lies a simple question: Can the armed forces transition from a platform-centred structure to a genuinely integrated technology-driven one?

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) earmarked 2025 as the “year of reforms”, which basically meant modernisation, self-reliance, and the creation of integrated theatre commands. This plan included a nine-point agenda that aimed at breaking longstanding institutional silos, fast tracking emergency procurements and shifting to new domains such as cyber, space, artificial intelligence, hypersonics, and robotics.

India has the legal framework for theatre commanders to exercise administrative and disciplinary authority over personnel from all three services, paving the way for theatre command structures.

Yet, operationally India did not establish even one theatre command in 2025. “Six years after the creation of the CDS, the fundamental theatre command debate is still unresolved,” said Anit Mukherjee, senior lecturer at King’s College London. “The forces have modernised in pockets, but without a joint structure, multi-domain operations are difficult to execute.”

“Planning exists on paper - there is no genuinely integrated acquisition organisation,” said Amit Cowshish, former financial advisor (acquisition) in the MoD.