The Department of Military Affairs (DMA) is working towards creating a culture of integration among the forces. The DMA has outlined that many steps have been taken and many are progressing under the pipeline.
The Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Anil Chauhan and the three services chiefs have been working towards creating three theatre commands.
The DMA has already talked about the integration roadmap to be implemented within this financial year under the mandate.
The rapid development in force integration has resulted in multiple initiatives which aimed to link various areas in the operational domain.
The key initiatives include the decision to have cross postings of personnel in other services, holding of joint exercises and joint staffing in organisations among others.
Recently, the official from the DMA also indicated that the forces will soon see the three services chiefs having personal staff from other services to help them carry out their tasks on a daily basis to promote the integration of the three services.
Many other steps have been taken like bringing personnel from all three services on par in terms of giving admissions in schools run by respective services.
Earlier, for example, a school run by the navy gave first priority to wards of its personnel while Defence Ministry civilians were given second priority and Army and Air Force personnel were kept after them the officials said.
Now the wards of personnel from all three services would be in the first priority category and this would be applicable in schools run by all three services, they said.
Similarly, the institutes like the Kota House or Army or Air Force Golf Course in the national capital would give memberships to their personnel only but now they would be open to all the personnel, they said.
The officials said over the years, the services had developed infrastructure and systems for their service-specific requirements only but now this culture of integration has to be created as the country moves towards creating theatre commands which will have personnel from all three services fighting the wars of the future jointly.
The forces have also decided that all the major future exercises will be held jointly with participation from all three services.
Importantly, onwards, all major capital acquisitions will be carried out jointly. In case of critical acquisitions for future weapon systems to be procured mostly from indigenous sources would be led by the tri-services IDS only to optimise the expenditure for procurement and maintenance.
Officials said the DMA and the three services would be taking many more such steps to achieve the desired level of jointness among the forces.