Author Description

The Integrated Defence Staff released the first-ever public joint doctrine for the Indian armed forces (JDIAF-2017) in April 2017. Absent a publicly articulated national security strategy, the joint doctrine presents important clues about what that strategy might be. This paper examines JDIAF-2017 in conjunction with other Indian military doctrines, public writings of leading Indian strategists, as well as foreign military doctrines and strategies that influence Indian military thinking. Opening with a comparison of Indian defence planning and the American structure in order to tease out the broader role of the joint doctrine in the Indian system, the paper proceeds to examine the continental view of threats enunciated in JDIAF-2017, and connects it to India's recently-avowed proactive, limited-aims Pakistan strategy. A consequence of this continental view of threats is an army-centric joint doctrine that fails to pay sufficient attention to the role of the other two services, and appears considerably influenced by the US Army's Air Land Battle doctrine. The paper explicates JDIAF-2017's treatment of nuclear issues and their relationship to conventional war, and deals with the near-absence of force-projection and other issues in the joint doctrine. The paper also discusses the Joint Training Doctrine of the Indian Armed Forces that was published as a follow-up to JDIAF-2017.