War Fighters and Their Mental Models
Wars are first fought in the minds of men. Long before aircraft leave the ground or formations advance towards the battlefield, the character of the coming conflict has already been shaped based on the mental maps of those who must plan and execute it. These mental pictures of the battlefield are formed by domain, training, education, experiences, learnings, risk, and institutional experience. These are not secondary considerations. They determine what is judged operationally feasible, what risks appear acceptable, and what organisational solutions seem legitimate. In the Indian debate over theatreisation, these differing mind pictures explain more clearly than formal doctrine or resource tables why the Army and Navy generally support integrated theatre commands with stronger claims on air assets, and why airmen almost uniformly resist the permanent geographic splitting of combat aircraft. The resistance does not flow from institutional self-interest. It flows from a particular understanding of airpower: a medium free of permanent physical obstruction, except the enemy air force, and knowledge of the fact that the same platforms can generate tactical, operational, and strategic effects, often simultaneously; and in which the freedom to concentrate effort remains the decisive quality. Also, in our strategic context of defending our sovereignty and territorial integrity, the country has to be defended from attacks through the medium of air, known as Air Defence or Defensive Counter Air (DCA), as also ensuring freedom of operations of our air, land and sea forces from attacks through the medium of air, known as Offensive Counter Air (OCA).
India’s Strategic Context
India’s national security posture is fundamentally defensive with respect to its own territory and sovereignty. Even the more proactive military actions of recent years, which are sometimes described as defensive offence or deterrence by punishment, are actions to protect citizens, territory and core interests from asymmetric warfare, rather than as instruments of expansion. India does not pursue classical expeditionary ambitions. The only significant outward-oriented military requirement is the protection of the sea lines of communication (SLOC) that carry the bulk of its trade and energy imports. Logistics access arrangements and dual-use facilities in the Indian Ocean serve this limited purpose; they do not constitute a doctrine of sustained overseas combat operations.
The principal external challenges identified are a two-front continental threat from China and Pakistan and the parallel necessity of keeping open the maritime arteries on which the economy depends. Military reform must maximise flexibility, the ability to concentrate force rapidly, and the efficient use of scarce high-value assets. Theatreisation is the creation of geographically or threat-oriented integrated commands, which are intended to improve jointness and operational responsiveness. Open-source reporting indicates that a refined blueprint, commonly discussed in terms of a Northern theatre oriented towards China, a Western theatre oriented toward Pakistan, and a Maritime theatre focused on the Indian Ocean, has been developed under the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) and is progressing through the approval process. The most persistent point of friction remains the control and allocation of airpower.
Attributes of Airpower and the Nature of the Medium
Airpower is defined by a distinctive set of attributes: height, which confers observation and the ability to strike across wide areas; speed, which enables rapid response and concentration; reach, which allows operations deep into an adversary’s territory or across multiple theatres; flexibility and agility, which permit the same aircraft and crews to switch roles and geographic areas of responsibility; and the capacity for persistence when supported by modern sensors and tankers. These qualities make airpower a theatre-spanning rather than a theatre-bound instrument.
Crucially, the airman operates in a medium that offers almost no permanent physical barriers, except for the opposing air force. Terrain and distances do not canalise movement in the same way; rivers, mountains, deserts, forests that constrain land and maritime forces can be crossed in minutes. This physical reality produces a distinctive mental model. The airman does not automatically treat the levels of war as a sequential continuum. The same platforms can deliver tactical close support, operational interdiction, or strategic effect, sometimes during a single mission, or a single day. The airman’s task is to select the application that most efficiently serves the overall objective, which frequently also includes the task of creating the conditions for the other two services to operate with greater freedom. Ask any soldier or sailor on the frontline; they are trained to fight the enemy from the same medium, but the roar of a jet engine above terrorises them. Airpower’s role is to ideally try and remove that terror for them.
Differing Mental Models of the Battlefield
The Army tends to plan operations as a continuum. Tactical actions are designed to create the conditions for operational success; operational success is intended to produce strategic effect. The levels of war are treated as sequential and hierarchical. Ground must be held or seized. For infantry to achieve this, violent clashes, blood and gore, hand to hand fights, are the norm when all else fails; logistics have to be function; and momentum has to be generated to push forward against a determined enemy, over time and space. In this scenario, the soldier desperately seeks artillery to shape the battlefield, and additionally, air support.
This mental model is natural to a force that fights in the medium of land based terrain, where progress is often incremental and the same formation cannot easily leap from a local firefight to a theatre-level decision. Thus, reliable and predictable close air support (CAS) and battlefield air interdiction (BAI) are practical necessities for a soldier; necessities that can be counted on day after day in the same sector and this need is felt because of lived experience. From this perspective, theatreisation with stronger claims on air assets appears as a rational way to reduce uncertainty within the land continuum.
The Navy’s mental picture is shaped by the requirements of sea control, sea denial, persistence, and the protection of extended lines of communication. Time and sustainability matter as much as distance. The ocean is both a manoeuvre space and a logistics problem. Sailors are comfortable with distributed operations, yet they also understand that land-based airpower is a supporting rather than a core element of most maritime campaigns. Their preference is for assured access to air support for specific tasks. Theatreisation offers a structural means of securing that access within a unified maritime command.
These preferences are logical in their minds and not a product of ill will. They are the most rational institutional expressions of how soldiers and sailors see the battlefield. The airman’s resistance to permanent geographic splitting arises from an equally coherent but different vision. Combat aircraft are scarce and because their value multiplies when they can be concentrated, the airman treats the national air effort as a single pool whose allocation should be decided according to the highest operational payoff rather than according to peacetime geographic ownership. Permanent splitting freezes a portion of the force even when the decisive employment lies elsewhere. In a two-front contingency, the ability to reinforce the more threatened sector within hours can be the difference between containment and crisis. In a situation where maritime SLOCs come under sudden pressure, the same flexibility allows airpower to contribute without stripping continental theatres of their last reserves.
The Case Against Permanent Splitting of Manned Air Assets
Several factors reinforce the airman’s position in the Indian context. First, scarcity, the Indian Air Force is down to 29 squadrons against an authorised 42 squadrons, which was sanctioned decades ago. India’s combat aircraft inventory remains limited relative to the demands of two continental fronts and a vast maritime domain. Permanently assigning fixed shares to each theatre reduces the pool available for concentration.
Second, the two-front threat is not symmetrical or static. Pressure may build first on one front and then shift. Airpower’s speed and reach are ideally suited to exploit such sequencing; a split system is not.
Third, the maritime requirement, while important, it does not justify large permanent diversions of land-based combat aircraft. SLOC protection is primarily a naval and maritime-patrol task.
Fourth, India’s defensive strategic posture places a premium on air defence/ defensive counter air (AD/ DCA) and the ability to punish aggression across fronts rather than on sustained offensive campaigns. Balance are needed to undertake OCA and interdiction, let alone the other roles like Intelligence Surveillance and Reconaissance (ISR), CAS and BAI. OCA helps neutralise the threat from enemy air to own air, land and sea operations. Interdiction is done to disrupt the enemy supply chain to create friction in the enemy land forces, and thus help our own forces in doing their task. All these battle functions are not visible to the soldier but are indirectly helping them in their task.
A Differentiated Solution
A more rational approach is to differentiate the means according to the actual requirements of each domain while protecting the flexibility of manned airpower.
Unmanned
systems can meet the Army’s most important needs for CAS and BAI. Attritable
platforms, loitering munitions, and longer-endurance ISR-strike drones are
better suited to the continuous, lower-altitude, higher-risk work that the land
continuum demands. These systems can be placed directly under theatre control,
giving the land component the predictability it seeks without permanently
locking scarce manned fighters into geographic boundaries. Manned combat
aircraft would then be employed to augment the capability, when they can
decisively enhance the achievement of objectives, as determined by the joint
centralised picture of the war. This preserves the airman’s core insight: the
same platforms remain available for tactical, operational, or strategic effect
according to national priority.
Genuine maritime and limited expeditionary tasks in support of the Navy should be built primarily around naval assets—carrier-based aviation as it matures, maritime patrol aircraft, ship-borne helicopters, and organic unmanned systems. Land-based manned fighters can augment these efforts when the joint picture requires it, but they need not be permanently assigned to a maritime theatre in large numbers.
Air defence of India should be treated as a single, indivisible national task. The air defence battle is inherently national rather than theatre specific. An attack on one sector can be the opening move of a larger campaign; the same fighter force that defends one region may be required hours later to defend another or to support operations on the opposite front. Any multi-role fighter in the inventory can contribute to air defence, with dedicated air defence assets forming the core. This function deserves clear priority, and thus logically it must take precedence over almost all other air operations.
Implementing Theatreisation Without Fragmenting Airpower
Under this model, theatreisation can still deliver substantial benefits. Integrated theatre commands can exercise unified operational control over assigned Army and Navy formations, streamline logistics and intelligence fusion, and improve joint planning. Theatre commanders would receive dedicated unmanned support for CAS and BAI and would have access to manned airpower through a joint prioritisation mechanism responsive both to theatre needs and to national direction. The service chiefs would retain the raise-train-sustain function; operational employment would be directed through the theatre structure and the joint air component. Pre-planned support packages, standing joint procedures, and regular exercises can give ground and maritime commanders the confidence they require without freezing the manned force in peacetime geographic ownership.
Higher political and military direction can be exercised through the Chief of Defence Staff and the political leadership; this structure would retain the authority to set priority of effort according to the evolving strategic situation and national priorities. In a defensive posture oriented toward the protection of territory, sovereignty, and vital SLOCs, this authority is essential. It ensures that the differing mental models of the services are made explicit and subject to strategic arbitration rather than allowed to produce either permanent fragmentation or unresolved institutional friction.
Conclusion
The debate over theatreisation in India is basically a debate between different mind pictures of the battlefield, and each one of them is correct in their perspective. The Army and Navy seek structural guarantees of support because their domains and professional experience teach them that reliable, continuous air support within a geographic continuum is essential. The airman resists permanent geographic division because his domain teaches him that the potency of airpower lies in the absence of physical barriers and in the freedom to apply the same scarce platforms wherever and at whatever level of war they can produce the greatest effect. In the Indian strategic context, defensive in objective, constrained by a two-front threat, and required to protect SLOCs without classical expeditionary ambitions, the airman’s understanding retains the strong operational logic of “centralised control and decentralised execution.
A differentiated solution that assigns unmanned systems for the Army’s continuum requirements, retains manned airpower as a centrally prioritised national instrument, builds maritime tasks primarily around naval assets, and treats air defence as a single overriding national task offers a path that respects all three mental models without sacrificing the flexibility on which airpower’s value depends. Theatreisation can and should proceed, but it should proceed in a form that strengthens joint operational command while preserving the ability to concentrate air effort across fronts, and across levels of war. The side that sees the battlespace most clearly, and retains the freedom to act on that vision, will hold the decisive advantage. Organisational reform should serve that clarity rather than obscure it.
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