Why 2026 matters

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

 This is a widely shared view within India’s strategic community. For officers who served in joint assignments, one persistent frustration is that operational planning continues along service lines. The Army, Navy, and Air Force may sit at the same procurement tables, but they still generate their own priorities and their own capability lists.

 “The identification of operational needs remains the exclusive domain of the services,” he said. “Planning exists on paper, but there is no genuinely integrated acquisition organisation.” Amit Cowshish, former financial adviser (acquisition) in the MoD, said.

That gap is becoming harder to defend as India prepares for the possibility of conflict in more than one theatre. 

 China’s army operates under a unified western theatre command with real authority over land, cyber, air, electronic warfare, and missile assets. India is still debating the shape and number of its own commands.

 Whether a theatre command structure finally emerges in 2026 remains to be seen, and how disruptive that transition is will be one of the clearest signals if Indian defence reform is moving from vision to reality.

 The procurement puzzle 

If theatre commands represent the organisational bottleneck, procurement is the operational one. Here, too, expectations are colliding with legacy structures. India has rewritten its acquisition rules multiple times in this century, from the defence procurement procedure (DPP) to the defence acquisition procedure (DAP) to the upcoming revised framework now under review.  

Each revision has promised faster decision-making and more transparency. Yet the experience of industry, particularly the private sector, is still one of long timelines and shifting goalposts. 

Cowshish argued that this is not purely a procedural issue — it is also structural. “You have the Capital Acquisition Wing, DMA (Department of Military Affairs), Department of Defence Production, Finance, Defence Research and Development Organisation — the services are all separate. People come on deputation, they move on. There is no composite acquisition organisation with accumulated experience,” he said.

 The result is predictably uneven outcomes. Smaller contracts like the Make-II category of the capital acquisition under the MoD proposals have moved faster. India has seen progress in drones, simulators, tactical communications, and smaller requests for quotations have also moved quickly. But larger procurements like aircraft, tanks, and submarines continue to 

face delays.

 The Project 75(I) submarine programme is an example cited repeatedly in strategic circles. Twenty years after conceptualisation, it remains without a signed contract. 

 Experts say that this is the kind of gap that must be narrowed if India wants to be taken seriously as a country capable of building and fielding modern systems at scale.

 India’s external partnerships have run into their own problems. In late 2025, India and the United States (US) signed a new 10-year defence cooperation framework meant to deepen intelligence sharing and ease codevelopment of critical technologies.

But in reality, major deliveries like those of the US-based firm General Electric’s F-404 engines for the Tejas Mk-1A aircraft slipped behind schedule, with only a handful supplied so far.  

“The tools of warfare are changing. The MoD must deepen its engagement with technology thinkers that can present compelling visions of where warfare may be heading, and work with private innovators to ensure the service branches are as well-prepared as possible,” Richard M Rossow, senior adviser at the Washington, DC-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said. “Some of the reluctance to move fast stems from concerns that large acquisitions can invite scrutiny over the process. Officials in charge of acquisition need confidence that their decisions will not be unnecessarily reviewed.” India is also diversifying its defence suppliers, moving away from the traditional suppliers like Russia to new ones like Israel and France. “Right now, the services sit at the same table and negotiate their priorities. That is not jointness. Without a clear national security strategy that drives capability planning, long-range procurement will remain fragmented,” Arzan Tarapore, senior fellow at Stanford University, said. “Procurement planning requires top-down strategy-making.”  

This year has tested India’s defence modernisation in a way policy papers never could. Operation Sindoor was not a war, but it was the largest cross-border retaliatory action undertaken by India since the Balakot strikes of 2019.

 The operation featured a range of indigenous weapons like BrahMos that were used in combat for the first time, and India got to measure the strength, weakness, and readiness of its own technology base. The lessons learnt from this operation have since triggered an arms race between India and Pakistan. 

 Major acquisitions after Operation Sindoor have included armoured recovery vehicles for battlefield logistics and rapid repair of tanks and heavy equipments; electronic warfare systems to counter enemy communications, radar, and drone incursions.

India has cleared one lakh worth of defence acquisitions in July, with an emphasis on homegrown systems under Atmanirbhar Bharat. Contracts worth ₹400 billion are being fast-tracked to boost air defences and cyber technology.  

The defence minister has introduced the defence procurement manual (DPM) in October this year, which is a new set of guidelines that is meant to simplify and streamline the procurement process. It includes reforms such as 15 per cent “growth of work” provision in repair and refit contracts. This will cover unforeseen fixes in contracts without the requirement for new approvals. 

 Talks have also resumed on an advanced medium combat aircraft (Amca), India’s fifth-generation stealth fighter jet programme, involving both public and private sector firms. Next year will test whether the structural realignment begins and if policymakers are prepared to empower a smaller number of organisations with real authority and accountability.