By Colonel Vivek Nautiyal (Retired)

India stands at a defining inflexion point in its national trajectory. As the nation marches purposefully towards Viksit Bharat@2047, the sinews of that ambition rest not only on economic growth and technological advancement, but equally on strategic security and military preparedness. A nation that aspires to lead must first demonstrate the capacity to defend. It is within this overarching context that the tenure of General Anil Chauhan, India’s second Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), must be viewed.

General Chauhan assumed charge as CDS on 30 September 2022, stepping into an office that was barely two years old and into a security environment of exceptional complexity, which included a contested northern border with China, an unresolved proxy conflict with Pakistan and a global order in flux following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The tenure draws to a close on 30 May 2026. Over the course of nearly four years, he has systematically built the institutional foundations of a modern, integrated and future-ready Indian military.¹

This article examines four pillars of General Chauhan’s strategic legacy: the advancement of tri-services jointness and Integrated Theatre Commands; the operational validation of joint warfighting through Operation Sindoor; the pursuit of technological self-reliance through Atmanirbharta; and the articulation of the Defence Forces Vision 2047, which is the most comprehensive long-term blueprint ever produced for India’s armed forces. Together, these contributions constitute a strategic inheritance of enduring national value, aligned directly with the imperatives of Viksit Bharat 2047.

The Making of a Strategic Reformer

General Anil Chauhan’s credentials as a strategic reformer are rooted in a distinguished 40-year military career. Commissioned into the 6th Battalion, 11 Gorkha Rifles on 13 June 1981, he gained operational experience across India’s most sensitive theatres including counter-insurgency operations in Jammu & Kashmir and the North-East, command of an infantry division in the critical Baramulla sector and command of a corps in the North-East. His tenure as General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Eastern Command (2019–2021) gave him intimate familiarity with the China challenge, which is a domain expertise widely acknowledged as a principal consideration behind his selection as CDS.²

His intellectual orientation sets him apart as a military thinker, not merely a military commander. His 2010 monograph, ‘Aftermath of a Nuclear Attack: A Case Study on Post-Strike Operations’, examined the strategic consequences of nuclear conflict and civil-defence preparedness, which is a subject of enduring relevance in South Asia’s nuclear environment. He subsequently authored the ‘Ready, Relevant and Resurgent’ (RRR) series, which outlined a roadmap for transforming the Indian Armed Forces into a technologically advanced, theaterised and future-ready force capable of handling multi-domain warfare.²

It is this blend of operational depth and intellectual breadth that made General Chauhan uniquely suited for the CDS role. He was appointed to execute the most consequential military reform India has ever undertaken, namely, theaterisation, in an environment where inter-service consensus, government confidence and institutional patience were equally indispensable. His approach to this task reveals the essential character of his tenure: methodical, collaborative and strategically visionary.

Pillar One: Building the Architecture of Jointness

The creation of Integrated Theatre Commands (ITCs) is the defining reform ambition of the CDS era and General Chauhan’s most consequential institutional contribution. Understanding his approach requires appreciating the conceptual framework he articulated: the progression from Jointness 1.0 to Jointness 2.0. In a seminal lecture on ‘Jointmanship: The Way Ahead’, he stated with characteristic precision: “Jointness 1.0 was about fostering better camaraderie and consensus among the services. Since there were no major differences, we now have an opportunity to advance to the next level – Jointness 2.0.”³

Jointness 2.0, as envisioned by General Chauhan, is not symbolic integration but structural and operational fusion. He identified eight verticals of integration as the scaffolding for theatre commands: operations and intelligence; capability development; communications and information technology; logistics; training; maintenance and support; human resources; and administration and legal. The three services have since achieved a joint communication architecture framework enabling seamless communication and the air defence systems of all three services have been integrated and made operational on a 24×7 basis along the Western Front.⁴

Critically, General Chauhan rejected the temptation of premature structural announcements. His approach was methodical, and consensus based. At his initiative, the three services identified 197 subjects requiring resolution before operationally ready theatre commands could be constituted.⁵ This painstaking groundwork, largely invisible to the public eye, is the essential precondition for commands that will function effectively in war.

A landmark milestone came in June 2025, when the Raksha Mantri’s Office issued a notification empowering the CDS to issue joint orders across all three services without requiring separate approvals from individual service chiefs. This reform mirrored the command model of India’s Andaman and Nicobar Command, the country’s only existing tri-service operational command, and marked a decisive shift in the Indian military’s command philosophy.⁶

With Defence Minister Rajnath Singh declaring 2025 the “Year of Defence Reforms,” General Chauhan confirmed that presenting a blueprint for Integrated Theatre Commands to the government was his topmost priority. Joint doctrines were concurrently developed for multi-domain operations, airborne and heliborne operations, network-centric warfare, joint communications, conventional missile force employment, space operations and joint logistics architecture.⁷

The culmination of this effort came in May 2026, when General Chauhan submitted his final report on the Integrated Theatre Command plan to the Ministry of Defence, which is his last major act of institutional stewardship before completing his tenure. He characterised defence reforms as an “unending process,” signalling that the architecture he has built must be further developed and operationalised by those who follow.⁸

Concurrently, a Joint Operations Centre, providing the three services with a unified platform for planning and conducting integrated operations, was established by May 2026. This represents the operational nerve centre of India’s emerging joint warfighting architecture and a tangible, lasting institutional legacy of General Chauhan’s tenure.⁹

Pillar Two: Jointness Validated in Combat

Strategic reform finds its ultimate validation not in policy documents or organisational charts, but in operational performance under pressure. Operation Sindoor, which was India’s precision military response to the Pahalgam terror attack of April 2025, provided exactly that validation. The 88-hour operation, conducted from 07 to 10 May 2025, was the most significant tri-service combat engagement in recent Indian military history and it served as the definitive real-world stress test of General Chauhan’s integration philosophy.

As CDS and Secretary of the Department of Military Affairs (DMA), General Chauhan served as the principal architect of the operation’s strategic framework, ensuring seamless coordination between the Army, Navy, and Air Force under conditions of intense pressure and compressed decision timelines. The operation demonstrated that years of painstaking institutional groundwork had produced tangible operational dividends. India’s armed forces fought not as three separate services, but as a unified joint force.

General Chauhan articulated the strategic rationale of the operation with clarity and conviction: “State-sponsored terrorism from Pakistan has to stop and that country should not be able to hold India hostage to terrorism.” He noted that India had fundamentally redrawn its strategic boundaries, connecting terrorism to direct military consequences in a manner that established a new and credible deterrence threshold. The precision of the strikes demonstrated the mature fusion of intelligence, technology, and joint operational execution.¹⁰

Pakistan’s planned counter-operation, expected to last 48 hours, was effectively neutralised within eight hours. The request for talks and de-escalation came from Pakistan on 10 May 2025, on India’s terms and within India’s chosen timeline. General Chauhan described the outcome with strategic candour: “We dominated the escalation matrix in the four-day conflict.”¹¹

Equally significant was his emphasis on institutional learning. General Chauhan stressed the value of honestly identifying and rectifying tactical shortcomings, noting that such self-correction enabled India to adapt and operate with greater effectiveness within the duration of the operation itself. This ethos of rigorous self-assessment, translated into doctrinal and capability improvement, is a hallmark of a maturing and self-aware military institution.²

Operation Sindoor also validated a strategic assertion General Chauhan had long championed: that the cultural and doctrinal groundwork for joint warfighting, even before the formal constitution of theatre commands, was already producing decisive operational results. The precision of cross-border strikes in live-fire conditions demonstrated that the incremental, consensus-based approach to integration, which many had criticised as too slow, was in fact laying the correct foundations for a military that could fight and win as one.

Pillar Three: Atmanirbharta and the Technology Imperative

Strategic autonomy, General Chauhan has consistently argued, is inseparable from technological self-reliance. A nation that depends on foreign suppliers for its weapons and military platforms is, in the final analysis, dependent on those suppliers for its security. This dependency becomes most consequential precisely when the security stakes are highest. At the EastTech 2025 symposium in Ranchi, he stated this principle without ambiguity: “Atmanirbharta is the sine qua non for strategic autonomy.”¹²

General Chauhan has been both candid and constructive on India’s defence industrial trajectory. He acknowledged that India’s performance in developing military platforms has been uneven, while noting greater success in weapon systems development. This honest assessment, rather than institutional self-congratulation, has underpinned a policy agenda that is simultaneously ambitious and credible. He called for indigenous development across the full spectrum of future warfare capabilities: artificial intelligence, cyberwarfare, space technology, quantum computing, advanced materials, wargame simulations and lethal autonomous weapon systems.¹²

He emphasised that true Atmanirbharta lies in creating indigenous systems. These systems preserve the element of surprise and strategic advantage because their design architecture and vulnerabilities are not known to potential adversaries. He also warned that India cannot remain tied to Western warfighting concepts and that the nation must develop its own intellectual frameworks for future conflict, suited to its unique geostrategic environment.¹²

A significant doctrinal achievement under his watch is the formal release of the Joint Doctrines for Cyberspace Operations and Amphibious Operations, declassified and released at a Chiefs of Staff Committee meeting under his chairmanship. These doctrines outline a unified approach to defending national cyberspace interests through integrated offensive and defensive cyber capabilities, which is a critical advancement in India’s doctrinal architecture for non-kinetic warfare that aligns India’s military posture with the realities of 21st century conflict.¹³

General Chauhan has also reformed military education to embed the culture of jointness at the foundational level. The integration of the tri-Service Staff College, the fourfold acceleration of doctrine development through distributed authorship, the establishment of rank-agnostic future warfare courses open to academia and industry, these all reflect an understanding that military effectiveness in the modern era is a whole-of-nation enterprise. Collaboration between the armed services, DRDO, the Ministry of Defence, ISRO and NTRO, institutionalised under his watch, is already yielding results.¹³

Pillar Four: Defence Forces Vision 2047

Perhaps the most enduring institutional legacy of General Chauhan is the “Defence Forces Vision 2047: A Roadmap for a Future-Ready Indian Military”, released by Raksha Mantri Rajnath Singh on 10 March 2026. Articulated by Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff under General Chauhan’s direction, this document is the first comprehensive blueprint for aligning India’s defence forces with the national aspiration of Viksit Bharat 2047.¹⁴

The Vision document rests on several foundational pillars. It envisions the transformation of the military into an integrated, multi-domain and agile force capable of deterring adversaries and responding across the full spectrum of conflict i.e. from conventional warfare to grey-zone operations and non-kinetic threats. It recognises the need for a whole-of-nation approach, integrating military strength with diplomatic, technological, and economic power. And it sets the ambitious goal of a defence force self-reliant in critical technologies, thereby, transforming India from the world’s largest arms importer to a significant global exporter of defence hardware by 2047.¹⁵

The document institutionalises cyber, space and AI-driven operational concepts, marking India’s strategic transition from reactive border defence to proactive, multi-domain deterrence. It aligns military capability development with India’s projected economic growth, recognising that a $30 trillion economy by 2047 will require commensurate strategic depth and the capacity to protect and project national interests globally.¹⁵

Significantly, the Vision document was released eight months after Operation Sindoor and explicitly incorporates the lessons of that conflict. This sequencing is not incidental. It reflects the ideal relationship between operational experience and institutional policy. A military that learns from combat, translates those lessons into doctrine and embeds that doctrine into long-term strategic planning is a military that is genuinely future-ready.

The Vision document also represents General Chauhan’s most direct contribution to the Viksit Bharat 2047 project itself. National development by 2047 requires strategic security as its foundation. An India that is economically vibrant but militarily vulnerable cannot realise its civilisational potential. By providing the armed forces with a 21-year roadmap aligned with India’s broader national vision, General Chauhan has ensured that military modernisation and national development will proceed not as parallel tracks, but as a single, integrated national enterprise.

Analysis: Consolidating the Gains

An honest appraisal of General Chauhan’s tenure reveals both the scale of achievement and the strength of the foundations he leaves behind. The comprehensive groundwork for Integrated Theatre Commands, laid over four years, through the consensus, the doctrines, the eight integration verticals, the Joint Operations Centre and the empowered CDS, is General Chauhan’s gift to the process. The final act of formal constitution, when it comes, will stand on the bedrock that General Chauhan has so carefully laid.

The China challenge remains the most complex and enduring dimension of India’s security environment. The partial disengagement at friction points in Eastern Ladakh, while significant, has not resolved the underlying strategic competition. General Chauhan’s deep expertise in the China domain has been a critical national asset. His handling of the security calculus along the northern borders, within a framework of credible deterrence and measured diplomacy, reflects the strategic patience that this relationship demands and rewards.

Operation Sindoor has fundamentally altered India’s strategic posture vis-à-vis terrorism. The redrawing of India’s deterrence red lines i.e. linking state-sponsored terrorism to direct and proportionate military consequences, establishes a new strategic paradigm. General Chauhan has been unequivocal: India will no longer accept the fiction of deniability as a shield for terrorist violence against its citizens. This doctrinal clarity, now reinforced by demonstrated operational capability and political will, is one of the most consequential strategic shifts of his tenure.

General Chauhan’s intellectual legacy is no less significant than his institutional one. His writings, addresses and doctrinal contributions have elevated the quality of India’s strategic discourse. From the concept of Jointness 2.0 and the framework of eight integration verticals, to the articulation of Atmanirbharta as a strategic imperative rather than a mere policy slogan, these are lasting contributions to India’s evolving strategic culture that will shape military thinking long after his tenure concludes.

Conclusion

General Anil Chauhan assumed the office of Chief of Defence Staff at a moment of institutional challenge and strategic complexity. He leaves it having fundamentally transformed the architecture of India’s higher defence management, validated the concept of joint warfighting in actual combat, advanced the cause of technological self-reliance and provided the armed forces with a comprehensive 21-year roadmap aligned with India’s national destiny.

His strategic legacy rests on four enduring pillars. The first is the architectural groundwork for Integrated Theatre Commands, including the legal empowerment of the CDS to issue joint orders, the development of joint doctrines across multiple domains and the establishment of the Joint Operations Centre. The second is the operational validation of Jointness 2.0, demonstrated with precision and decisive strategic effect during Operation Sindoor. The third is the doctrinal and industrial foundations of Atmanirbharta that is India’s indispensable path to genuine strategic autonomy. And the fourth is the Defence Forces Vision 2047, which is a long-term compass that anchors military modernisation firmly within the imperatives of Viksit Bharat.¹⁶

Viksit Bharat 2047 is not merely an economic aspiration, but a civilisational declaration. It is an assertion that India will, by the centenary of its independence, stand among the foremost nations of the world, respected for its values, its capabilities and its contributions to global peace and stability. For that vision to be realised, India’s military must be ready: integrated, technologically advanced, doctrinally sound and strategically autonomous.

General Anil Chauhan has spent nearly four years building that readiness. Through the force of his institutional vision, the depth of his operational experience and the rigour of his intellectual contributions, he has shaped the Indian Armed Forces for the challenges of the 21st century and the opportunities of 2047. His contribution to the security of Viksit Bharat will echo through the decades as India marches confidently towards her centenary of independence.

(The writer is a senior fellow at the New Delhi-based Centre for Joint Warfare Studies [CENJOWS] and the views expressed are personal.)

Notes

1. Press Information Bureau, Ministry of Defence, Government of India, “Government Extends the Service of General Anil Chauhan as Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) & Secretary, Department of Military Affairs,” 24 September 2025. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2170934&reg=3&lang=2

2. Ajai Shukla (Col, Retd), “Quiet Authority: Meet General Anil Chauhan, India’s New Chief of Defence Staff,” Broadsword (Strategy, Economics, Defence), 30 September 2022. https://www.ajaishukla.com/2022/09/quiet-authority-meet-general-anil.html

3. “Next Level of Warfighting: CDS Gives Indian Theatre Commands Plan a Boost,” Business Standard, 21 May 2024. https://www.business-standard.com/external-affairs-defence-security/news/next-level-of-warfighting-cds-gives-indian-theatre-commands-plan-a-boost-124052101369_1.html

4. “Armed Forces Joint Operations Centre Coming Up by May-End: CDS General Anil Chauhan,” The Tribune, May 2026. https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/india/armed-forces-joint-operations-centre-coming-up-by-may-end-cds-general-anil-chauhan/

5. “After Consensus Building, Theatre Commands to be a Reality in 2025?” Bharat Shakti, 31 December 2024. https://bharatshakti.in/after-consensus-building-theatre-commands-to-be-a-reality-in-2025/

6. “India Grants Chief of Defense Staff Command Authority to Build Integrated Theater Commands,” Fair Observer, 18 July 2025. https://www.fairobserver.com/world-news/india-news/india-grants-chief-of-defense-staff-command-authority-to-build-integrated-theater-commands/

7. “Creating Integrated Theatre Commands a Key Priority: CDS Gen Chauhan,” Business Standard/PTI, 20 January 2025. https://www.business-standard.com/external-affairs-defence-security/news/creating-integrated-theatre-commands-a-key-priority-cds-gen-chauhan-125011900570_1.html

8. “CDS Anil Chauhan Submits Final Report on Theatre Commands to Defence Ministry, Calls Reforms an ‘Unending Process’,” ANI News, 14 May 2026. https://www.aninews.in/news/national/general-news/cds-anil-chauhan-submits-final-report-on-theatre-commands-to-defence-ministry-calls-reforms-an-unending-process20260514225620/

9. Ibid.

10. “India’s New Approach Responds Firmly to Pakistan’s ‘Thousand Cuts’ Tactic: CDS Gen Anil Chauhan,” Onmanorama, 03 June 2025. https://www.onmanorama.com/news/india/2025/06/03/india-pakistan-operation-sindoor-cds-chauan.html

11. “We Dominated Escalation Matrix in 4-Day Conflict: CDS Anil Chauhan on Op Sindoor,” The Kashmir Horizon, 15 May 2026. https://thekashmirhorizon.com/2026/05/15/we-dominated-escalation-matrix-in-4-day-conflict-cds-anil-chauhan-on-op-sindoor/

12. “‘Atma-Nirbharta’ Sine Qua Non for Strategic Autonomy; Future Warfare Courses On: CDS Gen Chauhan,” The Print/PTI, 19 September 2025. https://theprint.in/india/atma-nirbharta-sine-qua-non-for-strategic-autonomy-future-warfare-courses-on-cds-gen-chauhan/2747056/

13. “CDS Gen Anil Chauhan Highlights India’s Military Transformation,” ANI News, 09 August 2025. https://www.aninews.in/news/national/general-news/cds-gen-anil-chauhan-highlights-indias-military-transformation20250809023754/

14. Press Information Bureau, Ministry of Defence, Government of India, “Raksha Mantri Releases ‘Defence Forces Vision 2047: A Roadmap for a Future-Ready Indian Military’,” 10 March 2026. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleseDetailm.aspx?PRID=2237368&reg=3&lang=2

15. “Defence Forces Vision 2047: Roadmap for a Future-Ready Indian Military,” PW Only IAS, 16 March 2026. https://pwonlyias.com/current-affairs/defence-forces-vision-2047/

16. “CDS General Anil Chauhan’s Rise and How He Became the Face of India’s Military Reform,” Asianet Newsable, May 2026. https://newsable.asianetnews.com/india/cds-general-anil-chauhan-rise-how-he-became-the-face-of-india-military-reform-articleshow-gaek0co

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