The meeting comes a few weeks after CDS General Chauhan held a similar meeting with military commanders responsible for securing the borders with China

Tasked with the creation of three Maritime Theatre Commands, Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan met top military commanders on Tuesday from the three services. The military commanders are deployed in the peninsular and island territories of India.

“The CDS is meeting the senior Military Commanders from the three services including the Andaman and Nicobar Command, Southern Air and Naval Commands, the Navy’s Western and Eastern Commands to discuss the future structures and responsibilities of the Maritime Theatre Command being created to tackle the threats from that domain,” top government sources said.

The meeting comes a few weeks after CDS General Chauhan held a similar meeting with military commanders responsible for securing the borders with China.

CDS General Chauhan is in the advanced stages of strengthening integration and jointness among the defence forces for setting up three new Theatre Commands which will look after threats from the Northern front, the Western front and the Maritime domain.

The office of the Chief of Defence Staff was created over three years ago to enhance jointness and integration among the defence forces to tackle the threat from adversaries in a more robust way.

The enhanced method includes capabilities in both Cyber and Space domains. The Department of Military Affairs has been mulling over multiple issues including whether the heads of new formations should be three star generals or four star ones.

Most of the suggestions in this regard have been in favour of appointing four-star officers to head these formations as the Theatre Commanders would have many Commander-in-Chief rank officers under them.

The appointment of four-star officers would also avoid issues over seniority and have proper command and control structures in place, sources said.

CDS General Chauhan, along with the service chiefs, is also looking into issues of integration and looking at having common rules for discipline, intelligence gathering and operations.

Studies have also been ordered by senior military officers to integrate intelligence gathering, common operations directorate, training, maintenance and logistics. The DMA is also looking at significant savings with the creation of new formations as a number of existing formations at the Services Headquarters’ level will get optimised with the raising of new centralised Tri-Services Commands.

Recently, the Air Force Chief visited the Army Air Defence College in Gopalpur, Odisha and the Naval Air Field near Visakhapatnam.

Besides, the Navy Chief met the senior JCOs of the Three Services as part of the efforts to promote a Tri-Services' culture among the forces.