OPINION | Logistics at War: Why India’s Theatre Command Future Depends on the Army’s Supply Chains, Border Infrastructure and Digital Fusion

by Huma Siddiqui

Every debate on theatre commands ultimately returns to one question: who sustains the fight? In India’s case, the answer is unequivocal: it is the Indian Army. No other service bears the responsibility of permanently manning hostile borders, maintaining battle-ready forces across extreme terrain, and sustaining high-tempo operations for months and years. This reality makes logistics the linchpin of any credible theatre command system. Without placing the Army’s logistical architecture at the center, theatre commands risk becoming structural experiments detached from operational truth.

India’s continental threats demand endurance, not symbolism. The Army guards the world’s highest battlefield in Siachen and some of its most unforgiving terrain across the LAC and LoC. Soldiers deployed at 17,000 feet require a constant flow of fuel, ammunition, rations, winter clothing, medical supplies, and engineering stores. In the Northeast, the Army secures inaccessible jungle terrain supported through long, winding road networks. On the western front, rapid mobilization demands massive stockpiles of ammunition and assured replenishment even under fire. None of this can be addressed by abstract models of jointness. It requires a logistics system that understands infantry boots, armor thrust lines, artillery consumption rates, mountain engineering constraints, and the brutal realities of high-altitude attrition.

The Ladakh crisis demonstrated this more clearly than any academic paper ever could. When China forced a standoff in 2020, it was the Army’s logistic and engineering ecosystem that carried India through the initial shock. Nearly 90,000 tonnes of supplies, from fuel to habitat modules, were moved into forward areas at unprecedented speed. The effort stretched BRO convoys, Army Service Corps nodes, air-maintenance loops, and forward supply depots to their limits. The Army executed it flawlessly, but it was achieved through improvisation, experience, and operational instinct, not because a unified tri-service structure existed. Had theatre logistics already been in place, anchored by Army leadership, India could have reduced duplication, secured faster lift capacity, and preserved critical reserves.

This is why the Army insists that any theatre command model must begin with logistics, and logistics must begin with land warfare. Air power and maritime power can surge, reposition, and withdraw. Land forces cannot. Soldiers live, fight, and remain in terrain where everything from water to fuel must be physically delivered. Ammunition expenditure during sustained land combat is exponentially higher than during maritime or air operations. A brigade in intense contact can consume in days what a naval fleet or air formation might spend in weeks. Without a logistics architecture designed around Army realities, theatre commands become fragile by design.

Infrastructure is the second pillar of Army-led theatre readiness. The Border Roads Organisation, working closely with Army engineers, has quietly enabled India’s deterrence posture by transforming border roads, tunnels, and bridges across Arunachal Pradesh, Ladakh, Uttarakhand, and Sikkim. Every meter of road built, every tunnel bored, and every bridge reinforced directly enhances Army mobility, survivability, and response time. The Army has long argued that theatre commands must integrate BRO, railways, civil aviation, and national logistics networks under a unified operational logic. Without this, India risks having theatre commands on paper but bottlenecks on the ground.

Digital fusion is the third and newest frontier, and here again, the Army’s requirements dominate. Modern land warfare demands real-time visibility of fuel, ammunition, medical support, spares, troop movement, UAV availability, and air-defense posture. The integration of Akashteer with IACCS is an early example of how digital systems can shrink response time and reduce fratricide risk. But these systems must now be expanded into a theater-wide logistics and ISR backbone that prioritizes land operations. Only the Army has the scale, distribution, and operational urgency to define what such a system must deliver in wartime.

A theatre commander cannot be effective without the ability to reroute ammunition, divert convoys, reprioritize air-maintenance sorties, and shift engineering resources instantly based on the needs of units in contact. This is not an airpower question or a naval question, it is the essence of land warfare. The Army’s lived experience of mobilizing in days, sustaining for months, and holding for years gives it a unique understanding of logistics as strategy. Theatreisation must reflect this.

For India’s adversaries, logistics is already central to warfighting. China’s Western Theatre Command functions as an integrated ecosystem where road, rail, air networks, missile forces, air assets, and ground troops follow a unified plan. Pakistan relies heavily on terrain-favored logistics for rapid mobilization in the plains and along the LoC. In contrast, India’s tri-service separation forces the Army to compensate for structural fragmentation through improvisation and sheer manpower. Theatre commands must remove this burden, not add to it.

The Army does not oppose theatre commands; it opposes theatre commands that do not reflect operational reality. A joint structure that reduces land-force authority over logistics, ISR, and battle-space management would not enhance jointness; it would weaken deterrence. India’s wars are fought on land. Its victories are held on land. Its vulnerabilities lie on land. And its logistics, the lifeblood of every fighting unit, begin and end with the Army.

The future theatre command architecture must therefore be built around Army-led logistics, BRO-driven infrastructure expansion, and digital systems calibrated to land combat. This is not service parochialism, it is strategic logic. If the Indian Army cannot sustain the fight, no amount of jointness elsewhere will compensate.

India’s political and military leadership recognize that the window to modernize command structures is narrow. The next conflict, whenever it comes, will test endurance, speed, and integration. Theatre commands will succeed only if they strengthen the Army’s ability to carry the heaviest load of war, the load it has carried for decades with quiet efficiency and unquestioned resolve.

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About Author

Huma Siddiqui is a senior journalist with more than three decades of experience covering Defense, Space, and the Ministry of External Affairs. She began her career with The Financial Express in 1993 and moved to FinancialExpress.com in 2018. Her reporting often integrates defence and foreign policy with economic diplomacy, with a particular focus on Afro-Asia and Latin America.