Integrated Battle Groups

In News

• Recently, the Army Chief said that the Integrated Battle Groups are in the final stage of application.

About Integrated Battle Groups

• Proposal: It was first proposed in one of the four studies regarding the reorganisation of the Army, which was commissioned in 2018 under then COAS General Bipin Rawat.
• Meaning: IBGs are self-contained, agile, brigade-sized fighting units.
• Role: The IGBs are meant to play both defensive and offensive roles.
• Formation: Each IBG will be headed by a Major General. The integrated units for the border will be all-encompassing, along with artillery units, armoured vehicles, combat engineers and signal units.
• Mobilisation: They will be able to mobilise for the required operations within a span of 12-48 hours based on the location.
• The process has been put to test along two most active borders such as with Pakistan and China.
  • One is coming up under the 9 Corps mandated to operate on the western borders with Pakistan.
  • The other one is being raised under the 17 Corps raised as the sole strike corps to operate along the northern borders with China.
• Theaterization: This whole exercise is associated with theaterization which means integrating all the forces into theatres.
• Strength: The IBGs will be bigger than a brigade (3,000-3,500) but smaller than a division (10,000-12,000).
  • While a Command is the largest static formation of the Army spread across a defined geography, a Corps is the largest mobile formation.
  • Typically, each Corps has about three Divisions.

What is the need? / Relevance

• After the terrorist attack on Parliament in 2001, the Indian military undertook massive mobilisation but the Army’s formations which were deep inside took weeks to mobilise loosing the element of surprise.
• Following this, the Army formulated a proactive doctrine known as ‘Cold Start’ to launch swift offensive but its existence was consistently denied in the past.
  • Its existence was acknowledged for the first time by Gen. Rawat in 2017.

Major challenges

• Faraway land war and medium to high-intensity wars are a distant possibility.
• With an increased communication network, the interaction between the three organisations is easy and can be planned without much consideration of spatial distance, so there is no need for the new organisation.
• Domain knowledge of integrated force commander is likely to be limited in respect to the other two services components under his command.
• Besides, interoperability of troops and equipment from dormant sectors to the active areas during the war will be difficult and less effective because they would have been trained and equipped specifically to their primary sector of responsibility.
• Another serious challenge that could be faced is that the concept of a theatre command may promote a sense of “fighting battles, rather than fighting a war”, which in turn may reduce our ability to either win a battle or the war.

Significance of the move

• Added strength: The IBGs add punch to the ground forces by combining the strengths of each formation.
• Swift operations: Once IBGs are rolled out, these will be comparatively smaller formations but will be able to execute their operations swiftly.
  • They will add to the options of the theatre commanders.
  • Integrated Battle Groups (IBGs) are meant to ensure faster punitive and defensive operations.
• They are meant to replace the current Cold Start Doctrine: which called for defensive corps to carry out shallow cross-border thrusts within 72 hours for limited objectives.
• Based on terrain: The composition of every IBG would differ on the basis of the terrain where it is located e. g. IGBs operating in the mountains will be different from ones operating in plains.

Experience in Other Countries

• Several major militaries in the world have deployed integrated theatre commands. China’s People’s Liberation Army has five theatre commands. Its Western Theatre Command is responsible for India. The US Armed Forces have 11 unified commands, of which seven are geographic and four functional commands.
• The Changing Dynamics of national security which now encompasses cyber, automation and such new challenges, cannot be solved by a disjointed general and MoD labyrinth but rather a clear and robust structure that should quickly respond to an emergent situation.  

Source: TH