New Delhi: The Doklam standoff of 2017 with China has led the Indian Army to propose the setting up of a new, all powerful Deputy Chief of Strategy. The Indian Army is institutionalising the committee formed to deal with the Doklam standoff through Deputy Chief of Stra-tegy, to be headed by a Lt. Gen. rank officer.
According to sources, during the Doklam standoff a “war group” called “Operation and Planning Steering Committee” was set up under the Vice-Chief to deal with the situation.
Personnel from different verticals were brought in the group to advise and deal with the emerging situation. It had personnel from branches of operations, intelligence, logistics, coordination and perception management. “Each personnel crucially contributed during the crisis,” sources said.
“The Deputy Chief of Strategy will have people from such fields under him so that ad-hoc arrangements do not happen in the future. Over a period of time, we want to make the Army more agile to quickly assess and res-pond to emerging situations,” sources added.
This will be the third deputy chief post which is being created in the Indian Army headquarters. The Army is awaiting clearance from the Cabinet to start implementation of the new setup.
The new Deputy Chief of Army Staff (Strategy) will deal with all operational and force planning. As per the plans, he will have DG military operations, DG military intelligence, strategic planning, operational logistics branches, as well as the newly-created information warfare branch under him.
At present, DG (military operations) and DG (military intelligence) report to the Army Chief or Vice-Chief. In keeping with the needs of the future battlefield, hybrid warfare and social media reality, the new DG (information warfare) will have under him the fromer ADGs public information and information warfare.
