Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff is the tri-service body created to coordinate between the Army, Navy and Air Force, and it functions under the Chief of Defence Staff. The Centre for Joint Warfare Studies is a think tank working on joint warfare and integration questions. The Manekshaw Centre in Delhi Cantonment, named after Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, is the Army's principal convention venue and hosts most major seminars and courses of this kind. The word 'tri-services' in the course title is the substantive point: it is designed for officers from all three services together rather than for one.

India's defence reform agenda since the creation of the Chief of Defence Staff has centred on jointness — getting the three services to plan, train and eventually fight as an integrated force rather than as three organisations that cooperate. Courses of this kind are one of the quieter instruments of that shift, because integration ultimately depends on officers who have studied the same problems together and share a common vocabulary. The focus on 'future warfare' signals the specific concerns now driving doctrine: unmanned systems, cyber and space domains, artificial intelligence and information operations, none of which map neatly onto a single service.