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The fourth edition of the Tri-Services Future Warfare Course concluded on 30 August 2026 at the Manekshaw Centre, New Delhi, after four weeks of instruction.
It was conducted under the aegis of Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff (HQ IDS) and coordinated by the Centre for Joint Warfare Studies (CENJOWS), drawing officers of the Army, Navy and Air Force along with participants from government, academia, industry and think tanks.
Certificates were presented by the Chief of Integrated Defence Staff to the Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee, Air Marshal Tejinder Singh; the fifth edition is scheduled from 16 November to 11 December 2026.
The tri-service staff headquarters created in 2001 to provide an institutional framework for the higher management of defence. It followed the recommendations of the Group of Ministers constituted on 17 April 2000 under L. K. Advani, which acted on the Kargil Review Committee's report. HQ IDS drives jointness, joint doctrine and tri-service training such as this course.
A think tank established on 27 August 2007 at the initiative of the Ministry of Defence and registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860. It works as a referral and support think tank to the Ministry of Defence and HQ IDS, researching geo-strategic and joint-warfare questions across the tri-service domain, and coordinated this course.
Created on 1 January 2020 as a department of the Ministry of Defence, headed by the Chief of Defence Staff as its ex-officio Secretary. It handles the three Services, the Integrated Defence Staff, the Territorial Army and certain procurement matters, and is the institutional bridge between the armed forces and the ministry.
A unit of IIT Ropar, an Institute of National Importance, set up to bridge the armed forces, the defence industry and academia in support of indigenous defence technology. It awarded the 'PG Diploma in Future Warfare' to the course participants.
The armed forces' convention venue in Delhi Cantonment, spread over about 25 acres and inaugurated by the President of India on 21 October 2010. It hosts the biannual Army Commanders' Conference and, here, the Future Warfare Course. It is named after Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, India's first Field Marshal and the Army Chief during the 1971 war.
India's Army, Navy and Air Force historically planned, trained and fought through separate service headquarters and separate single-service commands. 'Jointness' means the three services operating to one plan; 'integration' means merging their staff and structures; 'theatrisation' means putting all assets in a geographic theatre under one commander regardless of service. The Kargil conflict of 1999 exposed the cost of the gap, and the reform chain that followed produced HQ IDS in 2001 and the Chief of Defence Staff and the Department of Military Affairs in 2020. The Andaman and Nicobar Command, created in 2001 with its headquarters at Port Blair, remains India's only tri-service theatre command; the Strategic Forces Command, which handles the delivery and operational control of nuclear assets, is the other tri-service operational command. Wider theatrisation into integrated theatre commands was still under implementation as of August 2026. A course like this one is the training-side expression of the same push: it teaches officers from all three services to think about AI, cyber, space and grey-zone operations from one shared frame rather than three.
Simple Analogy: Three specialist doctors treating one patient from three separate case files is jointness failing. Putting them in one room with one file is jointness; making one of them the lead physician for that patient is theatrisation.
Received presidential assent on 15 August 2023 and came into force on 10 May 2024, with rules notified in May 2025. It empowers the Commander-in-Chief or Officer-in-Command of an Inter-Services Organisation to exercise disciplinary and administrative control over personnel of all three services under their command — previously each service's own Act governed its personnel, which blocked genuine joint command. Existing Inter-Services Organisations include the Andaman and Nicobar Command, the Defence Space Agency and the National Defence Academy.
The CDS is the single-point military adviser to the Defence Minister on tri-service matters and the Permanent Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, but exercises no military command over the three Service Chiefs — the separation is deliberate, so that the advice stays impartial. General Bipin Rawat was the first CDS and the first Secretary of the DMA.
Kargil Review Committee constituted under K. Subrahmanyam
Committee submits its report to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee; tabled in Parliament on 23 February 2000
Group of Ministers under L. K. Advani constituted to review the national security system and act on the report
Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff established; the Andaman and Nicobar Command, India's first tri-service theatre command, is raised the same year
Centre for Joint Warfare Studies established
General Bipin Rawat takes charge as India's first Chief of Defence Staff and as Secretary of the new Department of Military Affairs
Inter-Services Organisations (Command, Control and Discipline) Act, 2023 comes into force
The curriculum's inclusion of grey-zone operations, information warfare and cognitive warfare tracks the shift from declared war to coercion below the threshold of armed conflict — the frame examiners now use for questions on hybrid warfare and disinformation.
The presence of IIT Ropar's Defence Research and Innovation Foundation, awarding a PG Diploma alongside a military course, is the academia-armed forces-industry bridge that indigenisation policy has been building; connect it to iDEX, the Defence Acquisition Procedure and the positive indigenisation lists.
Alongside HQ IDS sit the Andaman and Nicobar Command (2001, Port Blair) and the Strategic Forces Command, which handles nuclear delivery, plus tri-service agencies for space, cyber and special operations. Learn which are commands and which are agencies — the distinction is asked.
GS Paper 3 > Internal Security > Various Security Forces and Agencies and Their Mandate
CDS/AFCAT General Knowledge > Defence Organisations and Reforms
General Awareness > Defence Institutions and Appointments
Defence reform — CDS, DMA, HQ IDS, theatrisation — appears almost every year in UPSC Prelims/Mains and in CDS/AFCAT general knowledge.
The Army, Navy and Air Force planning and operating to a single integrated plan rather than three service plans.
Placing all military assets in a geographic theatre under a single commander, irrespective of the service they belong to.
Coercive activity deliberately kept below the threshold of open armed conflict — economic pressure, proxies, cyber intrusion, disinformation.
Operations synchronised simultaneously across land, sea, air, space and cyberspace, plus the cognitive/information domain.
Chief of Integrated Defence Staff to the Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee — the three-star officer who heads HQ IDS.