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The five-day Combined Operational Review and Evaluation (CORE) Programme 2026 concluded at the Manekshaw Centre, New Delhi, on 18 September 2026.
It was organised by Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff and conducted by the Centre for Joint Warfare Studies (CENJOWS), the tri-service think tank set up under HQ IDS in 2007.
Senior officers of the Army, Navy and Air Force sat with officials of the Ministries of Defence, External Affairs and Home Affairs - a civil-military format, not a purely military one.
Participants interacted with the Chief of Defence Staff, the Chief of the Naval Staff, the Chief of Integrated Defence Staff, and the Vice Chiefs of the Army and Air Staff.
Discussions covered jointness, ongoing conflicts, defence production, artificial intelligence, robotics and quantum computing, and non-kinetic domains such as cognitive warfare and counter-disinformation.
To build inter-service jointness and civil-military synergy by putting senior Service officers and senior civil officials of the security ministries through the same review of contemporary warfare and national security challenges
Key: A five-day annual format run by HQ IDS through CENJOWS, combining scenario-based discussion on multi-domain and grey-zone conflict with direct interaction with the CDS, the Service Chiefs and the CISC; the maiden edition ran 9-13 September 2024
Tri-service headquarters created to drive jointness, integrated planning and coordination among the three Services; it functions under the Chief of Defence Staff and was raised on 1 October 2001 following the post-Kargil review of India's higher defence management
Tri-service think tank established in 2007 under the aegis of HQ IDS, mandated to research and debate integration as an enabler of national power; it conducted the CORE Programme 2026
Single-point military adviser to the government and head of the Department of Military Affairs, tasked with facilitating restructuring of the Services into theatre commands
Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff is raised, acting on the recommendations that followed the Kargil conflict review.
CENJOWS is established as a tri-service think tank under HQ IDS.
The maiden CORE Programme is conducted at USI, New Delhi, for Major General-equivalent officers.
HQ IDS marks its 25th Raising Day.
General N. S. Raja Subramani takes over as the 3rd Chief of Defence Staff and Admiral Krishna Swaminathan as the 27th Chief of the Naval Staff.
CORE Programme 2026 is held at the Manekshaw Centre, New Delhi.
GS Paper 3 > Security > Various Security Forces and Agencies and their mandate; defence reforms and jointness
General Awareness > Tri-service organisations, appointments and defence reforms
The ability of the Army, Navy and Air Force to plan, train and fight as one force rather than three coordinated ones; the stated objective of HQ IDS.
Action that does not rely on physical force - cyber operations, information and cognitive operations, strategic communication and disinformation.
Hostile activity deliberately kept below the threshold of open armed conflict, so that it is hard to attribute and hard to answer militarily.