New Delhi, September 30
The government is all set to put in place a strategic forces command which will have all strategic assets like aircraft-carrying nuclear weapons and land nuclear missiles under its command.
Lt-Gen Pankaj Joshi, Chief of Integrated Staff Committee, addressing the media on the first anniversary of the setting up of the Integrated Defence Staff (IDS) said today that the strategic forces command was on the anvil.
“We are in the process of raising a strategic forces command with all the strategic assets like aircraft-carrying nuclear missile and land-based nuclear missiles..... it will be a fighting command and will become operational soon”. Whenever sea-based nuclear missiles were inducted into the forces these would also come under the strategic forces command.
Saying that a proposal for appointing a Chief of the Defence Staff as an operational head of the three services was beyond his purview, the Chief of the Integrated Defence Staff (CIDS) said he was not aware of the progress on the front.
Commenting on the country having its nuclear command and control structure in place, he said although we have not announced putting the structure in place from the roof, like our neighbours, but it defied logic that any country possessing nuclear weapons should not have such a structure in place.
Stating that the country’s first ever tri-service command set up recently on the Andaman Island, was being treated by the government as “laboratory experience”, he said the authorities would review the working of the idea by 2005 and formulate whether or not to go ahead.
He said a high-level tri-service committee on revamping defence training institutions had submitted its report and this would be considered by the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee Gen S. Padmanabhan.
Asserting that the concept of joint training of officers and personnel was catching on, he said the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff-Committee would look into how many of the services’ training commands and institutions should be merged under the new CIDS set-up.
Saying that he was not aware of the proposals submitted by the tri-service committee, he said he felt that in a large number of training institutions staff could be reduced and some done away entirely.
As far as his IDS set-up was concerned, he said the organisation was more or less set up to be a single -window think tank of the defence policy makers tasked to provide strategic inputs on operations, intelligence, organisational matters, training and strategic vision.
Asked if the IDS had worked out any strategy to deal with nuclear terrorism, he said: “It already exists in the Department of Atomic Energy,” However, the IDS was looking at the problem of cyber-terrorism with the assistance of the USA, he said.
