The long overhaul

Integrated battle groups will change the army's land warfare tactics, experts say

12 min read

Updated On: Aug 10 2026 | 4:40 AM IST

Lt Gen Dhiraj Seth (centre) reviewing IBG formations displayed during Exercise Akhand Prahaar across the desert sector in November 2025. (Photo: PIB)

Six major generals of the Indian Army took charge of five newly raised integrated battle groups (IBGs) and one dedicated fire support group under the Panagarh-based 17 Mountain Strike Corps on July 1. The move marked the end of nearly two decades of debate over how the army should be structured to fight the next war.

The idea is simple, but difficult to execute: Move away from large divisions that conventionally take days to mobilise, and build smaller, self-contained formations that can deploy within 12-48 hours.

Each IBG will comprise up to 5,000 troops, bringing together infantry, armour, artillery, engineers, air defence, signals and logistics under a single command. The formation will be led by a major general, who will serve as the sole field commander.

The idea of IBGs stems from a painful lesson learnt during Operation Parakram in 2001-02, when it took nearly three weeks for the army’s strike corps to deploy. By the time they were ready, the window of opportunity had closed. The army’s then structure, built around large, manpower-heavy divisions, was simply too slow for the compressed timelines of modern conflict.

Army chief hails Kargil bravehearts for protecting nation's sovereignty

Lt Gen A K Singh (retired), who served as director general, perspective planning, in 2008-09, told the Blueprint that the IBG concept was conceived during a transformation study he had steered during his tenure.

“We looked at creating IBGs that would comprise a mix of combat arms — armour, infantry, mechanised infantry, artillery, air defence, engineers and signals, and be equipped with all the wherewithal,” Singh said. “The basic idea was that while the division remains a very potent force for long-duration, full-scale wars, short-duration conflicts require formations that are agile, all-arms and well-equipped, and can mobilise quickly to create multiple pressure points.”

In 2018, a series of restructuring studies initiated by then chief of army staff, General Bipin Rawat, formally conceptualised the IBG. Field exercises were conducted in 2019 in 9 Corps on the western border with Pakistan and in 17 Corps in the mountains to test the concept.

The idea of decentralised control, critical to modern IBGs, is not new. It traces back to the Prussian concept of Auftragstaktik, or mission-type tactics, after 1806, under which commanders acted on their own initiative to achieve the larger intent without waiting for detailed orders. This philosophy, used by Prussian commander Helmuth von Moltke, became the bedrock of Germany’s blitzkrieg, adopted during the World War II.

The term “blitzkrieg”, meaning “lightning war”, came to describe a military tactic designed to achieve quick and decisive victories. It relied on highly mobile forces, including tanks, motorised infantry and air support, to strike with overwhelming speed and surprise, paralysing the enemy’s ability to organise a defence.

The tactic proved decisive in Germany’s early victories in Belgium and France during the World War II, when both countries’ armies were overwhelmed by sudden and concentrated attacks.

“The integrated battle group concept is not something set in stone. It is an evolutionary process to fight better,” Lt Gen P R Shankar (retired), former director general of artillery in the Indian Army said. “IBGs are a thing in motion. They are going to restructure a lot of our communications and resources. They are going to put a new paradigm on logistics and firepower.”

Each IBG will include a brigadier-rank officer serving as chief operations officer (COO) of the formation, bringing together planning, intelligence, logistics, firepower and battlefield execution into a coordinated effort.

With the COO handling day-to-day operational synchronisation, the major general commanding the IBG is expected to focus on broader strategic and operational decisions.

What distinguishes an IBG from a traditional formation is its self-contained, all-arms structure. Unlike a conventional division, which has to bring together infantry, armour, artillery and support units from scattered formations before it can fight, an IBG is designed to be integrated from the outset.

Speaking at a recent panel discussion hosted by the defence platform Gunners Shot, Lt Gen Dushyant Singh (retired) explained the strategic reasoning behind the shift.

He said India operates in “the most nuclearised zone in the world”, placing every conventional conflict under the shadow of possible escalation. “So there is always this hurry to achieve something as early as possible and try to end the war. The aim is always to have a short war with significant gains,” he said.

“The Cold Start strategy was only a reshuffling of locations. The shift to IBGs was meant to be more fundamental: Not moving divisions faster, but building something inherently lighter and faster to begin with.”

Each IBG fuses infantry, mechanised forces, armour, artillery, engineers, air defence, signals and logistics into a single combined-arms package under one commander, allowing it to move and fight as a cohesive whole rather than being assembled after a crisis breaks out.

“Earlier, supporting elements would come, get attached and then move. Now, it is not that way. They are part and parcel of this particular commander’s force. It is not only engineers or only signals; he is overall in charge of the entire force. There is a kind of unity in this as a concept,” Singh said.

The composition of each IBG will vary according to terrain and theatre requirements, he added. “If you look at high altitudes, there would be a different composition. If you look at medium altitude, there would be a different composition. If you look at the western sector, there would be a totally different composition.”

The Fire Support Group (FSG), raised along with the IBGs, will consist of artillery systems and operate under the command of the corps headquarters. It will play a major role in using towed and rocket artillery, as well as loitering munitions, in support of the IBGs.

According to an article in The Diplomat, the decision to establish IBGs was driven by structural issues identified in the Rudra model, a combat formation launched by the Indian Army in July last year. “The sanctioned strength of 3,000 personnel was too small for the range of missions. Operations in the deserts of Rajasthan and plains of Punjab require mechanised formations to conduct rapid assaults,” the article said.

Lt Shankar (retired) noted, “Rudra Brigades are, in some ways, a reflection of the IBG concept.” In the northern and eastern commands, these formations are known as Rudra Brigades; elsewhere, the standard version is sometimes referred to as the Dhwaj Brigade. Shankar said the naming was less important than the underlying concept.

“Names are not really important. The only thing is to distinguish between the two,” he said.

Formation of Indian Army’s IBGs featured during Exercise Amogh Jwala in March 2026. (Photo: MOD)

Commentator Rahul Bedi, writing in The Wire in 2025, had also argued that naming formations as Rudra, Bhairav and Shaktibaan amounted largely to a rebranding of the long-stalled IBG idea, with many of its original doctrinal and funding hurdles still unresolved.

The Diplomat article also noted that IBGs could “adversely affect the existing conventional deterrence between India and Pakistan” and “could act as a catalyst, triggering a situation that gets beyond the control of New Delhi, spiralling into an all-out nuclear conflict”.

Eastern front first

The rollout of IBGs under the China-focused 17 Mountain Strike Corps is no accident. Headquartered at Panagarh in West Bengal, the corps was raised specifically to address threats along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China. According to reports, the earlier plan was to create four IBGs under the 17 corps’ two divisions — 59 Division and 23 Division.

“The whole idea of an IBG is that its organisation should align with the task it is meant to perform. Since this mountain strike corps would have specific tasks, the IBGs have been formed accordingly. This will give the army a realistic idea of whether the IBG concept is correct or not,” Shankar said.

China’s military transformation has been a key driver behind the formation of IBGs. Over the past decade, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has moved from older divisions to smaller, more versatile combined-arms brigades (CABs), which integrate tanks, artillery, air defence and support elements for joint operations.

The IBG model is similar to CABs, which are smaller and more flexible formations. The PLA’s Western Theatre Command, headquartered in Chengdu, oversees the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the Tibet Autonomous Region and other western provinces. It houses the 76th and 77th group armies, which include multiple heavy combined-arms brigades positioned opposite India’s northern and eastern borders.

Each CAB comprises 4,000 to 6,000 troops and is commanded by a senior colonel who can be task-organised for specific missions. The PLA’s transition to the CAB model began after its major military reforms and has given China a head start in operational experience and institutional learning.

The Galwan Valley clashes of June 15-16, 2020, may have accelerated the launch of IBGs. The fighting, which led to the death of 20 Indian soldiers, highlighted the “critical logistics vulnerability of the Indian Army” and the limitations of a conventional division-centric organisational structure in high-altitude border emergencies.

This was corroborated by former Indian Army chief General Upendra Dwivedi, who said the IBG project was launched “against the background of growing tensions with China in 2020”. The clashes also changed India’s strategic calculus, with China becoming “the topmost front” and Pakistan moving to second place.

“IBGs are a great requirement for our LAC and Line of Control (LoC). They have tremendous payoffs, especially in valley-based approaches. You have to have an IBG system tailor-made for a particular valley because one valley does not support the other,” Shankar said.

Potential pitfalls

Every advantage claimed for the IBG rests on one assumption: That the personnel within it stay together long enough to function as a single unit. That is where the model runs into its most serious internal contradiction.

“The Agnipath model of shorter tenures and younger personnel, with the loss of experience that follows, works heavily against the IBG model,” Shankar said. “The Agniveer model is coming to a stage where, if you do not modify it, we are going to be in trouble. On that, we should have no doubts. The whole story of the IBG is to do everything with the existing manpower; it is only reorganising within the existing larger framework. There is no accretion to capability through the IBG.”

The IBG, in other words, is not meant to add troops. It redistributes the army’s existing manpower into a tighter,

faster-moving package. That makes the retention question more important. If the pool of experienced soldiers available to fill that package keeps shrinking every four years, the IBG risks losing the continuity on which its effectiveness depends.

In a column for ThePrint, Lt Gen H S Panag noted that the US Army’s brigade combat teams derive their effectiveness “less from organisation than from overwhelming network integration, ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) assets, precision fires, and joint air support”. Training for these capabilities requires sustained tenures.

Panag also drew lessons from the war in Ukraine. Russia entered the conflict relying on battalion tactical groups, which were heavy on artillery and armour but thin on infantry, logistics and command resilience. It reverted to traditional brigade structures once those limitations became apparent.

Ukraine, by contrast, built combined-arms brigades around drones, commercial satellite communications and decentralised command, repeatedly offsetting its numerical disadvantage.

“Modern brigades no longer fight because they are bigger; they fight better because every sensor, shooter, and commander operates on the same digital battlefield. Connectivity has become combat power,” Panag wrote.

Despite the excitement surrounding IBGs, several risks need to be taken into account. A smaller, more agile and organised formation can also be more vulnerable than a conventional formation.

“A very small number of strikes can destroy the entire force. I am talking of the brigade and IBG headquarters; they might lose communication. So, dispersion is good, but at the same time it can make the force easier to destroy. One gap can be created through which the enemy can push through,” Lt Gen Dushyant Singh said.

Logistics, too, will be a challenge, he added. “If everything is integrated into a particular IBG, then logistics, maintenance and other support requirements also have to be catered for within that organisation. It will place an overwhelming cognitive load on the commander. Therefore, artificial intelligence and other tools will have to be made available to ensure he can take rapid decisions,” he said.

Lt Gen Harimohan Iyer (retired), who has commanded formations in Northern Command, raised a command-and-control concern.

“The gap between the commands becomes extremely large,” he said, adding that this would require a far more decentralised, directive style of leadership than the army has traditionally practised. “I don’t see our armed forces well tuned for that level of decentralisation.”

“Resources are another constraint. Engineers are scarce even at the corps level; spreading them across several IBGs leaves the corps commander with nothing held back to exploit a sudden opening.

Artillery presents a similar dilemma. It is most effective when centralised, while the IBG structure, by design, pulls it apart,” he added.

Nevertheless, the operationalisation of IBGs is underway, and these formations are now central to the Indian Army’s “decade of transformation”. Whether they can deliver the speed and agility the army seeks is a question the 17 Mountain Strike Corps will have to answer in exercises, deployments and, ultimately, any future crisis.

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Written By :

Mohammad Asif Khan

Mohammad Asif Khan is a Senior Correspondent at Business Standard, where he covers defence, security, and strategic affairs.

First Published: Aug 10 2026 | 4:40 AM IST

In this article : Indian Army

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The long overhaul

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