The 27th Constitutional Amendment has introduced the appointment of Chief of the Defence Forces (CDF) in Pakistan which is the subject of several discussions on mainstream as well as social media. The uninformed speculation and debate, unsupported by logic and reason, leads towards confusion which needs to be removed through dispassionate analysis of the need for this important catbird seat in our higher defence organisation (HDO). There is not a frisson of doubt that the reforms in our HDO were long overdue, owing to strategic and operational necessity born out of changed mode of warfare in this artificial intelligence (AI) assisted age.

This is an age of netcentric and multi domain warfare where air, land, sea, space and electromagnetic domains would fight as a network to dominate the famous decision loop i.e. "observe, orient, decide, act" (OODA) through super quick intelligence gathering and concomitant decision making. In this multidomain mode of warfare no single service i.e Army, Airforce and Navy can cast a lone furrow and hope to succeed. Pakistan, like India, had inherited a colonial organisational structure which kept the military organisation highly centralised yet siloed through separate commands in three services.

The British military organisation had a CinC India who used to sit in Viceroy's council and wielded enormous clout in security affairs whilst........

© The Express Tribune