Headquarters Western Air Command hosted a high-level Joint Operations Conclave on five and six February 2026 under the All Domain Joint Operations Exercise 2026 framework. The conclave focused on deepening intra-service and inter-service interaction at the operational level of warfare with the objective of strengthening joint operational capabilities across the Indian Defence Forces in a complex multi-domain environment. Senior officers from the Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff (IDS), the Indian Army, the Indian Navy, the Defence Space Agency (DSA), the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Indian Air Force (IAF) attended the deliberations.

In his inaugural remarks, Air Marshal JS Mann, Senior Air Staff Officer at Western Air Command, emphasised the importance of jointness and integrated warfighting for contemporary and future conflicts. He said an all-domain operational approach was required to achieve seamless integration across air, land, sea, space and cyber domains in contested and denied environments. He also urged enhancement of interoperability among the services, promotion of domain-agnostic decision-making, strengthening of sensor-to-shooter linkages and refinement of operational procedures for greater efficiency.

The Chief of Integrated Defence Staff, Air Marshal Ashutosh Dixit, underlined the need to institutionalise joint mechanisms for integrated planning, intelligence sharing and capability prioritisation. He advocated structured identification of capability gaps and coherent inter-service responses to strengthen operational preparedness for future contingencies. He urged accelerated doctrinal evolution and tri-service resource alignment to build unified operational capability and sustained strategic readiness.

Concluding the conclave, Air Marshal Jeetendra Mishra, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of Western Air Command, drew lessons from Operation Sindoor and outlined their implications for future warfare. He highlighted the pivotal role of air power in generating decisive strategic effects and the need to synchronise surface manoeuvre with offensive air operations while exploiting the advantage of stand-off weapons. He called for a shift from legacy attrition-based models toward a more agile, adaptive and fully integrated joint warfighting paradigm and stressed the imperative of identifying and bridging capability gaps to reinforce convergence across all domains.