A Hybrid Command Paradigm- MDO Evolution and its Application in South Asia

Muhammad Bilal Iftikhar Khan

Multi Domain Operations (MDO) are the biggest paradigm change in military thinking since the introduction of Air Land Battle in the 1980s. MDO's fundamental issue is that the conventional military forces are not yet ready to deter or defeat a capable peer adversary in the upcoming wars. This idea has quickly grown from being an American phenomenon to the operating paradigm of NATO and its partners, and is now reshaping not only the way militaries fight, but the way they think of command and control itself, namely the tension between centralisation and decentralisation.

Modern multi-domain doctrine teaches that neither a centralized nor a decentralized approach is the best method for conducting operations, but rather a dynamic balance. The goal is to work towards strategic unity while keeping tactical speed and initiative on a modern, very competitive battlefield. The essay chronicles the development of MDO, discusses the synchronisation of multiple domains, and showcases how India and Pakistan are introducing this hybrid command philosophy into their military transformations, albeit in different ways, that reflect their distinct strategic cultures and operational requirements.

Military change generally occurs through two opposing modes: bloody failure or proactive choice. Both have contributed to the development of MDO. These two historical streams of change are essential for understanding the significance of command balance.

In 1917, General John J. Pershing thought that the Germans could be overcome by courageous infantry fighting the enemy "open warfare," or by fighting in the open areas that had rendered the European front lifeless. In the face of years of experience in Europe, the U.S. Army did not change its doctrine, which was known to have proved suicidal.  The lesson was hard, but it was a hard lesson; doctrine that is not adapted before battle is a basic recipe for loss of life.

The development of Air Land Battle is the example of a proactive and successful change, however. The inspiration was the experience of Israel's close call during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Air Land Battle evolved as an idea but was codified into doctrine in 1982 , after an eight-year period. The three innovations that emerged were operational art (the development of deep, close, and rear areas), decentralized execution (commanders monitoring sectors for opportunities to exploit), and integrated battle (synchronizing maneuver, firepower, and support by all arms). Earning its stripes during Operation Desert Storm in 1991, the seemingly impossible "left hook" maneuver proved to be a success due to the planners' mastery of operational art and tactical superiority they had gained through constant training.

In 2017, General David Perkins coined the term "Multi-Domain Battle" for the military, but within the year, General Stephen Townsend took a major step towards rebranding the idea into "Multi-Domain Operations. This was no makeover. The change was motivated by three factors: first, the Air Force talked about MDO and the Army talked about “battle”; second, the concept had to be embraced by interagency partners, so that they were comfortable with it; and third, competition without conflict ... modern competition takes place on a continuum from below the threshold of war to full-scale conflict.

Today five operational domains are recognised by NATO: 

1.Maritime

2. Land, Air

3. Space 

4. Cyberspace. 

5. Cognative or Information 

The addition of space and cyberspace sets MDO apart from past "joint" operations concepts. In the past, these areas would operate as separate organizations. MDO requires that everything that happens on any domain is coordinated as a unified entity.

Multi-domain doctrine is highly developed and builds on the highest level of Centralised Command. This facilitates a unified strategic intent across land, air, sea, cyber, information and space domains, ensuring a coordinated approach with assets and avoiding fratricide issues. However, this centralisation is offset by Decentralised Execution to work in a jamming and clogging environment. This  enable lower ranking commanders to make decisions and act independently at the "speed of relevance" without waiting to get approval from higher levels. This new paradigm is described by NATO analysis as "Centralised Command, Distributed Control and Decentralised Execution.

Taken as a whole, the best way to describe MDO is that it is the art of synchronizing activities in time, space and purpose to create maximum impact at the right time, right place and right purpose. The objective of MDO is convergence... how to apply capabilities from multiple domains in order to achieve compounding effects on an adversary's critical vulnerabilities.

The MDO has grown over the past few years. The change for the better is a fundamental one, in that the Integrated Tasking Order (ITO) introduces a paradigm shift from the old Air Tasking Order to an "an effect as an effect" paradigm, irrespective if it is to be provided by rocket batteries, psychological operations broadcasts or cyber payloads. Non-kinetic is included alongside kinetic from the planning phase.

A fused, trusted Common Operational Picture (COP) lies at the heart of effective MDO synchronization. This COP should be more than just the typical blue-force tracking. It must incorporate electronic attacks and jamming operations, cyber operations and impacts, narratives of psychological operations, and expected decision points of the adversary. Only then can commanders see how the "convergence windows" ... those windows that occur when synced effects are at maximum effectiveness ,  support them.

 John Boyd's OODA Loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) is still applicable to military theory. Modern sync is to break the enemy OODA loop and extend  through non-lethal and non-kinetic activities that  fracture enemy morale, blind intelligence nets, disrupt command cohesiveness and delay enemy reactions at the exact moment maneuver forces strike.

5-step process, develop a list of all available non-lethal/non-kinetic capabilities; apply NLCVA to correlate effects to targets; plan the convergence window to maximize the effects; plan maneuver and fire with the same tools and plans; establish the effects in orders and gain resources and pre-approvals. This makes plans more rigorous in handling information and cyber effects, as they would be in relation to kinetic fires.

The central question of this model is how centralization and decentralization are in opposition. Where there are multiple domains, effects need to be synchronized, which means that at higher headquarters there must be a large degree of control. But in the fog of war and the reality of electronic warfare, forces can't always count on a steady stream of information from that central command.

As Syed Ali Abbas notes, Mission command (decentralization) and synchronization (centralization) are concepts that go hand in hand to a degree. The crucial point is that forces have to be flexible, selecting the right degree of control depending on the tactical situation, not following a dogma. The ultimate litmus test to see whether India and Pakistan are genuinely transforming into a multi-domain command or not will be seen from their capacity to make this hybrid command structure effective during a real crisis.

Theatreisation is a significant structural reform that India is working towards in order to develop multi-domain capabilities. General Anil Chauhan, the Chief of Defence Staff of India (CDS), has announced that the three service chiefs have "total consensus" on this concept. The main objective is to put operations, intelligence and logistics under joint commanders for certain geographic theatres, which is to merge the planning and application of force from the traditional single-service perspectives.

Indian doctrine, however, clearly states that distributed control is required. According to official analyses, if lines of communication are jammed with the main command structure, "mission command characteristics of distributed control will ensure that operations continue. This gives subordinates more power, particularly in the air force and special forces, to use speed and flexibility to their advantage. In August 2025, India formally released its first-ever joint multi-domain operations doctrine, signaling a major conceptual shift towards integrating all domains of warfare.

MDO became an integral part of the India-Pakistan equation in May 2025, vividly demonstrating its significance. India had a series of escalatory strikes on 8 critical airfields and targeted 9 allegedly terrorist targets, deep inside Pakistan under Operation Sindoor after the  attack in Pahalgam. The operation marked a paradigm shift in India's strategy towards Pakistan, the first was the perception that there is no difference between terror and war; the second was to counter the Pakistanis' conventional nuclear posture, i.e., the assumption that their nuclear arsenal would stop conventional incursions; and the third was to provide 'legitimacy' for the act of retaliation even when there was no granular evidence.

More than the past two decades, Pakistan's experiences in recent conflicts have expedited the shift towards multi-domain operations. The nation's efforts have been directed at building concrete skills to support a multi-domain, coordinated response. Pakistan has created a dedicated Army Rocket Force Command (ARFC), to coordinate and plan long-range conventional fires to ensure strategic coherence and escalation control.

 In order to allow decentralized action, Pakistan has indigenous tactical data link, “Link-17”, developed and deployed. This system enables the real-time exchange of data between air, land and naval platforms for the purpose of providing a common operational picture to help drive distributed decision making at the front line of the fight. It was  tested in Operation Bunyan un Marsoos, a coordinated multi domain operation which combined missile systems, drone swarms, electronic warfare, and cyber warfare in a unified command structure, in May 2025.

 The Pakistan Air Force's action against Operation Sindoor dubbed as Marka-e-Haq was a "masterclass in the use of multidomain operations". The PAF adopted and incorporated electronic, cyber, space and kinetic assets into an indigenously developed kill chain. Non-kinetic domains used for disruption of Indian Air Force's communications and links with the infrastructure in space. These included the successful neutralisation of India's S-400 air defence system, destruction of 90% of Indian drones , both hard and soft , by shooting them down, an unprecedented hour-long Beyond Visual Range (BVR) aerial engagement, and maintaining freedom of navigation for Pakistani drones in Indian airspace. The Pakistani analysis focuses on the fact that technology and machines do not win wars, but on visionary leadership, comprehensive training, based on MDO concepts, and doctrinal overhaul, not only acquisition of platforms.

What becomes clear is that the hybrid imperative is understood by both countries and they are starting from different places. India's focus is on structural integration, a process that is expected to follow from the empowered commanders. 

Pakistan focuses on technical enablers first, and establishes data networks that enable decentralized operations with centralized strategic fire control.

 AI and machine learning are  necessary enablers in MDO. AI-based Target System Analysis can map through adversary center of gravity systems (cognitive, informational, and physical) in a manner that is not possible for humans to achieve in the same time frame, enabling us to foresee the situation. The conflict in Ukraine has shown the importance drones and uncrewed systems play in augmenting the sensor and effector network across all domains. There is also a move towards software-defined defense, in which the function evolves with software upgrades and not hardware replacements, so that the changes can happen in months, not years.

To operate at the scale of NATO alliances, NATO is developing the federated digital backbone, a secure and interoperable ecosystem that connects all domains, nations and command levels. The principles are:

1.      Interoperability by design
2.       Sovereign by design (nations own their data)
3.        Open architectures.

 Interoperability, data protection and sovereign control are not mutually exclusive and have been shown to work together in a common digital ecosystem in exercises .

Synchronizing Multi-Domain Operations is not some futuristic concept, but the reality on the battlefield in Ukraine, the South China Sea and now South Asia. Today's military's problem is how to get mission command back in the day of data saturation and multi-domain complexity. This convergence framework is structured and backed by new targeting frameworks, AI-supported tools and institutional assistance, which allow commanders to achieve clarity and initiative in multi-domain fights. Not only as fire engineers but as masters of the whole competitive arena.

Both India and Pakistan are trying to make these concepts work. Their meeting in May 2025 was an actual test bed for MDO in a high intensity conventional setting where nukes played a role. The lessons will have a lasting impact on military balances in the region for years to come. Ultimately, the effectiveness of both nations' platforms and the beauty of their doctrine on the page won't matter; what will matter is whether they can make the hybrid command structure work when a real crisis hits the modern battlefield, where the tactical initiative is more decentralized than ever, and central command must keep its strategic bearings.

References

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Abbas, S. (2026, March 30). Multi-domain operations and the evolution of Pakistan’s conventional deterrence. Center for International Strategic Studies (CISS) Islamabad.

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Younas, A. (2026, April 28). Lessons from Marka-e-Haq. The Nation. https://www.nation.com.pk/28-Apr-2026/lessons-marka-e-haq

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