Why India need a dedicated Rocket Force

India urgently needs a dedicated rocket (or missile) force as a distinct, integrated branch of its armed forces to meet the demands of modern, high‑intensity warfare on multiple fronts. This is not merely about acquiring more missiles; it is about creating a single‑purpose, network‑integrated, high‑cadence long‑range strike arm that can deter aggression, degrade enemy systems at scale, and reduce the human and political costs of conventional warfare.

India’s missile capabilities are world-class yet organisationally underutilised. The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has already delivered game-changers like the Pralay quasi-ballistic missile (150-500 km range, highly manoeuvrable to evade defences, with 500-1,000 kg warheads), the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile (Mach 2.8, 450 km range with 800 km variants in development), the subsonic Nirbhay/ITCM land-attack cruise missile (up to 1,000 km) and the Pinaka multi-barrel rocket system, upgradable beyond 300 km.

A new 1,500 km conventional ballistic missile (BM-04) and hypersonic projects with scramjet propulsion are also advancing India's capabilities in the field. These assets, however, remain dispersed: tactical rockets with the Army, deep-strike munitions with the Indian Air Force (IAF), and maritime variants with the Navy. Nuclear-capable systems like the Agni series fall under the separate Strategic Forces Command (SFC), insulated to preserve strategic stability. 

In the face of rapidly escalating tensions across the world, India stands at a pivotal crossroads in its defence posture. Modern conflicts demonstrate that precision-guided missiles and rockets have become the decisive instruments of warfare, enabling standoff strikes that minimise human risk while imposing disproportionate costs on adversaries. China’s People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF), with over 40 missile brigades, and Pakistan’s newly formed Army Rocket Force Command (ARFC) exemplify this shift. India, despite boasting one of the world’s most advanced indigenous missile arsenals, lacks a unified conventional strike command.

China’s rocket force traces its origins to the early days of its nuclear programme. Following the country’s first successful nuclear test in 1964, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) needed a dedicated organisation to manage its emerging land-based missile arsenal. On 1 July 1966, Chairman Mao Zedong approved the creation of the Second Artillery Corps (also called the Strategic Missile Force). For secrecy, Premier Zhou Enlai deliberately named it an “artillery” unit even though it operated ballistic missiles. The force remained largely hidden from public view until its first official appearance during the 35th anniversary military parade on 1 October 1984. Over the next five decades, the Second Artillery Corps grew steadily. It began with a handful of short- and medium-range nuclear missiles, then added the DF-5 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in the early 1980s and introduced road-mobile systems like the DF-21 in the late 1980s.

By the early 1990s, it fielded its first conventional missiles (DF-11 and DF-15), expanding its role beyond nuclear deterrence. A major transformation came under President Xi Jinping’s military reforms. On 31 December 2015 (effective 1 January 2016), the Second Artillery Corps was elevated to full service status; equal to the Army, Navy, & Air Force and renamed the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF). This reform centralised command, integrated conventional and nuclear missions, and dramatically expanded the force to more than 120,000 personnel across six missile bases. Today, the PLARF is the world’s largest ground-based missile force, equipped with hundreds of ballistic and cruise missiles, including hypersonic systems.

Until 2025, the Pakistan Army’s missile assets were split: nuclear-capable systems fell under the Army Strategic Forces Command and the Strategic Plans Division (SPD), while shorter-range conventional rockets and missiles were handled by regular artillery formations.

The turning point came during the four-day India–Pakistan conflict in May 2025 (Operation Sindoor) where Indian precision missile and drone strikes exposed coordination gaps and slow response times in Pakistan’s conventional missile employment. Three months later, on 13 August 2025, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced the creation of the Army Rocket Force Command (ARFC) during an Independence Day-eve ceremony in Islamabad. The ARFC is explicitly a conventional-only command. It centralises control over battlefield, medium and long-range guided rockets, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles (such as the Fatah series and newly unveiled Fatah-IV), and future hypersonic systems. Unlike the nuclear-focused SPD, the ARFC is designed for rapid, calibrated strikes in non-nuclear scenarios, providing “deterrence by denial” below the nuclear threshold. It draws organisational inspiration from China’s PLARF but remains a sub-service command within the Pakistan Army.

Thus, where China and Pakistan both possess specialised rocket and missile forces, giving them a coherent, rapid‑response conventional‑strike architecture, India lacks a direct counterpart. A dedicated Indian rocket force would allow New Delhi to credibly threaten prompt, precise, and disproportionate retaliation targeting airbases, missile launchers, logistics hubs, and command‑and‑control nodes without climbing the nuclear escalation ladder. In the Himalayan context, such a force would underpin an “area‑denial” and “denial‑by‑deterrence” posture, making it prohibitively costly for Beijing to sustain offensive operations into disputed territory.

Missile and rocket systems are inherently better suited than manned aircraft for deep‑strike, anti‑access/area‑denial (A2/AD), and saturation‑attack roles. Platforms such as the Pinaka rocket system, Pralay tactical ballistic missile, and BrahMos supersonic cruise missile can be launched from hardened, mobile, or dispersed positions with minimal warning, while air‑superiority‑dependent strike packages are more vulnerable to modern air‑defence networks. A rocket force would also lower the threshold for using long‑range precision fires, enabling India to respond quickly to limited‑war or hybrid scenarios without crossing into nuclear signalling space.

India’s current long‑range strike assets are incredibly fragmented across the Army, Navy, and Air Force, with separate targeting, logistics, and intelligence chains. In a fast‑moving crisis such as sudden border escalation or a pre‑emptive attack, this fragmentation slows down decision‑making, increases the risk of miscommunication, and dilutes the impact of dispersed firepower. A rocket force would provide a single vertical chain of command, allowing for: unified targeting, rapid proportionality calibration, and swift execution of time‑sensitive strikes under the purview of the Chief of Defence Staff and the integrated theatre‑command structure.

Conventional rocket and missile forces are significantly cheaper than large‑scale air‑superiority campaigns or heavy armoured offensives, while offering comparable or superior destructive effects on high‑value targets. They reduce the need to put large numbers of aircraft and pilots at risk and compress the logistics footprint compared with mechanised or armoured formations. For India, which faces enduring fiscal constraints and therefore must balance defence spending against development priorities, a rocket‑centric long‑range strike arm offers a high‑leverage, asymmetric option that can offset numerical disadvantages along long land frontiers.

A rocket force is best conceived not as a standalone “army‑within‑army” but as the backbone of an unmanned, networked, and AI‑assisted strike ecosystem. It can be closely integrated with UAVs, long‑range reconnaissance platforms, and space‑based ISR and navigation systems (such as NAVIC and India’s planned military‑satellite constellation) to enable dynamic targeting, real‑time battle‑damage assessment, and coordinated joint operations. This integration pushes India toward a “non‑contact” warfare model in which standoff missile systems suppress enemy air‑defence and strike networks before manned platforms enter the contested battlespace.

India’s leadership has already signalled intent: the Army chief has described a dedicated rocket‑missile force as the “need of the hour,” and former service chiefs have backed the creation of a conventional missile branch to harness modern warfare lessons from Ukraine and the Middle East. The Integrated Rocket Force (IRF) concept, emerging in Delhi’s strategic discourse, envisions a centralised, tri‑service‑aligned command that consolidates land‑based, long‑range strike systems, thereby streamlining doctrine, training, and standardisation.

Over time, this nucleus can expand to absorb other long‑range firepower assets, becoming a true “conventional strategic arm” alongside nuclear forces. India’s security environment demands a dedicated rocket force that can deliver rapid, precise, and scalable conventional strikes under a unified command, while reducing escalation risks, conserving resources, and complementing the ongoing shift toward integrated theatre commands and militarised space capabilities.In an era where future battles will be fast, technology-driven, and contactless, India’s superior missile hardware demands matching organisational velocity. General Upendra Dwivedi, Army Chief, rightly termed the rocket-cum-missile force the “need of the hour” in January 2026. 

An IRF is not about militarising space or mimicking superpowers; it is about pragmatic reform to ensure deterrence works when it matters most. By consolidating precision firepower under unified command, India can impose costs on aggression, safeguard sovereignty, and maintain peace through strength. The window for action is closing and thus, delaying further risks turning capability into liability. The time for India’s Integrated Rocket Force is now.