When the Commander Is Given the Wrong Picture: The Hidden Danger of False Information in War

This is fundamentally different from military deception directed at an enemy. Deception is a legitimate instrument of warfare when it is designed to mislead the adversary. U.S. doctrine, for example, explicitly recognises deception as a means of influencing an enemy's decision-making. The problem begins when deception moves inside one's own command structure.

A recent controversy surrounding former Indian Air Force Vice Chief Air Marshal Nagesh Kapoor provides an interesting case study but it should be treated carefully. Kapoor reportedly said in a podcast that, during Operation Sindoor, he deliberately gave the Indian Air Force Chief a later timeline for aircraft becoming airborne than the actual timeline. According to his account, the aircraft were in fact about 15 minutes from the mission, but he feared that giving the Chief the exact timing could result in the mission being aborted after the pilots had already been waiting with weapons loaded. He subsequently acknowledged to the Chief, reportedly in the presence of the Defence Minister, that he had "lied" about the timeline. 

That admission is significant. But it does not automatically prove that the Indian Air Force has abandoned its chain of command, that its leadership is fundamentally incompetent, or that religious identity explains the relationship between officers. Those are much larger claims requiring much stronger evidence.

What the episode does provide is an opportunity to examine a genuinely important military question: What happens when a senior officer decides that his own judgment is more important than giving his commander the complete truth?

Modern military command depends upon information moving upwards and decisions moving downwards. The commander does not personally see every aircraft, radar screen, battalion or target. He depends upon a network of subordinate commanders and staff officers to construct a picture of the battlefield.

That creates an unavoidable vulnerability.

The higher the commander sits in the hierarchy, the more dependent he becomes upon the accuracy of information supplied by people below him. A false report therefore has an effect much larger than the individual piece of information being falsified.

If a subordinate tells a commander that an aircraft will be airborne at 0200 when it will actually be airborne at 0145, the commander may synchronise other elements of the operation around 0200. Intelligence dissemination, air-defence posture, electronic warfare, diplomatic signalling and follow-on operations can all be affected.

The danger becomes greater when the information is deliberately altered. The commander may still be acting professionally. He simply no longer has a reliable picture of reality. That is why military command-and-control doctrine places such importance on information management, decision-making and trust. U.S. Marine Corps doctrine, for example, describes effective command and control as a responsibility extending beyond senior commanders and staffs to the wider organisation. 

The phenomenon is hardly unique to India.

One of the clearest examples comes from the Vietnam War.

The U.S. military increasingly relied upon enemy "body counts" as a quantitative measure of battlefield success. Because officers' performance could become associated with these figures, the system created powerful incentives to report higher numbers. Academic research has documented how pressure for body counts flowed down the chain of command, with units sometimes receiving rewards for exceeding targets and penalties for falling short. 

The result was not merely individual dishonesty. It became an information problem embedded in the organisation.

Reports could be exaggerated because commanders wanted to appear successful. The higher headquarters then received inflated figures and made assessments based upon them. Those assessments could feed back into the system, creating further pressure on subordinate commanders to produce impressive numbers. In other words, a false report can become more dangerous when the institution creates incentives for producing it.

The U.S. experience in Vietnam demonstrates an important lesson: when career incentives, operational metrics and command expectations become misaligned, professional officers can begin manipulating information without necessarily believing that they are undermining the entire military institution.

An even more disturbing example occurred after the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.

The U.S. Army's subsequent investigation documented deliberate suppression of information and false or misleading reports at several levels of command. Reports concerning civilian deaths were altered, information about what had actually occurred was withheld, and false accounts were transmitted upwards. The investigation found that concealment occurred across multiple command levels rather than being confined to one individual. This illustrates the nightmare scenario for any military organisation.

The problem is no longer simply that one officer lies to a commander.

The problem becomes that officers at different levels begin protecting one another, modifying reports and assuming that headquarters either wants or expects a particular version of events.

At that point, the chain of command may continue to exist formally while becoming hollow operationally.

Orders still move downward.

Reports still move upward.

But neither side can be certain that the information crossing the chain accurately represents reality.

A similar issue emerged during the U.S. investigation into the 2005 Haditha killings in Iraq. Investigators concluded that some officers had provided false information to superiors, while senior commanders failed to scrutinise reports adequately. The episode prompted questions about professional standards, reporting procedures and the responsibility of commanders to challenge information coming from below. 

The lesson is important because it shows that false reporting by subordinates and inadequate verification by superiors are two sides of the same command-and-control problem.

A commander cannot personally verify everything.

But an effective organisation develops mechanisms that make deception difficult: independent reporting channels, cross-checking, staff scrutiny, intelligence fusion, after-action reviews and a professional culture in which delivering bad news is not automatically punished.

Where does Nagesh Kapoor fit into this?

This is where the Operation Sindoor episode becomes interesting.

Kapoor's own reported explanation is not that he wanted to sabotage the mission or undermine the Air Force Chief. Quite the opposite: he appears to have believed that giving the Chief the accurate timeline at that particular moment might lead to an abort, thereby wasting an opportunity after aircraft and crews had already been committed. 

That distinction matters.

There is a major difference between: "I lied to my commander because I wanted to undermine him."

and "I deliberately withheld or altered information because I believed my operational judgment was better than the commander's decision."

The second may be motivated by professional confidence rather than insubordination.

But it still creates a serious command-and-control question.

If every senior subordinate begins deciding which information his commander is "allowed" to know, then the commander is no longer really commanding. He is commanding a filtered version of reality. And that is potentially dangerous in wartime.

The real question is not whether one officer lied it is whether the system permits it

This is where some of the more sweeping claims surrounding the episode need to be approached cautiously.

One incident cannot establish that the IAF routinely ignores its chain of command.

It cannot, by itself, demonstrate that the Air Force Chief has "weak command and control."

It cannot prove that the force contains widespread "rogue elements."

And there is no evidence in the material reviewed here that would justify attributing Kapoor's decision to religious hostility toward a Sikh superior. Turning an operational dispute into a Hindu-versus-Sikh explanation without evidence would itself be a form of politicising military professionalism.

Indeed, such an argument risks obscuring the more interesting issue.

The genuinely important question is whether senior officers feel empowered or compelled, to override, manipulate or selectively present information to their commanders. If that behaviour is isolated and subsequently acknowledged, it may represent individual judgment under extreme operational pressure. If it becomes habitual, tolerated or institutionalised, it becomes a command-and-control vulnerability.The difference can only be established through evidence.

The paradox of military professionalism

There is an intriguing paradox here.A professional military needs officers who can exercise initiative. War cannot be conducted through robotic obedience to every instruction. Communications fail, situations change and opportunities appear unexpectedly.

But initiative has a boundary.

An officer may disagree with a commander.

He may recommend a different course of action.

He may argue forcefully.

He may request permission to deviate.

What becomes dangerous is when initiative turns into unilateral control over information. The commander must retain the ability to make the final decision based upon the fullest available picture. Otherwise, decentralised initiative can gradually become decentralised authority. And once that happens, the formal hierarchy may survive on paper while the real decision-making system becomes fragmented.

The broader lesson for Operation Sindoor

The Kapoor episode should therefore be viewed neither as proof that the IAF is an "unprofessional air force" nor dismissed as an amusing wartime anecdote. It is better understood as a case study in the eternal tension between obedience, initiative and trust.

Military history repeatedly demonstrates that armies and air forces do not collapse merely because an individual makes a mistake. They become vulnerable when an organisation loses the ability to distinguish truth from what its commanders want to hear. Vietnam demonstrated how distorted incentives could corrupt battlefield reporting. My Lai demonstrated how information could be suppressed across multiple levels. Haditha demonstrated how false information could move upward when commanders failed to scrutinise it. The most serious lesson from the Kapoor admission is therefore much narrower and arguably more important than the political claims being attached to it:

In war, a commander who receives false information from his own senior officers can be more dangerously blind than a commander who simply lacks information.

The solution is not necessarily harsher discipline or unquestioning obedience. It is a command culture where initiative is encouraged, disagreement is permissible, bad news can travel upward without fear, and deliberate alteration of operational information remains exceptional rather than routine. If Kapoor's account is accurate, the episode demonstrates an officer making a calculated operational judgment under pressure. Whether that judgment was right or wrong is a separate question.

But the institution should ask a harder one: What safeguards ensure that tomorrow's commander knows when a subordinate is exercising initiative and when he is quietly replacing the commander's decision with his own? That is the real test of military professionalism. And it is a question that applies not merely to Indian Air Force, but to every modern armed force whose commanders must make life-and-death decisions through information supplied by people they cannot personally see or supervise.