A high level of synergy in the development and application of land, sea and 'aerospace' power is the essential requirement of the modern battlefield environment. Although basic issue is widely appreciated in principle, it is often forgotten that jointment is first and foremost, a matter of attitude, followed by the requirement to evolve an objective, impartial, integrated and institutionalised vision and to devise a well-defined roadmap towards credible joint doctrines, structures and processes. Admittedly, the march towards this goal, as in any management of change, will not be without its 'costs'. A very deliberate cost-benefit and cost-eff analysis of what is desired to be joint and what is possible to be joint needs to be done, rather than adopting a peripheral/symbolic Jointmanship or an "All or None" approach. We should exploit the inputs from the experienceces of other countries in their experiments in evolving models of Jointmanship. Evolving a consensus on the concept, process and plan for achiving jointmanship in the areas of force development and force application, and a vigorous implementation of the plan is indeed a real challenge before us.
Victory in any event, be it a playful game or a bloodthirsty war, is a joint effort of all the members. How one orchestrates this effort is Integration. These fundamentals are universal. These do not require proof or QED. Yet, quite often, while dealing with inter-services matters, in the desire to promote enhanced jointmanship and integration, one comes across decisions, which do not lead to true jointmanship. While there may be extensive amount of joint training, the same may contain.
Jointness or Jointmanship is not a word in Concise Oxford Dictionary. However, following Institutions define/explain it thus. A definition coined at DSSC in 2001 explains Jointmanship as, “Integrated planning and application of military power at the Strategic, Operational and Tactical levels, with proper sequencing of combat power of the three Services in time and space as per requirement and in relation to the enemy’s centres of gravity and culmination points is a must to win a war. Cooperation.