The country currently only has 15 regional military commands across all 38 provinces, including two formations that cover four new provinces in Papua and West Papua. Some of the commands cover only one province while some others work in two to five provinces.

Army chief Gen. Dudung Abdurachman is looking to establish one military command in each province, at the instruction of Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto who said the military needed to work closely with local governments and the expansion had been part of the country’s defense grand strategy.

Indonesia’s military operations rely on a well-developed doctrine of national security called the Total People’s Defense (Hankamrata), which requires a closed bond between citizens and soldiers to be maintained to garner support from the entire population and manage war-related resources.

Dudung said he would table the proposal this year to the Indonesian Military (TNI) commander Adm. Yudo Margono, whom Dudung said had also backed the plan.

Prabowo’s spokesman Dahnil Azhar Simanjuntak told The Jakarta Post that the proposal is still currently being processed within the Defense Ministry. “What the Army chief has put forward is in line with the defense minister’s goal in strengthening and adding the number of territorial commands,” said Dahnil.

Made Supriatma, a visiting fellow at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, said the plan was “out of touch with reality,” stressing that the addition of unnecessary layers of bureaucracy would not solve the sluggish coordination hampering the military.

“Adding regional military commands would mean expanding high-ranking army officers’ posture, which will lead to a more chain of command,” Made said in a recent livestreamed discussion hosted by human rights group the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras).

The move would go against the spirit of military reorganization carried out in 1985, Made added, during which the military simplified its structure to allow a more effective chain of command.

The military chief at the time reduced the number of regional military commands from 17 to nine, with an additional Kodam Jaya that serves capital Jakarta and some of its satellite cities.

“The more we have regional military commands, the less effective we are in facing external challenges,” Made added.

Indonesia Institute for Defense and Strategic Studies (Lesperssi) analyst Beni Sukadis questioned the rationale behind the planned expansion, saying that the creation of a new military command was never outlined in the Defense Ministry’s strategic plan.

“There is no reason to urge us to build a regional military command [in each province]," he said.

He added that the move would also put more burden on the state’s coffer, particularly given the possibility that having more regional commands could mean also establishing more sub-provincial command posts (Korem).

"If a Korem is upgraded to Kodam, a new Korem will be created. And thus, state spending would increase,” Beni said.

A Kodam is led by a flag officer in the rank of a two-star major general, while a Korem is led either by a flag officer in the rank of a one-star brigadier general or a colonel depending on the size of the unit, and is under the auspices of the Kodam.

Defense and security researcher Diandra Mengko of the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) said adding more regional military commands would need a more in-depth study and clarity, noting that the government’s reasoning behind the plan had been questionable.

“Matters related to the country’s defense are the domain of the central government. It is very confusing if the aim of adding a regional military command is to establish cooperation with regional governments," she said.

"The TNI is a state instrument to deal with security threats primarily externally, not to help organize the civil bureaucracy, let alone be involved in the socio-political realm.”

The plan came at the same time the Army mulled over an idea to abolish 121 positions of flag officers in a bid to increase efficiency of the Army, the largest of the three services in the TNI.

Experts said the two plans could be counterproductive to one another.

Just on Wednesday, the TNI promoted 44 middle officers with the rank of colonel to brigadier generals.