Lt. Gen, Hooda was commissioned into the 4th Battalion of the 4th Gorkha Riftes in 1976. Between 2012 to 2016, he was stationed in Jammu and Kashmir and retired as the Army Commander of Northern Command in 2016. In 2019, he authored a comprehensive National Security Strategy document. Today, he is one of India’s foremost commentators on the country’s national 
security. He co-founded the Council for Strategic and Defence Research