Op Sindoor: India pushing the Envelope
After the 26/11 terror strikes on Mumbai, India went to the global community, including the UN Security Council, with compelling and unambiguous evidence of Pakistan’s involvement in this attack. The US had credible intelligence about Pakistan’s involvement in the Mumbai attacks and later it arrested two dramatis personae of Pakistani origin, namely David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana, who were successfully prosecuted in the US courts. Pathankot airbase was attacked in 2016, and India, this time, even took the unprecedented step of allowing the Pakistanis access to the Pathankot air base for a joint investigation of the attack. However, Indian accommodation for a joint investigation and appeals to cease support for terrorism were met with outright denial of any role by the Pakistani establishment. This proved to be the last straw.
After the Uri base camp attack in 2016, India retaliated with a surgical strike against terror camps across the Line of Control in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, thus crossing the Rubicon. The strike, though tactical, was strategic in its signalling. Pakistan initially denied that the Indian military had intruded or conducted any strike within the territory under its control, but this was followed by a notable absence of significant terrorist attacks in India until 2019 when Pakistan-backed terrorists perpetrated a suicide bombing that killed 40 central police troopers. This time, India responded with airstrikes on a terrorist training camp in Balakot in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Following the Balakot airstrikes, there was a six-year hiatus in any major terror attack against India. The abrogation of Article 370 by the Indian parliament in August 2019, along with the security measures and developmental initiatives undertaken in Jammu and Kashmir, ushered in visible peace until it was shattered by the heinous killings, on 22 April 2025, of 26 male tourists near Pahalgam, targeted for their Hindu identity in front of their families by four terrorists, two of whom were identified as Pakistani nationals. The attack was met with outrage across India, including protest marches in Kashmir.
A Calibrated Blow: The Execution of Operation Sindoor
On 7 May 2025, people across India awoke to the news of the Indian military having conducted precision strikes against nine terror targets spanning from POK to Punjab, the heartland of Pakistan, in the early hours that day. The Indian establishment communicated to Pakistan that the strikes were solely against terror targets and that India had no intention of escalating the conflict. Pakistan, however, threatened to retaliate and, during the intervening night of 7 and 8 May, attempted to strike at 23 Indian military targets; these attempts were thwarted as all drones and missiles were intercepted by India’s integrated air defence systems, resulting in no significant damage. Pakistan also engaged in firing and artillery shelling across the international border and the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir, causing numerous civilian casualties and damage to places of worship and homes. The following night, between 8 and 9 May, Pakistan again launched two ballistic missiles, one of which was perhaps aimed at Delhi. India’s missile defence systems intercepted both, but this time, India retaliated with precision strikes on 11 Pakistani air bases, causing significant damage and rendering the Pakistan Air Force ineffective. Distressed by these losses of its air force assets, Pakistan sought peace on 10 May when its Director General of Military Operations, at around 1530 hours, called up his Indian counterpart on the hotline to request a ceasefire. Throughout the operation, India, having maintained control over the escalation, agreed to a pause in operations effective from 1700 hours that day. Despite requesting a ceasefire, the Pakistani military continued artillery shelling across the Line of Control and sent attack drones against border towns and cities across the international border, all of which were shot down by Indian forces.
The Geopolitical Reverberations
The reverberations of India’s precision strikes were felt far and wide, well beyond India’s proximate neighbourhood. Operation Sindoor, when seen in the background of the earlier response by India against earlier terror strikes, was gradually pushing the envelope. The surgical Strikes of 2016, the Balakot airstrike of 2019 and now the precision strikes across the length and breadth of Pakistan herald a new counterterror doctrine of a confident and assertive India willing to walk the talk to defend itself rather than just issuing diplomatic demarches approaching international fora with dossiers of evidence against Pakistan’s complicity in terror acts against India or at the most putting the Line of Control on a boil. Through this action, India not only demonstrated that no part of Pakistan is safe for terrorists who act against India but also abolished the difference between the Pakistani state and its non-state actors. India also called off the nuclear bluff, which Pakistan’s political leaders have repeatedly used in the past to deter a conventional response to its support for terrorism.
India punched a hole into the Pakistani air defence shield and then extended it by knocking off numerous radars, thus exposing the latter’s vulnerability in the face of an Indian onslaught. The embarrassing military losses intensified tensions between the civil-military power centres as well as inter-service divisions in the Pakistani military establishment regarding the use of terror as a state policy. Externally, Pakistan was once again exposed as a state sponsor of terror, bringing international isolation. While initially, China displayed a strategic watchfulness underscored by ambiguous neutrality, later, as the weight of Indian strikes increased, it came out in complete support of its vassal state, pledging to protect its sovereignty. The subpar performance of Chinese armament in Pakistan’s inventory, such as the HQ 19 Air Defence System, the J-10 and JF-17 combat jets, and the PL-15 air-to-air missiles, presented a reputational loss for the Chinese defence industry that had recently announced its arrival. While the Russian origin armament in the Indian military inventory once again proved its reliability and effectiveness, made-in-India systems ranging from the Akash Air Defence System, indigenous kamikaze drones and jointly made Brahmos walked away with the accolades. For the US, this conflict once again demonstrated India’s worth as a capable and dependable partner in the Indo-Pacific, meriting stronger defence cooperation.
The Path Forward of Peace and Preparedness: What Pakistan must Learn
Through Operation Sindoor, India has demonstrated doubtless conventional superiority in armament, joint planning and execution. India has executed a new counterterror doctrine that believes that any terror attack emanating from Pakistan will be treated as “an act of war”, and the entire Pakistani territory is kosher for the Indian military in its response to any act of terror. Pakistan has no option but to shed and cease its policy of a “thousand cuts” against India. A policy of peaceful coexistence and good neighbourly relations would be in the best interest of Pakistan.
India has demonstrated sterling operational finesse in the recent two conflicts with Pakistan. However, no two conflicts are the same, so India will have to be creative and innovative in the next one and the next one as well.
In democracies, public opinion sways government actions, but the government must guard against too much populism in security matters. Decisions related to national security must be taken in a cool, calculated manner after a comprehensive SWOT analysis without diverging from long-term national goals. However, to maintain technological dominance over Pakistan and catch up with China, India would need to hike its defence expenditure up to 3 per cent of GDP.
India also needs to be ready for a multi-domain conflict in future, including Cyber and Information war. The information drive that India launched a few days after Op Sindoor should have started ab initio itself as a blitzkrieg. All cognitive warfare platforms, including social media and scholarly platforms, need to be exploited to engage with the hoi polloi as well as the discerning scholarly readers.
As was evident during the conflict, India not only needs to maintain and enhance its generational gap in stand-off precision strike capabilities with weapons like Brahmos, SCALP, Hammer, RudraM, etc, it also needs to augment its air defence systems to provide coverage to various vital areas and points. Another important aspect is Electronic Warfare, where India needs to focus more attention and resources to gain ascendancy in the initial stages of battle.
India’s Strategic Imperatives for Future Conflicts
Should a future operation like this continue, the collusive threat of China-Pakistan will come into play. The need to augment the number of combat aircraft squadrons and the fifth-generation stealth fighter to address a collusive China-Pak threat has been emphasised ad nauseam. In the interim, India must fill this capability gap through Surface-to-Surface Missiles and Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs) while telescoping the timelines for projects like AMCA. HAL should be directed to share its production experience with private players and to enable more jets to be produced annually.
The number of home-grown drones equipped with a multitude of functions, including destroying targets, is not only heart-warming but also demonstrates the capabilities of Indian defence manufacturing. This capability must be nurtured through encouragement and incentives. Similarly, our security planners must transfer the missile manufacturing to the private sector to achieve higher annual production rates to sustain prolonged conflicts and also plan for surge production during conflicts. For this an ‘Emergency Defence Production Act’ to engage private industry to contribute to the ‘whole of the nation’ effort is worth considering.
Strengthening Naval and Nuclear Deterrence
To prevent Pakistan from exploiting asymmetric naval threats, India must strengthen coastal defence, mine countermeasures capability and augment anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) assets in the Arabian Sea. For tackling the collusive threat, India must expedite the third aircraft carrier project. India may like to outsource some of the shipbuilding tasks to countries like South Korea, which has a high-value, technologically advanced and efficient shipbuilding industry.
In the era of shifting geopolitical alignments, India will need to stand on its own and thus, must develop, post haste, its defence manufacturing. The Defence PSUs need to get their act together in terms of their development timelines and meeting production targets. More involvement of the private sector in both these functions needs to be encouraged by the government. The FDI norms for defence must be further liberalised to give impetus to Make in India.
In the nuclear domain, India must continue to maintain and demonstrate credible deterrence through robust and redundant command and control systems, survivable second strike and deployment of the missile defence system.
Pakistan must introspect, since the Surgical Strikes of 2016, every time India has punished Pakistan, it has pushed the envelope-next time could be more horrendous for the military as well as for Pakistan’s sovereignty.
While peace with a recalcitrant Pakistan does not seem possible till it demonstrates permanent, meaningful, verifiable and substantial actions against the terror infrastructure that it has over the decades so ardently nurtured and nourished, back-channel talks must continue to gain insights into the winds of change as peace must remain the ultimate goal. While preparing to prevail upon Pakistan in any future conflict, as an ever-optimistic civilisation, Indians must never give up hope for peace.