Operation Sindhoor - What we don't realise

 I decided to write this after seeing a flood of articles, videos and social media discussion on Operation Sindhoor. A lot of it either focussed on the wrong subject – possible Indian aircraft losses, or does not put the operation in context, or speculates on why we agreed to a ceasefire – with the underlying assumption that Pakistan, or at least its air force, could have been finished off if the conflict had continued.

Operation Sindhoor has to be evaluated in terms of its context, what its objectives were, the extent to which they were achieved and what our alternatives were at each stage of the conflict.

 Background: In 1991, at the time India started economic reform and Pakistan chose an Islamist path,
Pakistan’s GDP was 27% of India’s. At the time of the Kargil war in 1999, it was 20.7% of India. In 2025, Pakistan’s economy is projected to be just 9% of India’s. At current rates of growth, in 2031, Pakistan’s GDP will be 7% of India’s. In other words, India will start adding a Pakistan to its economy each year. The projection for Pakistan do not take into account the effect of a rising insurgency and loss of agricultural output from a drop in Indus water availability.

The under 2.5% annual GDP growth that Pakistan is expected to experience in the decade upto 2030, is the same as population growth, so per capita income will experience no rise for ten years. In reality, with a small elite controlling the economy, there may be a drop in real income for most Pakistanis over a sustained period.

This disparity is also reflected in defence spending. Although Pakistan’s defense spending is less transparent than India, it has actually reduced in dollar terms over the last 5 years (though it will increase is year). While the difference in budgets is roughly 7: 1, the Pakistan armed forces are roughly half the size of India and salaries and pensions are the biggest components of both countries defence budgets.

Hence, the difference in ratio of capital expenditure (for new equipment) or operating expenses (fuel or ammunition) is probably over 10:1.

A bigger problem is the size of the Pakistan army. It is half of India's with a seventh of the budget. Over the last few years, the salaries for soldiers and junior officers have fallen below India's. The army in Pakistan continues to enjoy a high status only because of lack of other employment. Pensions are also 
being reduced. Pakistan is one of the few countries where the literacy rate is falling, lowering the 
quality of soldiers when warfare is getting more technologically sophisticated.   

The world economy: India has been the fastest growing economy in the G-20 since 2021 (it has outpaced China each year since 2021 and in the two years pre covid). Given the current trade war between the US and China, a near recession across the EU, tensions in the Middle East and political problems with neighbours competing in textile exports (Bangladesh and Pakistan), India has been an island of stability globally with more manufacturing and offshoring coming to India. A full fledged war would derail the India story.   

Kashmir: I have blogged about the impact of the abrogation of article 370 in an earlier blog and argued that a boost in tourism (with the train connection to Srinagar being a catalyst) could turn around the economy of the state. The suspension of the Indus water treaty – something I have written about back in 2016, will address the two most pressing infrastructure problem of the state – power and water.

https://rpdeans.blogspot.com/2024/07/kashmir-5-years-after-article-370.html

In 2018, 8.3 lac tourists visited Kashmir (the higher numbers of visitors to the state, mentioned on official statistics are because 10 times that number visit the Vaishno Devi temple in Jammu.
In 2024 35 lac tourists visited Kashmir. The first quarter of 2025 – normally the low season, had 5.25 lac visitors upto 7^th April, an increase from 2024.
The Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla train which was to be officially inaugurated on 19^th April has begun trial runs. Despite the drop in tourist numbers in the peak April-May season, my view is the train service
will result in 2025 tourist numbers to Kashmir being at an all-time high.  

The security situation prior to the Pahalgam attacks had also been improving, with the kill ratios of terrorists reaching an unsustainable level. The ratio of militants neutralized (killed or arrested) to Indian security forces killed has moved from 4.36 (from 2014 to 2018) to 10.1 in the last five years. This is not a sustainable ratio for an insurgency.

Pakistan: I had written about the increase in insurgency and armed violence in Pakistan in my previous blog post.https://rpdeans.blogspot.com/2024/12/pakistans-terrorism-problem.html

This is not only hurt the popularity of the Pakistan army, but the army Chief Gen Asim Munir. This fall in the army’s popularity was exacerbated by a stolen election, where, despite all attempts to ban former PM Imran Khan and his party and split his supporters, a free election would have seen his nominees win a majority. The incumbent govt is therefore seen as a front for the army (by those who didn’t see it earlier) which has made people blame the army for the failing economy.

 Why Pahalgam: A couple of weeks before the Pahalgam attack, I had written in Linkedin that either the Pakistani army chief would have to achieve some success in the form of a terrorist attack in Kashmir,  both to boost terrorist morale and divert attention from the army’s falling popularity, or his possible successor, the X corps commander – commanding Pakistani formations opposite the Line of control in Kashmir, will do it for him.

In the past militants in Kashmir have largely targeted the army, or supporting the Indian state, as Pakistan wanted to be seen as pro Kashmiri people. With an adverse kill ratio by engaging the security force and after being unable to engineer deaths of civilians by the actions of the security forces, terrorists took to killing people from outside the state, or non-Muslims working in Kashmir. Tourism was seen as central to the economy and therefore not touched, until Pahalgam

Throughout its history when a risk has not paid off, Pakistan has resorted to a desperate `all or nothing’ gamble. In 1947, after a tribal invasion of Kashmir failed, Pakistan escalated by introducing their regular army. In 1965, after Operation Gibraltar (a variant of the failed 1947 tribal invasion failed) Pakistan attacked with their regular army, with the incorrect assumption that we were same army as 1962.

In 1971, Pakistan attacked us rather than accept the will of the people of them East Pakistan and also because the growth of the Indian army since 1962, would not make defeating India a realistic proposition after 1971. In 1999, we were attacked in Kargil, because the insurgency started the Mujahadeen veterans of the Afghan war had run its course and needed a boost and Kargil was seen as an attempt at a limited war at a time and place of Pakistan’s choosing. There is a view, not unjustified, that Kargil was in intelligence failure on our part. However, from a strategic perspective, one did not expect a rational opponent to start a conflict with objectives he could not possible achieve.
In the book `Kargil- from conflict to coup’ by Nasim Zehra, senior Pakistani officers also expressed their misgivings about it. Unlike India, there was no civilian administration who could understand the wider implications of the conflict and take a final call. The army chief who initiated it, was not accountable for failure – perversely, defeat helped him become the country’s dictator, just as the Indian success in Operation Sindhoor got Gen Munir promoted to Field Marshal.

Doubling down on a failed bet, is a Pakistan army tradition. The Indian intel failure at Kargil was to assume the Pak army leadership would act rationally.
 
Pahalgam in my view was like Kargil. It was Gen. Munir’s attempt to regain popularity, divert attention from economic woes and the raging insurgency in Baluchistan and try to revive the Kashmir issue – even if the downside meant a loss of whatever support Pakistan did have in Kashmir (hastening the process of losing the state completely) and a possible attrition war the army could not afford.        

Gaming the possible Indian reaction:
After Uri and Balakot and given public anger against Pakistan, there would have been no doubt in the minds of the Pakistan military leadership that there would be a military response. Though, in my opinion, the diversion of some of the river water flowing into Pakistan will hit Pakistan more than any military action, no government could stay in power if there was no military response.

The suspension of the IWT was something that in my view, India could have done in 2008, or at least in 2019, after the abrogation of article 370, when the Indian state needed to demonstrate it could provide good governance by meeting the power and water needs of the state, though a better utilization f river water. The only way to stop terrorism from Pakistan was if the common man (the Pakistani Punjabi farmer) felt the damage Pakistan’s policy was causing him. That will happen when the flow of water from the Indus and its tributaries is affected. I believe the suspension of the IWT took the Pak army as much by surprise, as India’s robust military intervention in Kargil in 1999, when there was no plan B.
My previous article on the IWT: IWT article
The govt's various options were outlined in an article of mine in 2016 in Swarajaya. 
https://swarajyamag.com/world/a-new-non-diplomatic-approach-for-pakistan

A civilian govt, of the type we have in India, would have warned the Pak army of that possibility. As in the past, the Pakistan army opted for something that might give a questionable short-term advantage, with the certainty of a long-term loss. As the army is not accountable for Pakistan’s long term economic health and its leadership has already enriched themselves, they have an incentive to take such gambles. For Gen Munir, it worked, as he has become Field Marshal.

It was not be difficult for Pakistan to predict where the Indian military might strike. There would be a high probability that the strike would be more intense than Uri and Balakot. That implied either more targets and/or deeper into Pakistan, perhaps into the Pakistan heartland of Punjab.

The balance of forces on each side, which I will cover later, meant that India would not seek an all-out conventional war. The result would be indecisive. Hence, the most likely of many scenarios that Pakistan would have war-gamed would be exactly what we did, a strike on the best-known locations of terrorist camps and associated infrastructure.

 The Pakistan officer corps, however much one might dislike their support for state sponsored terrorism, are professionals, trained in much the same way as ours. They are aware of our capability an theirs and would have learnt from our Balakot strike. They had six years to prepare a defence for a likely Indian air attack against the targets we struck. The Pak name `Operation Bunyan Al-Marsoos’ (solid wall of lead) wasn’t coincidental. They ran the same war games as we would have. Pakistan’s expectation was that we would either not attempt to attack these targets due to the defences around them, or that the cost would be too high for us if we tried. The reason Hafiz Sayed was operating with impunity from the same place for so long was because he – and more importantly the Pakistani military was confident we did not have the capability to hit that target.

Our military leadership would have presented a plan to hit the 9 targets we did, with an expectation (or a calculated probability), that we would hit most targets, with losses that would be acceptable for this type of mission. Based on this assessment the political leadership would have approved the plan.
The Pakistanis would have expected, based on their own exercises that such an attack would not hit most targets and the losses while attempting to hit them would be unacceptable. Both sets of plans cannot be right, which is why it is said none survive contact with the enemy.
   
The fact that we hit all nine targets, with proof of damage and acknowledgment of losses by Pakistan, including of many high value targets, with no loss on our side, was an unprecedented success.

That is at the heart of understanding what we achieved in Operation Sindhoor.

The impact of social media and ISPR’s strategy.
When the 1999 Kargil war began, we saw the following:

- Pakistan achieved surprise. It was embarrassing to the country that Pakistan had occupied our territory
  without our knowing.
- Our initial attacks were badly planned and costly as we had no idea of the enemy’s strength.
- We unexpectedly lost two aircraft and a helicopter.
- We had a coffin scam. Krasnopol shells did not work as advertised.
- We won.  

 If Kargil had happened in the age of social media, we would have wallowed in grief, within a week of the conflict, decried the incompetence of the army and demanded the government’s resignation.

Pakistan’s ISPR (Inter services public relations) has a 600 crore budget to control the narrative during a war. It is done both by convincing the Pakistan public that they have won and by manipulating social media influences and handles to convey a misleading narrative.

Thus, within hours of India announcing that it hit 9 targets, about 600 handles all over the world (a lot from China) announced that Pakistan had downed 5 aircraft. This was supported by old pictures of wreckage and some dubious photoshopped pictures. The fact that India has successfully pulled off an audacious strike on nine targets was lost in the social media war regarding weather or not India lost aircraft and claims around proof of it. 

The Pakistan strategy was summed up as `first to lie'.

 Of the dozens of analysts of every type, the only one who has actually flown fighter aircraft, handled air defence and was at a senior enough level to understand Pakistani doctrine is Air Marshal Bedi. He has provided a detailed explanation of why the Pakistani account of its actions against our strikes on 7^th May was incorrect. It is best explained in his own words in the linked talk. In summary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcGRmMJZk2E&t=741s

- The timelines given by Pakistan don’t make sense. They claim Indian aircraft were loitering about
  for an hour and a half waiting to be fired on &
- There are no radar tracks of the claimed shooting down of aircraft, Something that a serious analyst
   would expect, to validate claims.   
   Apart from that, we had no casualties, which is very unlikely if multiple aircraft were claimed to
   been shot down.

 Tom Cooper, perhaps the world’s foremost writer and analyst on modern air combat also has a credible and detailed take on the air and missile operations from 7 to 9 May. He did not have access to timelines that Pakistan had put out, or IAF doctrine and on these points, Air Marshal Bedi would be a better source. Part 1 (below) has links to his initial assessments of 7th May. 

https://www.cemaat.media/en/article/india-pakistan-additional-details-part-1
https://www.cemaat.media/en/article/india-pakistan-additional-details-part-2-q-a

Neither analyst excludes the possibility of Indian losses (Tom says 3), but both debunk Pakistani claims and make the larger point that any losses, even the Pak claim was correct, are insignificant in the larger context of a successful strike. Their analysis was also made before the news that `dummy’ aircraft may have been used on 7^th May, to spoof the Pakistani air defence into believing they were the real thing.
Of the various pictures of wreckage purporting to be crashed Indian aircraft. all have been shown to
be fake, barring possibly one, where there are eyewitness reports of a crash.

For those like me, who come from the corporate world, military hardware is a resource to achieve an objective, much like money is, in a company. You are expected to use resources to achieve objectives. Op Sindhoor would have failed if we did not hit targets (even if nothing was lost).
That said, even if probable hardware losses are considered, the score is heavily in favour of India and, with more information being available, the `probability' of claims have been much higher on the 
Indian side.       

After 7 May. Both sides would also have war-gamed scenarios for escalation if India conducted a strike after a terrorist attack. Here, Pakistan had the advantage of deciding the means of their retaliation.

What they considered the best option was a drone cum missile attack – which would cause damage to Indian military and civilian targets without casualties to their side as the drones and missiles were unmanned. The fact that no Pakistani aircraft crossed Indian airspace was because Pakistani planners made the same assumptions, they made about the IAF’s ability to attack targets in Pakistan. The cost would be too heavy. Given Türkiye’s (Pakistan’s collaborator in drone supply and doctrine) experience in drone warfare this was considered the best option for Pakistan.

Almost every drone being shot down, with no damage or loss of life (possibly one civilian) was a complete failure of that strategy. Drones were shot down both in saturation attacks (several drones trying to overwhelm one target) and in widely dispersed attacks, for e.g. in Kutch.
In contrast India’s attacks with drones and missiles were more successful. On the first day of the drone/missile campaign, Pakistan’s radar network was degraded. The next day, a near simultaneous attack on 11 airbases caused visible damage to aircraft an airfield infrastructure. 

Tom Cooper’s substack has the best analysis of the damage caused, validated by satellite photos of the damage to each air base.

A point to consider is that Pakistan claimed no Indian losses after 7th Oct, not even decades old 
Jaguars, which were used to fire missiles in a simultaneous attack on 11 airbases. A fully alert air 
defence should have performed much better than when it supposedly downed several Indian aircraft during its surprise attack of 7 May. 

LOC firing: Along with the drone & missile strikes on each other, the Pakistan army initiated cross border firing. The difference this time was that the majority of casualties on the Indian side were civilians. It did not make sense for the Pak army to do this, because it invited an inevitable retaliation from the Indian army, present in greater strength on the LOC. Indian estimates of Pakistani army casualties, were significantly higher than the seven killed on the Indian side, while Pakistani reports of civilian casualties were lower than ours. India’s XV `Chinar’ Cops estimated they killed 64 Pakistan army personnel.

It's neighbouring XVI corps (Southern part of the LOC) would have had a similar share of the fighting.
The Indian DGMO’s initial estimate was 35-40 Pakistani’s killed in cross LOC firing. Another 10 terrorists were believed to have been killed trying to cross the LOC.
   
If one removed competing claims of military casualties, it was still not a sensible strategy for Pakistan as the death of civilians – most were Muslim, lost them whatever support they may have had among border villages and in an attrition battle, the smaller Pakistani army could not afford to expend as much ammunition or personnel losses as India.   

Ceasefire violations by the Pakistan army after both DGMOs agreed to a ceasefire, also indicated poor coordination between units of the Pakistan army.

What we did not do: We did not cripple the Pak air force, nor would we if the war had progressed. What we did do, is degrade their air defence systems to a point where many of our drones and missiles hit their targets. The best estimate I have seen of Pak losses is six aircraft. While six may be a higher number than the slightly more credible claims (Tom Cooper) of three IAF aircraft lost, the point is moot.

If the IAF lost aircraft (none proven at the time of writing) it was while attacking heavily defended targets, which was their mission, while Pakistan lost them without even attempting to attack.
 
In all airbases, aircraft are placed individually in hardened shelters, dispersed across the airfield. One can see it them on google maps. A typical Pakistani airbase has more hardened shelters than aircraft. It would take a direct hit by a Brahmos or Scalp missile to destroy a hardened shelter and many will be shot down in the attempt. Therefore, the IAF attacked softer targets like maintenance hangars, radars,
command centres and runways. Runways destroyed by a missile can also be repaired in a few hours.

What the IAF really demonstrated – and the PAF could not, was that our missiles can get through heavily defended targets and hit them with precision. We have a limited inventory of missiles and continuing the air war would have led to losses on both sides, with no additional objective of ours being achieved.

We have also not destroyed Pakistan’s nuclear capability, with any strike in the Kirana hills area. Just as Pakistan made wildly exaggerated claims, our media has been irresponsible with their reporting on nuclear weapons.

What we cannot do: There has been a lot of talk of social media that India should `once and for all’ finish Pakistan, or liberate Pakistan occupied Kashmir. Though the size of the countries, or even the army sizes may suggest otherwise, India’s army or air force do not have any significant numerical advantage against Pakistan. In J&K for example, while the Indian army has 19 brigades in its order of battle (ORBAT), the Pakistani army has 15.

To put in a simplified way – The Indian army has 38 divisions (excluding, for both sides, artillery formations and independent brigades). They can field 30 against Pakistan, with 8 having to be retained on the border with China. Pakistan has 24 of which it can deploy 22 against India (assuming two divisions are held back to fight insurgencies in Baluchistan and KP province. Our 30 deployable divisions include people deployed on counter insurgency in Kashmir (the Rashtriya Rifles), so we effectively have 28 divisions vs 22 for Pakistan. It rules out the Pakistan army attacking India, but will be insufficient to attack Pakistan and take territory. Similarly, for the IAF, excluding squadrons deployed in the east, it is a 21:15 ratio over the PAF.  

Conventional wisdom is that a 3:1 superiority is required in numbers, or in firepower (units of both countries are structured in the same way, so numbers are a proxy for firepower), for an offensive to be successful, though in the mountains of Kashmir, where both sides have prepared defences over decades even that ratio may not give success. We had that 3:1 ratio in Bangladesh in 1971 and in Kargil.

What's next: I believe an additional deployment of troops into Kashmir will eliminate several militants (12 killed in the past month inside Kashmir) root out over ground workers and revive tourism, particularly with the start of trains from Jammu to Srinagar.  
The insurgency in Pakistan will be a slow burn, with Pakistan taking casualties and losing equipment but not at the rate which prompts a big operation. 
Unknown gunmen will continue to kill high value terrorist targets in Pakistan.

There is also a crackdown on the ISPR's network on influencers within India and those suspected of spying. I believe this will bring normalcy sooner rather than later. Since the Pakistan army chief has been promoted to Field marshal and the army has regained popularity, there is no incentive for the 
army to provoke India. In about a year, once the disruption in Indus river begins to have an effect, there might be some discussions over terrorism in exchange for a renegotiated IWT.  

Col John Spencer's blog offers an insight into the weapon systems used by each side and the outcome:
https://x.com/SpencerGuard/article/1927900481248186485

The Royal united services institute (RUSI), one of the world's leading military think tank summarizes the operation as follows: `Operation Sindoor should be remembered not as a dogfight between airframes, nor as a stumble toward strategic instability. It was a calibrated use of force, intended to signal resolve, degrade terrorist infrastructure, and demonstrate capability – without crossing the line into broader war'.

Further info: 
A summary from a leading Pakistani journalist Moeed Pirzada- who is now abroad and not subject to army censorship. Someone I follow for his knowledge of Pakistani politics, though his channel is no longer available in India. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLt6MFzLdkQ 

My related blogpost on the insurgency and violence within Pakistan:
https://rpdeans.blogspot.com/2024/12/pakistans-terrorism-problem.html 

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