DeansMusings

Six weeks after operation Sindhoor, the narrative in India, is still about how many aircraft India lost, ignoring weather or not the primary and secondary objectives of Operation Sindhoor were met, or how many aircraft Pak may have lost. I have covered this in some detail in my earlier post on Operation Sindhoor. https://rpdeans.blogspot.com/2025/05/operation-sindhoor-what-we-dont-realise.html Suffice to say that what matters in a battle is weather the objectives were met. A secondary consideration, is the cost – both human and material, in achieving that objective. Our objective was the destruction of 9 terrorist facilities. That was done, with a heavy loss of life among the terrorists and supporters, with no human loss on our side. Pakistan’s objective, which was to either deter us from attacking, or, if India did attack, either clear people from the targets and/or defend against the aircraft and missiles sent against them. That failed.   The secondary objective of India was...

 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 sta...