As Operation Sindoor, India’s response to the April 22 terror attack in Kashmir, has been put on a temporary pause, it is time to reflect on what happened. For the first time since the Battle of Britain, and the Korean War, two near peer air forces were engaged in an air campaign. This was also the first open conflict between two nuclear powers.

Both sides had imbibed lessons from the Russia-Ukraine conflict. It was clear that aircraft crossing borders would face strong hostile air defenses. Therefore, all strikes had to be undertaken using long-range, stand-off precision weapons, and yet hit targets accurately without much civilian collateral damage. Also the side with better air defense systems would be able to inflict significant damage and deter the adversary from carrying out strikes.

Indian Air Force (IAF) strategy, tactics, and therefore inventories, have long been designed for offensive strikes against the Western neighbor with whom India has had three fully-fledged wars and many shorter skirmishes.

Pakistan, conscious that it is a smaller economy with a smaller military, built an air force with a stronger defensive posture. In recent decades India has also had to prepare to take on a possible Chinese threat.

Notwithstanding the known positions, Indian strikes against both terrorist and military targets all across Pakistan proved very successful. Pakistani defensive systems could not engage or thwart them.

There were weapons platforms and armaments belonging to many countries at play, including, the US, Russia, China, France, and Turkey among others. Most analysts have started comparing and analysing the performance of the major weapons systems.

This was also of interest to the manufacturers and their host countries. Some of the writing was part of the narrative-building to introduce motivated biases with politico-commercial considerations. The shares of some of these conglomerates saw huge fluctuations on the stock markets on a day-to-day basis.

Both sides have claimed to have shot down each other’s aircraft on the opening round, but since no aircraft crossed the border, any wreckage would have fallen on home territory and proof could have been concealed, while confirmations take time to come in.

Just to recap the sequence of events. During the early hours of May 7, 2025, India launched air strikes on nine terrorist targets in Pakistan using 24 stand-off weapons.

Codenamed Operation Sindoor, the strikes were India’s response to the Pahalgam terror attack of April 22 by Pakistan-backed terrorists, in which 26 civilian tourists, mostly Hindu, were killed. India accused Pakistan of supporting cross-border terrorism, which Pakistan denied.

The missiles struck the camps and infrastructure of militant groups Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba, and no Pakistani military or civilian facilities were targeted. The initial Indian strikes that lasted 23 minutes and were reportedly carried out by Rafale aircraft using SCALP missiles and BrahMos cruise missiles as well as the Indian Army’s Indo-Israeli SkyStriker loitering munitions. Photographic evidence of strike success was presented to the Indian and international media.

Following these strikes, there were gun duels and enhanced border skirmishes along the Line of Control........

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