It took just four days for India to shake the world. Operation Sindoor started with a goal to destroy the terror infrastructure in Pakistan as a reprisal for the Pahalgam attacks. The operation precisely targeted only the headquarters of various terror outfits based in Pakistan, carefully avoiding any civilian or military collateral damage. Yet, the Pakistani military, which sees these terror outfits as an extension of itself, saw it as an attack on Pakistan and escalated. India’s response to Pakistan’s escalation not only brought the Pakistani military to its knees, but also sent shockwaves through global defence establishments.
India’s swift response conclusively established its military capabilities on multiple fronts. Firstly, by destroying eleven Pakistani Air Force Bases spread across the length and breadth of the country, it proved its precision targeting abilities. It also demonstrated its ability to deliver payloads equally precisely. Even more significantly, it announced to the world that it could break through and defang the latest Air Defence (AD) systems used by Pakistan and hit its targets with impunity.
Concomitantly, by intercepting and destroying every projectile launched by Pakistan against India, be it hundreds of drones or its Fatah-I and Fatah-II missiles, India’s Akashteer Air Defence System took the entire world by surprise. Everyone, including Indians, stood in awe of Akashteer, a multi-layered, multi-network, multi-modal, Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered Air Defence system comparable, if not superior, to Israel’s famed Iron Dome. The indigenously built Akashteer is a proper twenty-first-century Air Defence system with plug-and-play architecture. It integrates seamlessly with multiple threat detection systems like satellites, radars, and missile systems like Akash and S-400 to neutralise every incoming threat from the sky.
What was even more shocking to the world was that India rewrote the concept of Nuclear Deterrence. For a long time, Pakistan had waged proxy wars against India using its terror outfits under the assumption that its nuclear weapons would deter India’s response. Especially since India has pledged a no-first-use (NFU) policy, while Pakistan hasn’t. The Indian political leadership, under Prime Minister Modi, shattered that myth once and for all by launching an offensive deep into Pakistan and taking down an estimated 20 percent of the Pakistani Air Force infrastructure.
Though the four-day offensive, counter-offensives played out between the Indian and Pakistani defence forces, alarm bells rang throughout the global military establishments. At stake were the reputations and business interests of military-industrial complexes of various countries.
American F-16 and Chinese JF-17 and J-10C jets, Chinese HQ series, PL-15 Air Defence and missile systems, Turkish UAV and drone systems, including the YIHA-III, Bayratkar and Asisguard Songard models and many more, powered Pakistani offensive and defensive capabilities. The stakes were so high that Turkey, for example, had not just sent its drones but drone operatives, who were reportedly killed in India’s offensive, to ensure the success of its drone systems. On the other hand, indigenous jets, air defence and missile systems, Russian (MiG, Sukhoi) and French (Mirage, Rafale) jets, and Russian (S-400) surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems mainly powered Indian forces.
No wonder, given the high stakes faced by leading military-industrial powers, the affected countries launched a narrative war focusing on either repudiating India’s spectacular success or diminishing its scale of victory. With truth on its side and backed by satellite prowess provided by ISRO, India came out triumphant in that dimension too. The press conference held by the Directors General of Military Operations (DGMO) of the three Indian armed forces put paid to all kinds of false narratives with irrefutable proofs backed by high-definition satellite and drone imagery. India dominated militarily and ensured it could emerge victorious in the narrative wars bound to follow.
Countries often squander a triumphant military victory by giving in to “mission creep”. Over the last two weeks, I have written in this column noting the Pahalgam terror attack as a possible conspiracy of forces beyond Pakistan – a conspiracy to draw India into a prolonged military conflict, creating uncertainty and thwarting its rise, primarily economic. It goes to the sagacity of our civilian leadership, led by PM Modi, that India restrained itself from taking the bait.
Through Operation Sindoor, India avenged the deaths of its sons, dealt a death knell to Pakistan’s nuclear blackmail and demonstrated complete dominance over the Pakistani military. India also established a new doctrine concerning terrorism – terrorists and their sponsors will be seen as one, not distinct and will be retaliated against accordingly. Under this new “Modi Doctrine”, it further made clear that terrorism and trade, terrorism and talks, blood and water cannot go together.
Yet, the most significant outcome of Operation Sindoor is that India, a country that relied on foreign suppliers for even basic military equipment only a decade back, has emerged as a battle-tested, compelling option for high-tech weaponry indispensable for any twenty-first-century war. Go India!
(The author is BJP TS spokesperson)
