OPERATION SINDOOR

OPERATION SINDOOR AND THE EVOLUTION OF INDIA'S MILITARY STRATEGY AGAINST PAKISTAN

Once more unto the breach, India struck inside Pakistan in response to a terrorist attack. Once more, the two sides escalated again to unprecedented levels before agreeing to a ceasefire. It is tempting to consider this latest crisis as a somewhat larger replay of the last Indo-Pakistani crisis in 2019, but in fact it signifies a notable shift in India's military strategy towards Pakistan, which has potentially grave implications for future crises. The latest crisis was triggered by a terrorist attack at Pahalgam on April 22, which was especially provocative and likely calculated to be so by targeting specifically Hindu men for point-blank execution. Tensions rose immediately, with consistent exchanges of small-arms fire across the Line of Control that separates Indian- and Pakistani-controlled parts of Kashmir. Then, soon after midnight on May 7, India launched its military response, dubbed Operation Sindoor. It used a mix of long-range stand-off weapons, including air-launched missiles and loitering munitions, to target nine sites belonging to terrorist groups Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad, groups that have frequently attacked India, including at Pahalgam.

Pakistan made still-debated claims to have shot down Indian aircraft, and launched reprisal drone and missile attacks. The two sides traded tit-for-tat rounds of stand-off weapon attacks against each other's military installations. The violence intensified on May 9 and 10, with effective Indian strikes against key Pakistan Air Force bases and Pakistan launching its own counter-offensive, Qperation Bunyan Marsoos, which was largely thwarted. That uptick drew the concerned diplomatic intervention of the United States before the two belligerents agreed to ceasefire on the afternoon of May 10. Despite some minor violations, the ceasefire seems to be holding, and the crisis seems now to have concluded. For India, this crisis represents an important evolution in its military strategy against Pakistan shifting from the issuance of threats to change Pakistani behavior, to the direct imposition of costs to degrade terrorists' capacity. This new cost-imposition strategy has a compelling logic, but will be diffcult and risky to execute in future crises.

From Uri to Balakot to Sindoor

Over the past decade, India has progressively transformed its response to Pakistan's campaign of terrorism. Its actions have grown in scale, using new technologies, triggering larger cycles of violence, and seeking more expansive effects.

For years, despite grave provocations such as the 2001 attack on the Indian parliament, the 26/11 attacks In Mumbai, and even multiple smaller attacks during Prime Minister Modi's first term in offce, India resisted responding militarily to terrorist attacks. That pattern of inaction began to change in 2016, when in response to an attack at Uri, Indian special forces raided terrorist camps just across the Line of Control. At the next crisis, India's response was notably more aggressive. In 2019, in response to an attack at Pulwama, India launched an air strike targeting a terrorist site at Balakot. As I wrote in these pages, the Balakot air strike sought to deter Pakistan by crossing multiple new thresholds India used airpower against Pakistan for the first time since 1971, and reached into undisputed Pakistani territory beyond Kashmir and by deliberately generating risk to intimidate Pakistan. That strike despite its dubious tactical effects validated for Indian decision-makers the notion that they could use military force to punish Pakistan without triggering a war or nuclear retaliation.

Operation Sindoor took that evolution further. India struck a larger set of initial targets, with more force, and more types of weapons, including cruise missiles and loitering munitions. Whereas in Balakot the use of air power was a radical departure, in Operation Sindoor, air- and ground-launched stand-off weapons had become India's primary tool. India already boasted some such capabilities, for example, with its indigenously-produced BrahMos cruise missiles, and Israeli-made Spice bomb kits and Harop loitering munitions. But it made a concerted effort to grow these capabilities since Balakot, most prominently with the procurement of French-made Rafale fighters carrying Scalp air-launched cruise missiles. Its layered, integrated air defenses including the S-400 surface-to-air missiles that it imported from Russia, to Washington's great consternation also proved to be exceptionally effective.

All of these capabilities gave India military options short of starting a war. Over the past decade, India has been able to attack Pakistan repeatedly without mobilizing its large ground formations. The vexed debates over the Army's erstwhile "Cold Start" doctrine and its perpetually delayed Integrated Battle Groups have now become obsolete. India's lumbering ground forces, mobilized with great diffculty and cost after the 2001 attack, gave New Delhi an invidious all-or-nothing choice to either remain passive or start a war. And if committed to an offensive, they could not be easily dialed back, making crisis resolution or war termination more diffcult. In contrast, missiles and drones are quicker to launch and easier to calibrate as Operation Sindoor showed, successive waves of sorties can be ratcheted up or down, giving national leaders flexibility to escalate or de-escalate as required. For all these reasons, stand-off weapons, delivered from multiple domains, have emerged as India's weapons of choice.

Also extending the evolution of recent crises, Operation Sindoor triggered a conspicuously larger cycle of tit-for-tat counterattacks. Consistent with its previous strikes, India had immediately declared that its operation was measured and restrained. Contrary to some of the more inflammatory demands for action, including from Indian parliamentarians, New Delhi was adamant it was only seeking justice against terrorists, and had no intent to attack the Pakistani military. The onus of prolonging or escalating the crisis, it held, would lie squarely with Pakistan. But unlike the previous Uri and Balakot crises, when Pakistan could plausibly deny any losses and suppress the need to retaliate heavily, this time India immediately released video evidence of effective strikes, and Pakistan immediately admitted to casualties. Pakistan had irresistible incentives to hit back, harder than it had after Balakot. It could not allow India to strike its territory with impunity. So, entirely predictably, the crisis quickly crossed the threshold into a military confrontation, lasting four days and involving orders of magnitude more weapons and targets on both sides than previously.

The most strategically significant evolution of India's actions, from Uri to Balakot to Sindoor, is the nature of the effects that India attempted to create at each iteration. In each case, it tested and pushed the boundaries of what it could do without triggering a war, and what it could achieve. The post-Uri raid was designed only as a symbol of India's new willingness to introduce military action after years of inaction. The Balakot air strike was designed to demonstrate Indian capabilities to strike deep into Pakistan, and its willingness to cross previously sacrosanct thresholds. As an Indian journalist presciently observed at the time, "If it is Balakot today, it could be Bahawalpur or Muridke tomorrow," referring to terrorist groups' headquarters. And, indeed, with Operation Sindoor, India did strike exactly those sites, among others, in a larger retaliation designed to inflict real material damage to the groups.

The evolution of India's military responses was crystallized by Modi in a victory speech he delivered on May 12. He pronounced that henceforth India would by default respond militarily to terrorism, that Pakistan's nuclear threats would not deter India, and that India would consider both terrorists and their military backers to be equivalent. All of these positions are a stark departure from Indian practice a decade ago. After successive evolutionary iterations, India implemented this doctrine in Operation Sindoor, and Modi proclaimed that this would be "a new benchmark in India's fight against terrorism" and a "new normal."