Swift & Strategic

Operation Sindoor was launched in the early hours of May 7, 2025, in response to the dastardly, heinous and religiously provocative terrorist attack on innocent Indian civilians in Pahalgam on April 22, 2025. Op Sindoor was a stupendous success and achieved its laid-down military objectives in less than four days. While the success of Op Sindoor should be celebrated for its decisiveness, highly professional and integrated execution, the Indian Armed Forces also need to do a comprehensive, honest, and unbiased analysis of the entire operation to draw the correct lessons and prepare for future more challenging battles. A few enduring takeaways from Op Sindoor are highlighted in the succeeding paragraphs.

Defence Budget Enhancement

The defence budget of India for financial year FY 25 is approx. USD 79 billion (fourth largest in the world), which is slightly less than 2 per cent of our GDP. However, it is significantly smaller than the defence budget of our Northern adversary (China) for FY 25, which is USD 245 billion. It needs to be enhanced to approximately 2.5 per cent of GDP as there are several critical capability gaps in the technological upgradation and modernisation of our Armed Forces. We need to develop disruptive or asymmetric capabilities for credible deterrence. ‘Deterrence is costly, but wars are even costlier’ is a well-known military adage. Presently, India cannot afford to get embroiled in an unnecessary conflict that diverts its focus from economic growth. India needs to wisely utilise its demographic dividend to accelerate technological, economic and military development and achieve its goal of becoming ‘Viksit Bharat’ by 2047.

Joint and Integrated Operations

One of the most heart-warming features of Op Sindoor was the precise articulation of the national and military objectives; and complete synergy was achieved not only amongst the three services but the Civil-Military fusion as well. Op Sindoor’s success was also attributable to the ‘whole of nation’ approach.

Primacy of Air Power

During any conventional or even sub conventional contingencies, air power is always the fastest to respond and can hit the enemy’s Centres of Gravity simultaneously. In Op Sindoor, air power was used by India in an offensive, unrestrained, precise and calibrated manner for the first time after the 1971 war, and it produced exceptional results wherein the shock and awe of the sustained IAF air strikes forced Pakistan to ask for a ceasefire in slightly less than four days. Op Sindoor is the shortest military operation executed either by India or any other country, wherein the laid-down military objectives were achieved. Op Sindoor emphatically demonstrated that calibrated, deliberate and focused use of airpower in sub conventional contingency is non-escalatory. Air power can be utilised offensively in both conventional and sub-conventional operations, even under the nuclear overhang. Op Sindoor also unequivocally emphasised air power’s ability to produce strategic effects using long-range precision weapons with minimum collateral damage without crossing the international borders (IB).

Space-Based Capability Enhancement

The limited number of Indian electro-optical and radar imaging, communications, and Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) satellites performed credibly and provided accurate targeting data and other support services for the air operations during Op Sindoor. India needs to accelerate the proposed timelines for the launches of our Space-based Surveillance network (SBS-3) satellites to shorten the revisit times to approximately 2 hours (Chinese ISR satellites presently have a revisit time of approximately 30 mts). India also needs to replace the old life-expired NavIC satellites with new satellites expeditiously, strengthen the ground segment and upgrade the NavIC services to NavIC 2.0.

Focus on R&D and State-of-the-art Technologies

The mil-technological edge of India vis-a-vis Pakistan that was amply visible during Op Sindoor needs to be further enhanced while making all endeavours to narrow down the mil-technological edge that China presently enjoys with regard to India. This needs to be achieved through a dedicated focus on the development of cutting-edge technologies like high-power jet engines, hypersonics, long-range precision weapons and Artificial Intelligence and their rapid induction into the Services.

Strengthening Atmanirbharta

Op Sindoor demonstrated the stupendous success of India’s Atmanirbharta initiatives. The sterling performance and contribution of the indigenous weapon systems and weapon platforms to the success of the operations was indeed commendable and needs to be sustained. The indigenous development programs of Tejas Mk1A, Tejas Mk II, AMCA, the 110 kN high-performance jet engine, long-range precision weapons, larger range BVR AAMs (Astra- II, III), Ghatak UCAV, swarm drones, larger range DEW C-UAS systems and the CATS air warrior program need to be focused upon and speeded up.

Combined Joint All Domain Command and Control

The IACCS and Akashteer were a huge success, the backbone of the Integrated Air Defence network centricity. The IACCS and Akashteer Integrated Air Defence System endowed its numerous users with an unmatched Situational Awareness that significantly reduced the OODA (Observe, Orient, Decide and Act) loop, the Sensor-to Shooter time-lag and ensured the protection of the Indian air space. India must further enhance this network by integrating the naval sensors and their C&C network (Trigun) with IACCS. Simultaneously, India needs to start working on upgrading the integrated TriService C&C network to the Combined Joint All Domain Command and Control (CJADCC), which would be capable of coordinating and controlling all the sensors and shooters in multiple domains—Air, Land, Sea, Space and Cyberspace.

Information/Cognitive Warfare

Information/Cognitive Warfare has become increasingly critical in shaping the strategic narrative as the perception battle is being intensely monitored and commented upon by the international media. The briefings done by the DGMOs of the three services were comprehensive and done professionally. They were very well received not only by the national but also by the international media.

Conclusion

India needs to expeditiously build up the capabilities of its Armed Forces as future battles/wars would be appreciably more intense, more widespread (probably two-front) and multi-domain. Future wars would have a greater infusion of technology and artificial intelligence and would be increasingly fought in the digital and shadowy grey zones of cyberspace, space and cognitive domains. It would need an integrated ‘Whole-of-Nation’ approach with even greater Civilian Military Fusion for ensuring success.

The writer is Additional Director General, CAPS. Views expressed are personal