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Incremental climbs on the escalation ladder

A new set of disruptive technologies, indiscriminate use of air power, and obstinate willingness on both sides to test the tripwires have made the India-Pakistan conflict much more complex

29 min read
Updated On: Aug 31 2025 | 9:11 PM IST
A Vinod Kumar
A carrier battle group of the Indian Navy deployed during Operation Sindoor to deter Pakistani military activity in the maritime space in May (Photo: Indian Navy)

A carrier battle group of the Indian Navy deployed during Operation Sindoor to deter Pakistani military activity in the maritime space in May (Photo: Indian Navy)

It was on the morning of May 10, 2025, that I was woken up by frantic calls from relatives and friends from down South, querying about a Pakistani missile reportedly fired towards Delhi. The apparent fear was of the conflict intensifying and whether India and Pakistan were heading towards launching missile systems at each other’s cities on the fourth day after Operation Sindoor was launched in the wee hours of May 7.
  Hours earlier, in the intervening night of May 9 and 10, India had launched concerted air strikes on the frontline bases of the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) along its North-South axis. These included the pivotal Nur Khan base at Chaklala in Rawalpindi, Mushaf in Sargodha, Murid in Chakwal, Rafiqui in Shorkot, Shahbaz in Jacobabad and adjoining Sukkur, down to the Bholari base in Jhangri district, southern Pakistan. Recent reports confirm that the Sukkur base had an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) hangar while the F-16s were at Jacobabad, and Bholari hosted the airborne early-warning aircraft. The Indian Air Force (IAF) strikes are also supposed to have hit the runway at Rahimyar Khan, which doubles up as the Sheikh Zayed International Airport.
  As stated by India’s Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Anil Chauhan on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, all of India’s air assets, possibly those on the western front, were deployed for this all-out air campaign. Later, IAF Vice Chief Air Marshal Narmdeshwar Tiwari confirmed at a seminar the firing of “less than 50 air-launched missiles”, which brought the “adversary to the talking table”, though not confirming whether it was for the campaign against terror camps on May 7 or the assault on the PAF bases in the intervening night of May 9 and 10.
  By many accounts, the air power on display during the four days (May 7-10) would have been the largest wartime deployment of air assets between any two nuclear-armed nations.
  The calibrated attack by the IAF came after relentless drone strikes on Indian military bases, and shelling along the western front the previous night. As General Chauhan indicated, the air campaign entailed not just a correction of India’s “tactical errors” at the outset of Operation Sindoor on May 7, but also amounted to a resolute attempt to gain air superiority after three days of intense air combat and artillery assaults across the border.

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  One of the missiles hit the Kirana hills outside Sargodha, which is stated to house a depot of Pakistan’s nuclear warheads, with many Western OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) experts subsequently confirming damage in the area from the Indian strikes. Amid initial speculation of a radiation leak in the next few days, the Director of Air Operations, Air Marshal A K Bharati, at the Director General of Military Operations (DGMO) briefing on May 10 evening, denied that the IAF had targeted any nuclear assets, and, with expressive mirth, thanked the media for sensitising them to the depot’s presence at that location.
  The dismissive tone was understandable, as in a nuclear scenario, the attack on a nuclear arsenal depot amounted to hitting a tripwire, or, was akin to hitting a nuclear weapons asset, as stated in many of Pakistan’s ambiguous articulations about its 
first-use thresholds.
  At the break of dawn on May 10 (Fajir, according to Pakistani description), Pakistani troops launched a barrage of missiles from both Fatah-I and -II systems towards targets in India. Videos released by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) showed soldiers raising slogans like Alhamdulillah (praise be to God) and Nara-e-Takbir Allahu Akbar (the call to proclaim Allah is the greatest), and rejoicing at every firing of what is described in the background as the “F1”. An officer comes to the camera to proclaim, “At 0552 hours, wait for our response.”
  Hours later, the Indian media broke the news of a Fatah-II being fired towards the national capital and intercepted over Sirsa by an Indian air defence system. Initial reports speculated that the interception was by either the Russian-origin S-400, extensively used during Operation Sindoor, the indigenously developed Akash surface-to-air missile (SAM), or the long-range/medium-range surface-to-air missile (LR/MR-SAM) aka Barak-8, developed with Israeli assistance, which had undergone final tests in April this year. Some reports indicated that the indigenous advanced air defence (AAD) system might have been used for the interception.
  The reason why the exact interceptor was not revealed, unlike the liberal exposure given to the S-400 kills, could be a conscious effort to restrict, at least in the public domain, information about the placement of the nodes of India’s emerging air and missile defence architecture.
  The Fatah-II firing apart, Pakistan had claimed that the Fatah-Is, which were launched by a dozen, as shown in the videos, had wreaked considerable damage to forward Indian air bases in Adampur, Sirsa, Bathinda, Udhampur, and so on. At the morning briefing of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) on May 10, the officers rejected these claims and presented pictures of these bases being intact.
  The guns mostly fell silent during the peak daylight hours of May 10, which was marked by media briefings on both sides on the events of the May 9-10 night. Interestingly, the Indian military officers did not refer by name to the Fatah missiles at the morning briefing. 
  Instead, they talked about Pakistan employing unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs), drones, long-range weapons, loitering munitions, and fighter aircraft. “There were several high-speed missile attacks noticed subsequently after 0140 hours at several airbases in Punjab,” stated Wing Commander Vyomika Singh.
  The Fatah-II firing towards Delhi and the interception over Sirsa was not referred to. It was in the late afternoon that US President Donald Trump announced that both India and Pakistan had agreed on a “ceasefire”, facilitated by his administration. Hours later, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri confirmed the “cessation of military hostilities”.
  The media briefings of May 10 and 11, led by the DGMO, in the presence of his air force and navy counterparts, skipped any reference to the Fatah-II firing. If the presentation by the operations chiefs was focused on the precision strikes of May 7 and subsequent campaigns, the interactive session went into discussing the losses on both sides, including the claims about Indian fighter jets being downed.
  The IAF chief has come on record on August 9, exactly 90 days after the cessation of hostilities, confirming the downing of five Pakistani fighter jets, largely by the S-400s, along with one large aircraft, which could be an electronic intelligence (ELINT) or airborne warning and control system (AWACS) platform of the PAF. The air chief had termed it as the “largest ever recorded surface-to-air kill” by India. 
Operation Sindoor involved the IAF successfully utilising the Russian-made S-400 missile defence system to counter Pakistani air attacks (Photo: Reuters)
  Targeting India’s ‘redline’
  While the Fatah-I has a range of 150 kilometres, the Pakistani Army claims that the Fatah-II can hit targets in around 
450-km range. The distance between Delhi and Lahore by air is 418 km, while the Bahawalnagar Cantonment in Pakistan, which lies on a straight line from Delhi towards the west, is estimated at around 452 km.
  Considering that Sirsa falls along this straight line, and assuming that any air/missile defence system deployed there would be intercepting an incoming missile at 30-70 km range (distance-altitude), a mobile Fatah-II system could have been deployed anywhere between Bahawalnagar and Lahore for its missile to reach the national capital region, if not the precise heart of New Delhi where the political and military leadership is located. 
For that matter, the specific target intended by the Pakistani Army — whether a military base or a population centre — would be crucial in understanding the objective of the single shot, even if they had anticipated its futility. By launching the Fatah-II towards Delhi, the Pakistani Army clearly expressed the intent and capability to target India’s national capital, even if with a land-attack conventional missile. Accordingly, this became the first instance of a missile being fired towards or targeting Delhi in independent India, which assumes immense significance in the nuclear calculus.
  However, the launch and interception did not seem to have caused any alarm in the political and military leadership in Delhi, nor were they treated with panic or anxiety by the national press. In a nuclear dyad, it is admittedly prudent if both sides are keen to gloss over a serious threat to a sacrosanct redline, in the spirit of de-escalating, especially when a conflict situation is fast spiralling out of control. However, the purpose that Pakistan sought to serve by firing the Fatah-II towards Delhi and the dynamics of decision-making that prodded India’s national security leadership to abstain from responding in kind open numerous questions for a nation in a region branded as a nuclear flashpoint.
  Months after Operation Sindoor, many questions continue to reverberate — what was the outcome anticipated when the political objective of Operation Sindoor (hitting terror bases) was drawn; whether the Indian leadership was prepared for a rapid escalation to the missile domain and further up; and why New Delhi was keen to underplay the significance of an enemy missile flying towards the national capital, for the first time in “independent” and “nuclear” India?
  New frontiers in India-Pakistan conflict 
The dynamics of India-Pakistan military hostilities have drastically changed since 2016, when the Narendra Modi government decided to “publicise” the cross-border operation of September 29 by the Indian special forces, which came to be known as the “surgical strike”. I emphasise the “publicising” part as there are multiple claims now of similar operations earlier, said to be covertly undertaken.
  The air strikes on supposed terror camps in Balakot on February 26, 2019, christened Operation Bandar, saw aerial dogfights for the first time since the Kargil conflict. While Pakistan did not choose to escalate after the capture and subsequent handover of an Indian pilot, it was evident that the next India-Pakistan military confrontation would not be confined to the same template. The PAF had scrambled enough jets during India’s Operation Bandar, showing the intent to engage in an airpower showdown.
For war strategists, what emerged as a key takeaway from the Balakot strike and Pakistan’s response was that the next military faceoff between the two would not be confined to either a minimalist or an extensive display of air power, but would inevitably slip into the missile domain, implying a start with land-attack systems that could move up to conventional ballistic missile platforms.
  Cut to 2025, on the day of reckoning, the PAF assets, already on high alert anticipating an Indian attack, were airborne and marking Indian aircraft, even as the latter were launching precision strikes against the identified targets deep inside Pakistani territory. 
  Most of the reports indicated deployment of beyond-visual-range (BVR) air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles on May 7, including the Crystal Maze, Scalp, Rampage, and so on, besides Pakistan’s use of its PL-15s. Informal IAF briefings to the Indian media also suggest the use of cruise missiles by Pakistan, though it is yet to be confirmed whether it was the Ra’ad air-launched cruise missiles (ALCM) or the Babur series of land-based cruise missiles. In the same vein, it also appears that the BrahMos ALCM could have been deployed only in the intervening night of May 9 and 10, when the IAF used all its air assets to hit PAF bases, and not for the May 7 missions.
  More importantly, the question remains moot whether the Indian Army had deployed its land-attack missile systems — the BrahMos mobile launchers, Pinaka Multi-Barrel Rocket Launching System (MBRL) or the Prahaar tactical system with conventional warheads (assuming Pralay is still to be deployed) — at any point in time, including for the operations of May 9-10, in support of the IAF.
  If the answer is not in the affirmative, then it should be assumed that it was Pakistan that introduced land-attack missiles into the equation, with the firing of the Fatah-I and -II on May 10. This invariably denotes that the climb to the next level of the escalation ladder was initiated by the Pakistani Army. If these assumptions are accurate, the buck then passes to New Delhi on why India preferred to not respond to the Fatah firings despite promising same-domain responses to any act of escalation by Pakistan. The question attains greater importance when it is posited that the Fatah-II targeted India’s national capital — clearly a redline in India’s doctrinal framework, irrespective of whether the nuclear dimension was tangible at that point in time.
  The lack of response evokes numerous questions: What Pakistan sought to posture by targeting Delhi; whether the Indian leadership consciously chose against escalation even though the Prime Minister had supposedly warned US Vice-President J D Vance that any Pakistani action would “cost it dearly”; or had the ceasefire momentum set in by then and any Indian action could have led to further escalation and obliterated the chances of a cessation?
  Some strategic analysts and officials I talked to sought to treat the Fatah-II episode as a minor blip on the radar. A former Commander of India’s Strategic Forces Command (SFC), who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue and his past position, dismissed the contention that Pakistan might have sought to target the heart of Delhi or a “strategic location” as described in some reports. “The Pakistani Army could have wanted to target military bases, and aimed at locations like Hindon outside Delhi. However, there is no guarantee that the Fatah-II could come near Delhi, or, at best, hit its periphery,” he said.
Not all veterans shared the same sentiment. A retired lieutenant general, who headed one of the Strike Corps not so long ago, and did not want to come on record, was more forthright. “Why the Fatah-II was fired at Delhi and why we did not respond is in the realm of speculation for us… at least I have no facts or experience on this type of warfare,” he said, emphasising that a missile being fired towards the national capital was unprecedented.
  Professor Swaran Singh, who teaches nuclear strategy and disarmament at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), felt that the launch of a Pakistani missile in the direction of Delhi could not have any intention other than escalation. “How credible this intent was would depend on how good was this missile in reaching Delhi or causing any damage to its target, and would be a good guide to measure the degree of that calculated escalation,” he said. Singh also felt that the Pakistani responses, including the decision to escalate, must have been planned well in advance and wargamed.
  Most of the analysts and officials I talked to were unanimous about the Fatah firings being a definite response to the IAF strikes on the Nur Khan airbase in Rawalpindi, which was a hit on their perceived nuclear tripwire, where Pakistani Army’s general headquarters (GHQ) is located. When taken together with the strike on Kirana hills, two perceptive nuclear tripwires were hit by the Indian forces, which, by Pakistan’s part assertions — in the immediate years after overt nuclearisation of 1998 — should have led to a nuclear first use, or launch of a nuclear-armed missile, be it tactical or strategic.
  Why then did Pakistan prefer a measured and modest response to target the Indian national capital, “without meaning to do any harm”, in the words of Singh, will remain an enduring puzzle in any assessment of the escalation dynamics in the latest episode of India-Pakistan military hostilities.
  Some of the veterans I talked to, however, did not share this sentiment of the Fatah-II firing being a measured move. They felt that it was an ill-conceived and spontaneous reaction to the massive strikes on Pakistan’s airfields and assets a few hours earlier, and had a clear expression of intent to escalate the war. The American intervention, they felt, could have been a dampener and restricted the response to a single test dose, which also ended up being intercepted.
  A retired Air Marshal, who had served at the Integrated Headquarters, pointed out to me the emphatic denial by Pakistan of the alleged usage of the Shaheen missile, as indicated in an Indian Army video, which was subsequently withdrawn. This denial, he felt, was a conscious attempt to underplay perceptions of any escalation possibilities to the level of conventional ballistic platforms. The firing of Fatah-II, he insisted, only opened a small “sub-ladder”, quoting General Chauhan’s assertion in Singapore.
  In his interview with Bloomberg, General Chauhan had affirmed that a lot of space existed between the conventional and nuclear levels, and that “we have demonstrated it not once, but thrice”. He had emphasised that “in each of these ladders, there are many ‘sub-ladders’, which can be exploited for settling our issues, without raising the nuclear bogey, which, actually, is too 
far-fetched”.
  The Fatah-II, even if seen as operating in one such “sub-ladder”, created a one-sided equation when seen from a standpoint of a land-attack missile being fired at the national capital. However, most of the observers I talked to wanted to dismiss it as a “last shot” by Pakistan before deciding to initiate or pursue the ceasefire. The former corps commander, for instance, felt that the Pakistani Army’s frustration was evident as they tried out all the weapons in their inventory, including the glide weapons, the Ra’ad ALCMs, the loitering munitions, and finally the Fatah-I and II, all of which were intercepted.
  Two, it was felt that the Fatah-II action did not deserve a same-domain response since India had already delivered an overwhelming punch with its strikes on Pakistani airbases, which, by enormity, had a greater impact than the firing of one or a few land-attack systems. Third, by not responding, New Delhi gave space for Pakistan to vent out its ire, even if for symbolism, as a tit-for-tat response to the targeting of Rawalpindi. 
Recovered debris of a drone used by Pakistan in its attempts to attack India during Operation Sindoor (Photo: Indian armed forces)
 
The incremental climb
  Notwithstanding these perceptions, the Fatah-II launch towards Delhi marked a critical juncture in the India-Pakistan military equation. Most of all, it revealed the transformative character of the escalation dynamics — the intense display of both vertical and horizontal escalation.
  If Balakot marked an advancement from sub-conventional and limited conventional operations to the exhibitive use of air power, Operation Sindoor versus Operation Bunyan al-Marsoos was a progression from an extensive use of air power to the initial steps of the missile matrix. With India’s extensive use of BrahMos air-launched missiles and Pakistan’s response through the Fatah-I and -II, the precedence and benchmark have been set for liberal deployment of missile platforms in the next round of military hostilities, which implies that the potential start of the next round of confrontation will be from a higher level in the escalation ladder.
  That is where horizontal escalation emerges as a natural corollary. If the deployment of special forces marked the Modi government’s first response to a formidable terror attack in 2016, the government had no second thoughts in swiftly choosing the airpower option for the second instance, in 2019. This might partly be driven by the assumption that Pakistan could be prepared to repel an anticipated special forces or any land-based missions.
  Accordingly, by allowing the “surprise element” to be drastically diminished with the delayed response to the Pahalgam massacre, India’s national security establishment had indicated that the quest was to impart a drastically different response from the previous ones. While all options from air strikes using BVR munitions to precision strikes using limited-area artillery like Pinaka were being considered or gamed, Operation Sindoor sought to spring a surprise with the choice of targets, weaponry, and deployment options.
  The fact that the Indian leadership had dilemmas in their operational choices and feared the vulnerability of assets if they chose to employ cross-border air operations is an indicator of the pressure points that will drive the elements of horizontal escalation further. As was evident during the course of Operation Sindoor, air power might have turned out into a spent force with greater vulnerabilities or as much as a limited land offensive or a special forces operation, both of which could find increasing resistance from the Pakistani side. Accordingly, the Indian establishment will be left with fewer choices in the next round of action, which will necessarily push it towards an instinctive preference for missile platforms.
  The second dimension is of the national capital, a pricey redline, losing its sanctity in the four days of military hostilities. In a nuclear scenario, the national capital will ideally be the final frontier to be targeted for a second strike, stated in most doctrines as a “massive retaliation”. The perception of inviolability is highest as national capitals host the nuclear command authorities along with the political leadership, and are also considered as ultimate or highest-value countervalue (population/commercial) targets in a nuclear calculus. In a typical nuclear escalation ladder, the initial nuclear targeting would be reserved for counterforce (military) targets, including through the deployment of a tactical nuclear delivery system.
  In the years after Operation Parakram, following the 2001 Parliament attack, when the Indian Army developed the Cold Start doctrine — envisaging Integrated Battle Groups making forward thrusts into Pakistani territory for a limited conventional 
offensive — the Pakistani Army had responded by indicating the usage of Nasr tactical system, including in its own territory against forward-moving Indian troops. In return, Shyam Saran, then chairman of the National Security Advisory Board (NSAB), had indicated that any nuclear use, including on Indian troops in another territory, would be construed as a nuclear attack, inviting a second strike, which, in doctrinal terms, should be a massive retaliation. Notwithstanding the disproportionality inherent in such posturing, India went ahead with the development of Prahaar as an answer to Nasr. 
This being the nuclear calculus, the decision to target each other’s capital cities — Rawalpindi, besides being a twin city with Islamabad, is supposed to be the actual power centre due to the GHQ — in the hostilities of May illustrated how high-value tripwires are increasingly being put to test in the dyad. The IAF chief boasted that India could strike over 300 km deep inside Pakistan territory, which, in turn, reveals the inherent asymmetry that drives the Pakistani Army’s sense of desperation.
At the heart of this conditioning is the vulnerability of Islamabad/Rawalpindi, which is just around 150 km from the Line of Control (LoC). By consequence, the twin cities fall within the strike range of not just India’s BVR inventory but also of any of the land-attack mobile units — BrahMos, Prahaar, and Pralay — that can flexibly operate anywhere from Baramulla, Uri or Poonch on the North-South axis down to Jammu, Udhampur and Pathankot. While deep-penetration air strikes into the Indian heartland can only be a pipedream for the PAF, even its land-attack systems are vulnerable to India’s formidable air and missile defence network.
  From the perspective of a deterrence optimist, the Fatah-II firing towards Delhi could be seen as a demonstration of capability and serving as a reminder that Pakistan has the intent and ability to reach the national capital, even without resorting to its strategic inventory. It was reported that the Pakistan Army Chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, on his second consecutive visit to the US, has issued a nuclear threat, including that he will fire “ten missiles to destroy any dam India builds over the Indus River”. A report in The Print quotes Munir as stating: “We’ll start from India’s East, where they have located their most valuable resources, and then move westwards.”
  For a nation known for its nuclear brinkmanship, Pakistan had reportedly issued some 17 nuclear threats during the Kargil conflict. Pakistan’s leadership, in turn, was seen to be restrained during Operation Sindoor, with only its envoy to Moscow making a nuclear threat, besides the news report of the Pakistan Nuclear Command Authority (NCA) planning to meet. The former SFC commander also emphasised this aspect, stating that whereas the NCA was convened during the Balakot episode, Pakistan was seen to exercise caution this time around.
  However, none of the veterans was ready to dismiss the possibility of split-second impacts on the escalation dynamics, especially when missiles were launched at national capitals. They also believe that even a single missile has immense potential to influence the nuclear triggers. For, in the initial seconds, it might be difficult to discern if the missile fired out of the launcher or silo is conventional or nuclear-armed, but, of course, satellite and airborne reconnaissance aircraft can identify the system that fired the missile and give an advance warning.
  It is in this scenario that the absence of a response from New Delhi to the Fatah-II firing will remain an enigma, particularly as to how the national security establishment reacted to the launch in the early hours of May 10. Whether the launch triggered any standard operating procedures (SOPs) in Delhi and whether the SFC went into operational alert are questions to be answered even as more information is now being released by the forces about Operation Sindoor. As Professor Singh states: “What was the thought behind its use or how would have India responded if the Pakistan missile had reached New Delhi remain a matter of speculation until we may find answers in the archives decades later.”
  What, though, comes out as a key takeaway from Operation Sindoor versus Operation Bunyan al-Marsoos is that both India and Pakistan have made incremental climbs on the escalation ladder since 2019.
  The myth of escalation control 
Western schools of non-proliferation and deterrence have for many years studied the India-Pakistan nuclear dynamics and the numerous crises in both their covert and overt nuclearisation phases. These include the Brasstacks exercise of the late 1980s, the 1990 confrontation as a result of terrorism in Jammu & Kashmir, the Kargil conflict, the 2001 Parliament attack followed by Operation Parakram, and the Mumbai terror attack of 2008. Many insights on escalation control, drawn from the superpower rivalry during the Cold War, were applied and tested to study the India-Pakistan conflicts.
  Western analysts have generously suggested policy options like Confidence Building Measures (CBMs), enhancing nuclear security to prevent accidental launches, hotlines, the role of political leadership in restraining military (applicable to Pakistan only), limited military objectives, Track-II diplomacy, and so on. While many of these measures are relevant for peacetime engagements and even at the start of a conflict, they are unlikely to be effective amid raging hostilities.
  In fact, India’s attempt towards early escalation control, by pronouncing the limited military objectives of the May 7 strikes, did not prompt a favourable response, with the Pakistani Army seeing in it an opportunity to avenge the reversals of 2016 and 2019. As was evident in the showdowns of May 9-10, there was little in terms of escalation control that could be pursued when both sides were determined to strike deep, display resolve for retaliation, and harbour feverish tendencies to go up the ladder. As was also visible in the hours after the IAF strikes across the Pakistani heartland, the Pakistani Army was itching to take the fight to the Indian heartland, with little in terms of capability or resolve that could have stopped the Indian leadership from responding in kind.
  India-Pakistan war strategies and battlefield scenarios have evolved in the past decade. The concept of cold start, integrated battle groups, and limited conventional thrusts below the perceived nuclear tripwires, which were very much in discussion after the 2001-02 standoff, have now considerably transformed. The former corps commander was of the view that India should have pursued options like cold start before rushing to exercise higher-level options like air power and precision strikes, which have not just fired up the escalation pace but also dimmed the possibility of returning to land-based conventional means.
  Even more, a new set of disruptive technologies, including combat UCAVs and loitering munitions, indiscriminate use of air power, and obstinate willingness on both sides to test the tripwires have made the India-Pakistan conflict much more complex and unpredictable than in previous decades when Western powers had customarily intervened to de-escalate.
  On the other hand, the military disadvantages traditionally imprinted on Pakistan seem to have substantially dissipated over the years. This was much evident during Operation Sindoor when Pakistan’s inventory of Chinese aerial and BVR platforms wreaked initial havoc — a near-parity in air power was seen throughout the campaign, and in the uninhibited use of armed drones and loitering munitions, which Pakistan had considerably amassed in recent times. The long-held assumptions of conventional superiority in India’s favour seem to have diminished, if the way the four-day hostilities evolved is any indication.
With the Modi government seeking to match Pakistan’s long-pursued adventurism in its own terms, the idea that nuclear weapons will ensure stability at the lower levels has taken a reputational hit. Rather, the fear now is about every future military confrontation incrementally taking the tools of military engagement to a higher plane.
  Yet, despite the increase in intensity and potential to advance to the nuclear level, or, for that matter, even to the ballistic missile domain, there is a general feeling that both sides had restrained sufficiently to ensure that the risk of escalation was contained, notwithstanding the airpower extremes and use of platforms like BrahMos and Fatah-II. Taken at face value is the assertion by the CDS, in his interviews, dismissing the existence of a threat of nuclear war at any point in time. “Not only this escalation ladder, which we continued as much as Pakistan,” General Chauhan had remarked, “there was never a nuclear war scenario; our channels were open with Pakistan, which is a way to control escalation. That, I think, was never on the cards.”
  Echoing General Chauhan’s view, Pakistan’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Sahir Shamshad Mirza also denied any possibility of galloping towards a nuclear war. Indian strikes deep inside Pakistan’s territory and the latter’s plans for a massive military action — as reportedly warned by the US vice-president, and demonstrated through the Fatah-II launch towards Delhi — might have convinced both sides to agree on a ceasefire (cessation of hostilities as described by General Chauhan), even if without any resolute agreement.
  The remark by the CDS that “our channels were open” could be an indication that some mechanisms of “escalation control” were certainly at play, though there are no reports of the DGMOs using the hotline at the peak of the hostilities. The former SFC Commander emphasised the possibility of “back channels” working to reduce the intensity of hostilities. Probed further, he talked about possible communication happening between the two national security advisors (NSAs) or people involved at the Track-II level, besides the DGMO hotline being active throughout the confrontation, irrespective of reports stating that they talked only on the first and last days. Though not sure how many of these channels were at play during the May standoff, he impressed upon the need for escalation control as “things would easily go out of control”.
  The former SFC commander cited the example of 2019, when Pakistan, which responded to Operation Bandar with its Operation Swift Retort, planned air strikes on a brigade headquarters. Possibly aware that an Indian corps commander would be present there, it seems Pakistan withdrew from the plan, realising “unintended consequences”. He agreed that mechanisms of escalation control are fewer in the peak of hostilities and that “it has to be done by your own action, restraint, and how you speak”. He also indicated that the decision to not respond to the Fatah-II firing could have been one such notable example of escalation control.
  Ending the war in a stalemate also gave rise to criticism about India’s actual political objectives being ambiguous. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh clarified in Parliament that India did not go into the operation with any political plans other than fulfilling the military objective of striking the terrorist infrastructure. As intriguing as this may sound, it is inferred that the government erred in assuming that Pakistan would cave in as it did in 2019, and in ruling out any potential for escalation beyond a manageable point.
  The prevailing argument from the establishment is about imposing costs on Pakistan for its continuing and unrelenting support for cross-border terror. The question is moot whether the costs were impinging, as claimed to be, and whether the message was driven home potently. General Chauhan stated that India “had laid a clear ‘redline’ on our tolerance towards terror”, which is the sole politico-military objective that seems to be articulated, besides the many statements made by the Prime Minister, including that Operation Sindoor dispensed “a new form of justice”, and that military action is “the new normal”.
  Operation Sindoor informed us not just about the changing nature of warfare, already on full display in Ukraine and West Asia, but also brought in the realisation that an incremental climb on the escalation ladder has been initiated in the India-Pakistan contest. It also demonstrated the fact that restrained military objectives in themselves would not prevent leaderships on both sides from escalating when the confrontation advances to an eye-for-an-eye level, or, in the words of Indian officials, “responding in the same domain”.
  Mutual inclination and incentives to strike deep into each other’s heartland indicate that the tripwires in the climb 
to the top are not likely to remain inviolable for eternity. The next confrontation may portend ominous outcomes for the region.
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Written By :

A Vinod Kumar

A Vinod Kumar is editor-in-chief of The Polity, and earlier worked with the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi
First Published: Aug 31 2025 | 9:09 PM IST

In this article : Top NewsOperation SindoorIndian Air Force

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