India’s covert war over Pakistan last summer was neither the nuclear war that Washington now likes to project, nor the limited “surgical” exchange that Islamabad claims it won on social media. It was a calculated, hard-hitting campaign—dubbed “Operation Sindoor”—designed to punish Pakistan-backed terrorism without descending into all-out war, and it left the Pakistani military establishment struggling to repair concrete and credibility.
From the Besaran massacre to Bramos’ response
The reason for this, Shishir Gupta recounts, was the April 22 terrorist massacre in the Baisaran Valley tourist area near Pahalgam, where Pakistani-backed terrorists segregated the victims on the basis of religion and killed 26 people. India’s response was not symbolic: it was based on precise, long-range strikes against the terrorist infrastructure deep inside Pakistan and in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
On May 7, India opened its accounts with a BrahMos missile strike on the JeM headquarters in Bahawalpur, coupled with a French SCALP air-launched cruise missile. The BrahMos was launched from a Su-30MKI aircraft, while the SCALP aircraft was launched from a Rafale aircraft, and both remained within Indian airspace while directing cross-border standoff strikes.
On the same night, Lashkar-e-Taiba’s Muridke headquarters was bombed using SCALP missiles and Israeli Crystal Maze missiles, while other terrorist camps were targeted with loitering munitions – Polish Warmate, Israeli PALM 200/400, Harop and Harpy. What began ostensibly as a counterterrorism retaliation was in fact the opening phase of a limited air and missile war.
The night Pakistan went blind
The decisive blow came in the early hours of May 10. At approximately 1:30 a.m., India launched the first batch of BrahMos missiles at the Chaklala/Noor Khan Air Base in Rawalpindi, the headquarters of Pakistan’s Northern Air Command. According to Gupta, this strike paralyzed the command and control network, effectively leaving the PAF “blind” and unable to see what was unfolding in their skies.
By that afternoon, India had used the BrahMos 11 times, striking a series of air bases, with the final strikes falling on Jacobabad and Bhanoti/Bhunari. In parallel, India used its own S-400 air defense systems, and according to Gupta’s account, 11 Pakistani air bases suffered significant damage, with other aircraft and air platforms destroyed on the ground and at least six to seven Pakistani aircraft lost.
The scale and pace of these operations, supported by the extensive use of US Excalibur precision artillery in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, forced Pakistan to evacuate up to 10 kilometers in some forward areas due to the intensity of Indian fire.
Who actually arranged the ceasefire?
Against this backdrop, US President Donald Trump has publicly claimed credit for stopping a potential nuclear war between India and Pakistan by brokering a ceasefire. Gupta’s reconstruction of the decision-making chain tells a very different story – one in which Washington was an anxious bystander, not a central mediator.
On May 9, as tensions rose and Pakistan prepared for “Operation Marooned Structure,” US Vice President J.D. Vance phoned Prime Minister Narendra Modi, warning of major Pakistani retaliation. Gupta says Modi’s reported response was blunt: India will answer the bullet with a bomb.
The next morning, as the BrahMos strikes unfolded, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio repeatedly tried to reach Foreign Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, who had just emerged from the war room at 5 a.m., was, in Gupta’s words, “apparently asleep.” When the call finally came around 8:45-9 am, Jaishankar was categorical that any discussion on ceasefire should be channeled through military-to-military channels – specifically, between the Directors General of Military Operations (DGMO) of India and Pakistan.
It was the PTI’s Director General who called his Indian counterpart at around 3:35 that afternoon to propose a ceasefire, once it became clear that India had achieved its limited war aims. India agreed to this because its objectives – destroying major terrorist camps and weakening Pakistan’s air infrastructure – had been achieved; New Delhi was never seeking regime change or regional gains.
This diplomatic development came in the narrow window between the DGMO agreement and its official internal communications. According to Gupta, Jaishankar instructed Foreign Minister Vikram Misri to inform the Army and other agencies about the ceasefire, but the Army took about two hours to ensure that all formations along the Western Front were properly briefed.
Meanwhile, Islamabad quickly informed Washington that India had agreed, and Trump, the “consummate tweeter,” woke up and tweeted and immediately claimed credit. According to Gupta, at no time did India ask the United States to mediate the peace process, and at no point did nuclear escalation figure in the actual series of decisions.
Narrative war: images of Pakistan versus evidence of India
If the kinetic exchange tended towards India, the information war played out differently. Gupta says Pakistan and its supporters moved quickly to manufacture a perception of victory – pushing images on May 7 onwards as if Indian assets had been destroyed. Among the allegations are that the Indian S-400 system was destroyed at Adampur and at Bhuj; Gupta points out that those images were simply false, as the Prime Minister later visited Adampur where the S-400 system remained intact.
Gupta contrasts this with what he describes as India’s conservative, evidence-based approach to information, through which New Delhi has preferred to downplay rather than exaggerate its gains. In a world where “perception is greater than reality,” Pakistan, with the support of China and which the United States often indulges when the issue is India, has pushed its narrative more forcefully into the global echo system.
At the same time, neither the United States nor China has publicly acknowledged their losses or the failure of their systems in recent conflicts, whether in the US-Iran confrontation or the performance of Chinese-origin radars and weapons systems in Pakistan, Iran, or Venezuela. Gupta notes that this silence increases the bias of international scrutiny towards Indian claims and away from Pakistani vulnerabilities.
Ceasefire, violations and political anger
If the decision to accept the ceasefire was for military reasons – because India did what it planned – then the political leadership in Delhi was not at all satisfied with Pakistan’s behavior after that. Despite agreeing to stop, Pakistani forces continued to fire throughout the night of May 10, using drones, artillery and cross-border bombing against targets in Jammu and Rajasthan.
As for India, after it officially accepted the ceasefire, it chose not to respond in kind, and adhered to its obligations even though the other side violated them. Gupta points out that this restraint angered parts of the political establishment, which felt that India should have responded when Pakistan repeatedly violated the ceasefire it had requested.
Terror camps were rebuilt, and deterrence was recalibrated
On the ground in Pakistan, the story since Operation Sindoor has been one of reconstruction and renewed caution. The Lashkar-e-Taiba’s Muridke headquarters and the JeM’s Subhan Allah Center complex in Bahawalpur, which were hit by Indian missiles, witnessed visible construction activity as they tried to rebuild what was destroyed. He says other camps are also being restored; The terrorist infrastructure targeting India remains “alive and active” because it is an integral part of Pakistani state policy.
Gupta emphasizes that the difference is deterrence: there is now a clear expectation H in Rawalpindi that any new attack on Indian civilians would elicit a tough cross-border response – summed up by the principle of “ghar main jose ki maringi”, which is to strike terrorists on their own soil. He argues that India does not need external permission to do so, and cannot realistically be stopped by external forces once it decides to do so.
The new arsenal: from drones to SSBNs
Operation Sindoor also accelerated India’s military modernization process, especially in the area of long-range and precision capabilities. In the year following the operation, India shrank significantly $30,000 crore worth of drones and counter-drone systems, enhancing surveillance and mobility options.
New Delhi is preparing to issue a letter of request to Dassault for 114 Rafale fighters under the “Make in India” framework, expanding the same fleet that carried out the SCALP strikes in May 2024. It has acquired the Israeli PULS rocket artillery system, with a range of up to 300 km, as a more economical complement to the expensive missiles, and has inducted large quantities of loitering munitions such as the Warmate 400.
On the air defense and strike front, India has brought long-range Barak surface-to-air systems from Israel, and is now exploring longer-range variants of BrahMos missiles to expand its reach deep into the Indian subcontinent. At sea, it quietly launched its third nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine, INS Aridhaman, on April 3, and a fourth, INS Arisudan, is scheduled to launch next year – enhancing its survivable second-strike capability.
Couple this with a steady stream of howitzers, tanks, and light armor, and Gupta’s central point becomes clear: India aims to maintain its decisive traditional superiority over Pakistan, while signaling to all regional adversaries that any “evil eye” on India will incur costs they cannot afford.
In his closing remarks to anchor Ayesha Varma, Gupta offers a calm warning: Operation Sindoor is, in his words, “far from complete” – a reminder that in New Delhi’s eyes the campaign against cross-border terrorism is not a one-time retaliatory strike, but rather a long, incomplete project of deterrence with punishment.
