India And Pakistan's Military Strengths: How Arch-Rivals Stack Up
New Delhi:
The killing of 26 tourists by terrorists with cross-border linkage in Jammu and Kashmir has raised tension between India and Pakistan. India has also responded with effective fire at Pakistan's violation of the ceasefire on the Line of Control (LoC).
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India has 14.75 lakh active military personnel, and 16.16 lakh paramilitary police personnel, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
India has 1,437 fixed-wing aircraft, 995 helicopters, 7,074 armoured fighting vehicles (AFVs), and 11,225 pieces of artillery. The defence budget is $81 billion for 2025.
For nuclear deterrence, India uses a primarily land-based launch platform. However, India can also deliver nuclear bombs from the air, and is developing its submarine force. It has intermediate-range ballistic missiles, and is testing an intercontinental-range version.
Pakistan has a much smaller defence budget of $10 billion for 2025. It has 6.6 lakh active military personnel, less than half of what India has. Pakistan maintains a paramilitary police strength of 2.91 lakh.
Pakistan has 812 fixed-wing aircraft, 322 helicopters, 6,137 AFVs, and 4,619 artillery pieces. The gap between India and Pakistan's AFV strength is not very wide, according to SIPRI data.
Islamabad has both land-based and air-delivered nuclear weapons, with medium-, short- and close-range ballistic missiles. Pakistan has sought submarine-launched nuclear-armed cruise missiles.
A comparison of India and Pakistan's military strengths by the annual global defence review 'Global Firepower Index' (GFP) shows India has a better score with 0.1184 in the GFP's 'PowerIndex score' (PwrIndx). A score of 0.00 is considered optimal, according to the GFP. Under this index, India ranks 4th out of 145 countries in the PwrIndx military strength ranking.
The GFP gave a PwrIndx of 0.2513 to Pakistan, and placed it on the 12th out of 145 spots in global military strength rankings. The GFP data shows Pakistan is at a rank that is three times lower than India.
The last biggest escalation between the two neighbours was in February 2019 when India bombed a terror camp deep inside Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (PoK), in retaliation against the suicide bombing attack on a convoy of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama.
Since 2019, both sides have boosted their military capabilities. India is also the world's largest arms importer, according to SIPRI. The bulk of India's supplies come from Russia. New Delhi has also expanded military suppliers to include the US, France and Israel, as well as developing its domestic production, including aircraft carriers, submarines and helicopters.
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