19-05-2025
Operation Sindoor: The weapons that gave India the edge
Written by Arindam Goswami and Vikrant Shinde
Operations Sindoor and Bunyan Marsoos constituted a sharp and intense three-day engagement and yielded significant lessons on the infusion of technology into warfighting. The contest played out across multiple domains: diplomacy, economy, military, and information. The military aspect spanned non-kinetic, kinetic, contact, and non-contact engagements.
India and Pakistan appear to have drawn lessons from the Balakot strikes (India) and Operation Swift Retort (Pakistan), as well as from ongoing wars in West Asia and Eastern Europe. Both armed forces, equipped with inventories from opposing blocs — India with Russian, French, US, and indigenous platforms, and Pakistan with Chinese, US, and Turkish systems — have grappled with the challenges of restricted cross-platform integration going into this engagement.
Both air forces were acutely aware of the challenges of employing air power in a contested air defence (AD) environment. The nature of the conflict did not allow the luxury of time to shape the air situation through dedicated Suppression of Enemy Air Defences (SEAD) or Destruction of Enemy Air Defences (DEAD). Consequently, both air forces sought to operate outside each other's AD bubbles using a variety of beyond-visual-range (BVR) air-to-air missiles (AAMs), such as the US-made AMRAAM and Chinese PL-15 (by the PAF), and the Meteor (by the IAF), alongside air-to-ground munitions such as air-launched cruise missiles (ALCMs) including SCALP and HAMMER employed by the IAF.
The employment of kinetic strikes deep into Pakistan, dominated by air power from the outset, had the potential to escalate rapidly and uncontrollably. India's reliance on precision targeting facilitated escalation control by minimising collateral damage, thereby providing Pakistan with an off-ramp.
Active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar technology was another important factor in modern air combat capability. Unlike older passive electronically scanned array (PESA) systems, AESA radars offer superior target detection and tracking, as well as enhanced resistance to jamming. The ability to simultaneously track multiple targets while maintaining a low probability of interception provides a significant combat advantage. This combination affords aircraft equipped with AESA systems a decisive edge in air-to-air engagements.
India currently faces a modest capability gap in this domain. It possesses only around 30–40 AESA-equipped aircraft, primarily Rafales and a limited number of Su-30MKIs with upgraded AESA radars. In contrast, Pakistan fields over 70 AESA-equipped aircraft, including approximately 20 J-10CEs and around 45–50 JF-17 Block III jets fitted with the KLJ-7A AESA radar. These JF-17 Block III fighters are integrated with advanced PL-15 air-to-air missiles, significantly enhancing their BVR combat effectiveness. Similarly, the J-10C aircraft are also equipped with PL-15 missiles. This technological disparity creates a potential vulnerability in India's air defence posture.
However, India has made notable strides in addressing this imbalance. The acquisition of Rafale fighters has been particularly impactful. These aircraft can track over 40 targets and engage multiple threats simultaneously — a capability that far exceeds that of the Su-30MKI's PESA N011M Bars radar, which can track approximately 15 targets and engage up to four. Thus, the Rafale jets, equipped with the RBE2 AESA radar and Meteor missiles (with ranges exceeding 150 km), provide a distinct advantage in radar capability, missile range, and electronic warfare over Pakistan's JF-17s and J-10CEs.
The most significant enhancement to India's air defence capability, however, came through the 'Akashteer' AD management system and the IAF's Integrated Air Command and Control System (IACCS). The legacy systems included IGLA Man-Portable Air Defence Systems (MANPADS), and Bofors L-70 guns — both of which have been significantly upgraded with radar, electro-optical sensors, and auto-tracking systems, including the Soviet-origin Schilka. The advanced AD systems fielded included the indigenous Akash (SRSAM), the Barak (MRSAM) developed jointly with Israel, and the S-400 (LRSAM), one of the most advanced AD systems in the world.
India also deployed indigenous Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems (C-UAS), developed by BEL and private industry, capable of both soft-kill electronic warfare techniques (such as jamming and spoofing) and hard-kill options using directed energy weapons like lasers. These systems were extensively used to counter incursions by surveillance and combat drones.
Drones were deployed extensively by both sides to saturate the airspace and test air defence systems. The use of HAROP loitering munitions to target radars created potential gaps in AD coverage during the early stages. These munitions combine the features of UAVs and missiles, equipped with electro-optical (EO), infrared (IR), forward-looking infrared (FLIR) sensors, colour CCD cameras, and anti-radiation homing capabilities. HAROPs can loiter in a designated area for up to nine hours. Due to their immunity to GNSS jamming, they are largely resistant to electronic warfare attacks. Their relatively low cost and expendability make them likely candidates as weapons of choice in future 'no-war, no-peace' scenarios.
The writers are research analysts at the Takshashila Institution, Bengaluru
