How South Asian military calculus has changed after May 2025

AI Summary

Reflecting on altered military strategies following the May 2025 conflict between India and Pakistan, the article emphasizes how modern warfare has shifted towards air power and technology. It discusses lessons learned from recent conflicts and anticipates changes in military doctrine to include faster, more technologically driven confrontations.

• Air power increasingly central to modern battlefield planning; lessons from Ukraine, Middle East wars show primacy of drones, satellites and jamming capabilities on modern battlefield • Both sides realise conventional escalation still possible without breaching nuclear threshold • China now figures more prominently in New Delhi’s military calculations about Pakistan ONE YEAR on, the four-day India-Pakistan conflict of May 2025 has increasingly come to be seen by military circles on both sides as not simply another skirmish between two nuclear rivals, but rather the beginning of a new phase in their military rivalry. The conflict reinforced some long-held assumptions, overturned others, and convinced policymakers in New Delhi and Rawalpindi that future confrontations are likely to unfold faster, strike deeper and depend far more heavily on technology, precision and integration than any previous wars or conflicts between the two. “Lessons would have been learnt by both sides because operational readiness is the top priority for any military. In any case Pakistan will remain a step ahead of India, whose air force was mauled in last year’s conflict,” a former army chief told Dawn, while discussing the broader post-May 2025 strategic environment. What emerged from those four days was not the usual pattern of mobilisation and coercive signalling, but a far more compressed and dangerous strategic environment, in which both sides appear to believe they can sustain limited conventional operations while still avoiding full-scale war. That is the assumption now shaping military doctrine, force restructuring and weapons acquisition in the two countries. A new set of tools For nearly three decades after the 1998 nuclear tests, the India-Pakistan military balance rested on the uneasy understanding that crises would erupt, military pressure would build and political rhetoric would intensify, but the fear of uncontrolled escalation (a rebrand of the Cold War doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction) would eventually impose restraint before either side crossed certain operational boundaries. The events of May 2025, however, suggest that those boundaries have shifted, as both sides have demonstrated a greater willingness to target operationally significant military infrastructure, while still containing escalation. Precision strikes, drones, stand-off weapons and air-defence systems were employed in the last episode not merely for symbolism, but to impose concrete operational and political costs. The side able to deliver the first blow is likely to gain the decisive advantage in any future conflict. This matters, because it changes how future crises are likely to unfold, as both countries are adapting to a wider technological transformation of warfare itself. The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East had already altered military thinking globally. The May 2025 conflict accelerated the localisation of those lessons within South Asia and drones, in particular, are now central to military planning on both sides. Rather than lowering the nuclear threshold, Pakistan now seems focused on strengthening its ability to absorb, contest and retaliate conventionally while maintaining escalation control. This is producing greater emphasis on survivability, distributed force employment, long-range fires and stronger coordination between air and ground forces. The growing importance of the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) within broa­der operational planning also reflects this evolution. Former Air Chief Marshal Abbas Khattak, who is veteran of four wars while speaking to Dawn, noted that the “battlefield has changed” with the introduction of newer systems. He, however, emphasised the continued primacy of air force in any conflict, and underscored its autonomy in deciding its strategy and dealing with operational matters. Examples from modern-day battlefields Future conflicts are, meanwhile, increasingly being viewed through the lens of networked warfare in which sensors, electronic warfare, precision targeting and command integration matter as much as numerical force strength. Pakistan’s recent institutional changes also appear connected to this evolving threat perception. The creation of dedicated rocket formations and expansion of guided rocket capability point towards effort to build survivable stand-off strike options capable of threatening operationally relevant targets at depth. The objective is not conventional parity with India, but the creation of enough uncertainty and retaliatory capability to complicate Indian assumptions about escalation dominance. At sea, similar thinking is beginning to emerge. The conflict, combined with lessons drawn from the wars involving Iran, Israel and US, has sharpened focus within Pakistan regarding maritime vulnerability and possible economic coercion. Greater attention is therefore being paid to anti access capability, long range maritime strike systems and survivable naval assets. The growing use o