Inside India’s post-Sindoor defence reset

AI Summary

India’s post-Operation Sindoor military and strategic reset highlights changes in doctrine and technology tested during the May 2025 confrontation with Pakistan, involving targeted strikes on terrorist sites and a combination of military and non-military pressure tactics such as the Indus Waters Treaty suspension.

Every major military power has, at some point, had to find out in real time whether decades of doctrine and equipment actually hold up in combat. The United States tested precision strike and networked battlefield systems in Iraq and Afghanistan.China has used exercises around Taiwan and in the South China Sea to stress-test its navy, air force and missile systems. For India, the last such test before 2025 was Kargil in 1999. Operation Sindoor, the four-day military confrontation with Pakistan in May 2025, became the next one.Also read: Made in India, deployed abroad: The expanding map of India's arms exportsMore than a year on, government data and official statements sketch out what has changed since. Defence experts who spoke to ET Online offered their own reading of what worked, what didn't, and what still needs fixing.The government's accountIndia's account of the operation has stayed consistent since day one. On May 7, 2025, the government said the Armed Forces had struck terrorist infrastructure at nine sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The action was focused, measured and non-escalatory, it said, with no Pakistani military facility targeted.That framing mattered as Islamabad pushed a different version of events. Pakistan claimed India's S-400 and BrahMos installations had been destroyed. Wing Commander Vyomika Singh appeared at a special briefing on May 10 to confirm both remained intact, laying out instead the damage India's strikes had done to Pakistani airbases at Skardu, Sargodha, Jacobabad and Bholari.Lt Gen Rajiv Ghai, India's Director General of Military Operations, followed up two days later with the operational picture. He briefed reporters on how the country's mix of legacy and modern air defence, counter-drone systems and electronic warfare assets had performed.An ORF Special Report from June 2025, edited by Harsh V Pant, Vice President at the Observer Research Foundation, and Sameer Patil, Director of its Centre for Security, Strategy and Technology, calls Sindoor India's deepest military campaign since 1971, noting that the strikes hit targets untouched for decades, the Lashkar-e-Taiba headquarters in Muridke, Jaish-e-Mohammad's base in Bahawalpur, Hizbul Mujahideen's in Muzaffarabad.India has kept up pressure since through non-military means too, chiefly the Indus Waters Treaty suspension and a push to get Pakistan back on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) grey list.Also read: NSA Ajit Doval says India can ‘hit hard’ irrespective of consequences in first post-Sindoor interviewA separate Electronic Journal of Social and Strategic Studies (EJSSS) paper notes India sent all-party delegations of 59 MPs to 32 countries and the EU headquarters in the weeks after, to make its case directly.Pakistan's retaliation had been expected from across the border, since India's own strikes had stayed clear of the Line of Control.The tech pushIf the briefings explained what had happened, the months after were about building for what comes next. The clearest signal came in August 2025, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi used his Independence Day address to announce Mission Sudarshan Chakra, a home-built system he said would not just stop incoming attacks but "hit back at the enemy many times more," expanding to cover strategic and civilian sites nationwide by 2035.133290051Defence Minister Rajnath Singh gave the mission its first concrete milestone weeks later, announcing that the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) had test-fired an indigenous air defence weapon system capable of hitting three targets at once.Lt Gen Deependra Singh Hooda (Retd.) told ET Online that Sudarshan Chakra is, in his view, the single most significant move India has made since the operation.133290027He pointed to newer Army formations built around drones and rapid-strike capability: Rudra Brigades, Bhairav commando units, Shaurya drone squadrons. He also flagged imports already in motion, including more Rafale jets, P-8I aircraft, and five additional S-400 regiments.Dinakar Peri, fellow at the Security Studies Programme, Carnegie India, pointed to a longer list still. He named Integrated Battle Groups, Bhairav battalions and Divyastra drone batteries, a longer-range BrahMos with a hypersonic variant in development, and major upgrades to the Pinaka rocket system.A new long-range air defence missile under Project Kusha recently had its first successful test, he said, and a Joint Operations Centre is being set up to bring the pieces together.A less-noticed part of this build-out is cyber. A peer-reviewed paper in the EJSSS, by Sunaina S, Dr T.K. Singh and Dr Kishor Jose of the Central University of Gujarat, argues that stitching the indigenous Akashteer system together with the S-400, Barak-8, Pechora and Akash platforms pushed India's air defence doctrine from reactive toward proactive.133289983The paper also cites a Maharashtra Cyber Department assessment that India faced roughly 1.5 million cybe