Keywords: Air Superiority, Windows of Superiority, Counter-Air Campaign, Campaign Design, Suppression of Enemy Air Defences (SEAD)

Control of the air remains fundamental to the effective employment of military power. It gives one’s own forces freedom of action while limiting that available to an adversary. The principle is enduring. What requires examination is how such control may increasingly have to be achieved and exploited between near-peer competitors.

This is not an argument for a new degree of control. Existing doctrine already recognises that control may be limited in time and space. The United States (US) Air Force doctrine[1] notes that the required degree may be local or mission-specific, and that counter-air operations should produce it at the times and places chosen by the commander. North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) Joint Air Power Strategy[2] likewise defines control of the air as the degree of freedom needed to exploit the domain, achieved at a certain place and/or time.

The Indian Air Force’s (IAF) Basic Doctrine[3] makes a similar point. It distinguishes air supremacy, air superiority and a favourable air situation (FAS), the last being limited in time and space yet sufficient for specific operations. Its illustrative example is especially relevant: Suppression of Enemy Air Defences (SEAD), airfield attacks and offensive sweeps could create sufficient local control to permit an armoured breakout at the desired time.

The contemporary question, therefore, is not whether local and temporal control is doctrinally valid. It is how campaign design should create, exploit and shift such conditions against a capable opponent.

Windows of Superiority

Modern air forces operate smaller numbers of increasingly capable and expensive combat aircraft. At the same time, surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) and air-to-air missiles (AAMs) have gained range and lethality. Distributed sensors, airborne surveillance, electronic warfare, stand-off weapons, unmanned systems and networked air defences have enlarged the volume of contested airspace. Against such an adversary, maintaining air superiority uniformly across an entire theatre may be prohibitively demanding – and may not always be necessary.

A sustained counter-air campaign remains essential, but effort need not be distributed uniformly. Campaign design should identify the point of decision—the place, time, or operational circumstance where concentrated combat power can produce the greatest effect. There, the air component can seek a window of superiority: a deliberately created and sustained period of sufficient control, within a defined operational space, to give the joint force freedom of action for a particular purpose.

Such a window could enable a ground offensive, permit a deep-strike package to penetrate hostile airspace, facilitate an airborne or maritime operation, or protect a vital centre of gravity.

Campaign design identifies the point of decision. Concentration creates the window. The window creates freedom of action. Freedom of action enables the desired operational effect. That effect must serve the political objective.

‘Windows of superiority’ is used here as an operational construct, not as a proposed doctrinal category. Its value lies in applying established ideas of local and temporal control to the contemporary counter-air campaign.

Creating the Window

Fighters need not create the window alone. Offensive counter-air can attack aircraft, bases and command systems. SEAD can suppress or destroy SAMs and sensors. Electronic warfare can blind or confuse surveillance and engagement networks; cyber operations may disrupt command and information systems. Stand-off weapons can attack critical fixed nodes, while drones and decoys expose radars, saturate defences or consume interceptors.

Nor is destruction always necessary. Suppression, disruption, displacement and deception may produce the required condition for sufficient time. A SAM temporarily suppressed, an Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C) platform displaced, a command network disrupted, or fighter patrols drawn elsewhere may be enough. The point of decision may be local even when the actions required to create superiority there extend across the theatre.

The 1982 Bekaa Valley operations provide a useful historical illustration. Syria had established a substantial SAM, radar and fighter presence covering the valley. Israel concentrated fighters, electronic warfare (EW) and C2 aircraft, unmanned aircraft, helicopters, artillery and other capabilities against the system. The Royal Canadian Air Force’s doctrinal case study[4] records that 17 of 19 SAM installations were destroyed in the initial action and that Israel achieved control of the air over the valley within about two hours.

Bekaa should not be retrospectively relabelled a window of superiority in the contemporary sense; Israel achieved overwhelming local dominance. But the operation demonstrates the underlying logic: identify the operational problem, concentrate diverse capabilities, create the required degree of control and exploit the resulting freedom of action.

Concentration, Fighters, and SAMs

Concentration at one point inevitably creates risk elsewhere. Localisation cannot mean abandonment. Economy of effort and the offence-defence balance therefore matter. Lower-priority sectors may rely predominantly on layered SAMs, surveillance, electronic warfare and counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) supported by fighters able to reinforce them. Offensive air power and scarce enablers can then be concentrated at the principal point of decision.

SAMs and fighters, however, offer different forms of combat power. A SAM provides persistence and denial within its engagement footprint, but even a long-range system is geographically anchored. Moving launchers, radars, command elements, communications and logistics between distant sectors takes time.

Fighters provide manoeuvrable combat power. A force concentrated in one sector can rapidly reinforce another hundreds of kilometres away; tankers and airborne command-and-control extend this flexibility. An adversary must enter a SAM’s effective envelope before engagement, whereas an aircraft can move towards the threat, intercept before weapon release or carry the contest into hostile airspace.

SAMs provide persistent local denial; fighters provide manoeuvrable combat power across the theatre.

Joint Planning and Deception

A window has little value unless another element of the campaign is ready to exploit it. Joint planning must therefore begin before it is created. Land, maritime and air components cannot develop independent plans and later negotiate the air effort required. Campaign design must first identify the desired effect and point of decision; component plans should then be built around creating and exploiting the necessary conditions.

Deception may itself help create them. Decoys, false electromagnetic signatures, feints, uncrewed systems and selective attacks may cause an adversary to reposition fighters, activate radars, relocate SAMs or expend interceptors away from the real point of decision. A window may be created not by destroying combat power, but by causing it to be employed at the wrong place or time.

A Progressively Created Window: Israel-Iran-US

The campaign against Iran provides a contemporary, though imperfect, illustration of a window progressively created and exploited. On April 19, 2024, after Iran’s large missile-and-drone attack on Israel, a limited Israeli retaliatory strike damaged the radar associated with an S-300 battery near Isfahan, as later indicated by commercial satellite imagery[5]. When Operation Rising Lion began on June 13, 2025, suppression of Iran’s air-defence architecture formed part of the opening effort alongside attacks on nuclear, missile and command targets.[6] Further attacks struck air-defence systems around Tehran. By June, 14 Israel claimed aerial superiority from western Iran to Tehran[7]. The operational significance was the freedom thereby created for repeated attacks against strategically important targets.

The US strike on Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan on June 22[8] was a further stage in exploiting this shaped environment.  However, it should not be assumed that Israel had created the conditions specifically for a later American operation. The United States also did not rely on those conditions alone. According to the Department of Defense account of Operation Midnight Hammer,[9] deception and decoys supported the B-2 strike force, while fourth- and fifth-generation fighters swept ahead for residual fighter and SAM threats. The sequence shows that a window may be shaped in advance, expanded by continued counter-air action and reinforced locally at the point of decision.

An essential caveat is that Iran was not a symmetrical near-peer air opponent.  The case illustrates the mechanism of progressively creating and exploiting freedom of action; it does not show that the same conditions could be created as readily against a genuine peer integrated air-defence system and fighter force. Nor does operational freedom in the air guarantee strategic or political decision. Military effect matters only when it serves an achievable political objective.

Missiles, Aircraft, and Campaign Endurance

Long-range precision missiles raise a legitimate question: why create an air-superiority window if stand-off weapons can achieve the effect? Where they can, there may be no reason to manufacture one unnecessarily. But the calculation cannot end with range and accuracy.

Long-range missiles are finite. Magazine depth, expenditure rates and industrial regeneration become increasingly important as conflict lengthens. A weapon suited to a short punitive exchange may become uneconomical when repeatedly employed in a prolonged campaign.

Aircraft provide a different kind of depth. They are reusable delivery platforms that offer adaptability, persistence, rapid redeployment, and the ability to engage mobile or emerging targets. They also extend the reach of air-launched cruise missiles by moving the launch line forward and permitting attacks from changing axes. Yet creating a window is itself costly: fighters, tankers, AEW&C, EW assets, SEAD weapons and trained crews are also scarce and difficult to regenerate.

The correct question is neither aircraft nor missile, nor offence nor defence. It is which combination produces the required effect with the best campaign-level economy of scarce and difficult-to-regenerate resources. Range and probability of kill describe capability; magazine depth and regeneration help determine campaign utility.

Conclusion

Windows of superiority do not replace established concepts of air control. They offer a way to apply them where sustained theatre-wide dominance against a capable adversary may be difficult, expensive and unnecessary. The counter-air campaign must remain theatre-wide in awareness and readiness, but its combat power need not be distributed uniformly.

Campaign design identifies the point of decision. Air power’s reach, mobility and flexibility allow capabilities to concentrate force there. Surface-based air defence provides persistence and economy of effort elsewhere; fighters redistribute combat power rapidly. Missiles, EW, cyber capabilities, unmanned systems and deception help create the required conditions. The window must then be exploited, expanded, shifted or recreated as the campaign develops.

The enduring requirement for air control has not changed. The contemporary campaign planner’s question may simply need to be more precise:

Where, when, for how long – and for what purpose – must we control it?

*****

Authors Biography

Manish Khanna is a former Air Marshal of the IAF. He was the AOC-in-C of Southern Air Command and has been the Commandant of the College of Air Warfare.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Centre for Aerospace Power and Strategic Studies [CAPSS])

CLICK TO VIEW THE PDF

 Notes:-

[1] United States Air Force, United States of America, “Air Force Doctrine Publication 3-0, Operations,” January 22, 2025, https://www.doctrine.af.mil/Portals/61/documents/AFDP_3-0/AFDP3-0Operations.pdf. Accessed on August 28, 2026.

[2]  “NATO’s Joint Air Power Strategy,” North Atlantic Treaty Organization, June 26, 2018, https://www.nato.int/en/about-us/official-texts-and-resources/official-texts/2018/06/26/natos-joint-air-power-strategy. Accessed on August 28, 2026.

[3] Indian Air Force, Government of India, “Doctrine of the Indian Air Force, IAP 2000-22,” https://database.cyberpolicyportal.org/api/files/16643773682897k6k8szritq.pdf. Accessed on August 28, 2026.

[4] Royal Canadian Air Force, Government of Canada, “Control of the Air,” Canadian Forces Aerospace Shape Doctrine, https://www.canada.ca/en/air-force/corporate/policies-standards/royal-canadian-air-force-doctrine/ad-b-ga-403-000-fp-001-chapter-2.html. Accessed on August 28, 2026.

[5] “Satellite Image Appears to Show Damaged Iranian Radar Allegedly Struck by Israel,” The Times of Israel, April 21, 2024, https://www.timesofisrael.com/satellite-image-appears-to-show-damaged-iranian-radar-allegedly-struck-by-israel/. Accessed on August 28, 2026.

[6] “Everything We Know About Operation Rising Lion: Israel’s Attack on Iran,” The Aviationist, June 13, 2025, https://theaviationist.com/2025/06/13/operation-rising-lion/. Accessed on August 28, 2026.

[7] Israel Defense Forces, Government of Israel, “Press Briefing by IDF Spokesperson, BG Effie Defrin,” June 14, 2025, https://www.idf.il/en/mini-sites/israel-at-war/briefings-by-idf-spokesperson-bg-effie-defrin/june-25-press-briefings/press-briefing-by-idf-spokesperson-bg-effie-defrin-june-14-2025/. Accessed on August 28, 2026.

[8]  “Pentagon Reveals How B-2 Bombers Struck Iran Nuclear Sites in Mission Dubbed ‘Operation Midnight Hammer,’” CBS News, June 21, 2025, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pentagon-briefing-us-strikes-iran-nuclear-sites/. Accessed on August 28, 2026.

[9]  U.S. Department of Defense, United States of America, “Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine Press Briefing,” June 22, 2025, https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/4222543/secretary-of-defense-pete-hegseth-and-chairman-of-the-joint-chiefs-of-staff-gen/. Accessed on August 28, 2026.

The post Windows of Superiority: Control of the Air in Near-Peer Conflict appeared first on CAPSS India.

Keywords: Air Defence, Fratricide, IFF, Operation Rough Rider.

“When you train, you’re taught to react so quickly because the Air Battles that we train on, in my opinion, are unrealistic.  There are too many things going on at one time, so all it trains you to do is just react. And that is just fine, but out here it is more complicated than that.”

– PAC-3 SAM Platoon Leader, US Army

Introduction

On the night of March 22, 2003, two Royal Air Force (RAF), United Kingdom (UK) Tornados were returning to the Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait after a mission in Iraq. The lead aircraft, callsign Yahoo 75, made it back safely. The trailing aircraft, callsign Yahoo 76, was shot down by a US Army PAC-3 Patriot missile system guarding the airbase. Both crew members onboard the Tornado were killed instantly. US investigation board concluded that the Patriot battery detected the Tornados as Anti-Radiation Missiles (ARM) and fired in self-defence, while also stating that the IFF system on the aircraft was probably not working. The RAF also carried out an independent assessment and flagged Patriot Rules of Engagement (RsOE), ARM classification criteria and Identification Friend or Foe (IFF issues). The investigation also highlighted shortfalls in training certifications and an unrealistic training environment that contributed to the accident. Operating in a region where no ARM threat was construed, a deliberate pause by the Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM) operators could have resulted in correct classification by the system, or further track correlation by other means. The RAF board also concluded that the lack of communications equipment meant that the Patriot crew did not have access to the widest possible ‘picture’ of the airspace around them to build situational awareness.[1]

Almost two decades later, a similar story of blue-on-blue would haunt the United States (US) military when the United States Navy’s (USN) premier vessels fought off the Houthis in the Red Sea during Operation Rough Rider. On December 21, 2024, at 2325Z, USS Gettysburg (GC-64), a Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser, shot down an F/A-18F Hornet which was part of the same Carrier Strike Group (CSG) led by USS Harry S Truman (CVN-75).[2] Both pilots ejected safely and were recovered quickly. The accident occurred due to misidentification of a Hornet two-ship on their return leg to land on the carrier after having undertaken buddy-refuelling operations for other aircraft in the area. USS Gettysburg, the overall Air and Missile Defence Controller (AMDC), had in fact launched two SM-2 missiles wherein the wingman, flying in an extended trail, was able to acquire the missile in time and manoeuvred to defeat it. The accident occurred in a networked environment with all players equipped with Mode-5 IFF and Link-16, which makes it even more important for learning. A detailed but redacted report was released by the US Department of War (DoW) in April 2025 and has been the primary reference while analysing this accident.

Deployment and Operational Issues

US military, along with allies, had been actively engaged in the region under US Central Command (CENTCOM) since January 2024, providing freedom of navigation by intercepting Houthi missiles and drones. During this period, the US forces defended against a number of Houthi cruise missiles, Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles (ASBM) and drones.[3] Till December 15, 2024, US CSG led by USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69) included three Arleigh Burke-class destroyers and a Type-45 Guided Missile Destroyer from the Royal Navy (UK). This group was replaced by USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) along with USS Gettysburg, which were undertaking a routine deployment in the Mediterranean Sea under US European Command (EUCOM). Gettysburg was the senior Aegis vessel in the region and hence tasked with the role of Air Defence Commander (ADC), known as ‘Whiskey’. At the time of deployment, Gettysburg had known issues with three of its components – Identification Friend or Foe (IFF), Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) and Link-16. All three systems form the core of network-centric warfare capability and would play a critical role in the mishap.

These issues were magnified in the week and hours prior to the mishap, with the crew reporting numerous problems with Link-16, including short but frequent loss of Link. The Watch Officer’s logbook also has an average of eleven IFF Mode-5 casualties per day in the week prior to the mishap, which should be zero when performing as per design specifications. US Navy Tactical Reference Publication 1-03.1 states that “A casualty is defined as an equipment or software malfunction or deficiency that within the first 24 hours of discovery cannot be corrected within 48 hours and affects the ability of the unit to undertake its primary mission.” In the five hours prior to the mishap, there were five IFF failures and resets that were not reported upward. This was in direct violation of CSG standing orders wherein the Commanding Officer (CO) explicitly states that, “I expect all U.S. units to have fully operable IFF systems,” and the fact that CSG was not aware of IFF issues onboard the Gettysburg further complicated matters.

Air Defence Setup

Like in any theatre, the US Joint Force Commander (JFC) appoints a Joint Force Air Component Commander (JFACC) who is in charge of all air operations in the region. The mantle of Air Defence falls under the Area Air Defence Commander (AADC), which is normally handled by the JFACC himself, alongside the role of the Airspace Control Authority (ACA). The reason for these functions to be centralised with the JFACC will become evident as we further analyse the accident. As the AADC, the JFACC ensures that he provides the following to the theatre elements: –

• • Theatre Area Air Defence Plan (AADP)

  • RsOE and Weapons Control Status (WCS)

  • Airspace Control Plan (ACP)

Using these products, the Air Defence planners at lower echelons would have developed their own operational plans while ensuring compliance with the JFACC’s framework. However, being deployed at sea outside the Joint Operating Area (JOA), the naval task force had its own declared airspace and delegated control from the JFACC. The United States Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT) could thus plan its own airspace management and defence functions. Key functionaries within NAVCENT’s operational plan were as follows: –

• • CWC – Composite Warfare Commander onboard USS Harry S Truman

  • ADC – Air Defence Commander (Whiskey) onboard USS Gettysburg

  • AWC – Air Warfare Commander (Alpha) onboard USS Harry S Truman

In the above roles, the Air Battle Management functions and control of fighters on Defensive Counter Air (DCA) missions lie with the AWC, while the IAMD (Integrated Air and Missile Defence) is entirely under ADC–a small but crucial disconnect which will come into play as we go further. The entire setup operated on a ‘command-by-negation’ model, where subordinate commanders are authorised to act in accordance with the commander’s intent unless explicitly countermanded. This essentially means that effective and safe engagements would require extensive coordination between ADC and AWC, which would ride on two aspects–compliance with laid-down Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) and regular integrated training. The report states that Gettysburg was ‘aggregated with the CSG for only 23% of total fly days of their first three months of deployment’, which translates into a very unhealthy state in terms of integrated training. While this could be mitigated by exhaustive procedures and clear briefs, the exact opposite was observed in the report, which reads – ‘The strike brief included Carrier Air Wing (CVW) launch, employment and recovery procedures. DCA assets were present for this rehearsal meeting; however, CVW-1 personnel could not recall any AMDC representation.’ Considering that the Air and Missile Defence (AMD) plan was part of the composite plan developed by the CSG air wing, with Gettysburg in a support role, the AMDC had insufficient awareness of the plan. The report states that the Gettysburg crew had only a couple of printed slides from the briefing, which did not include the DCA plan, Joint Engagement Zones (JEZ), or hand-off ranges for coordination. This aspect closely mirrors the state of affairs during the 2003 incident between RAF and US Army discussed earlier.

Chronology of Events

The report states that– “HSTCSG entered the Red Sea on 14 December 2024. This incident occurred 7 days later, immediately following HSTCSG’s first defensive strike against Houthi positions. The strike was successful, and adversary reaction followed. HSTCSG air and surface units spent several hours defending the force against Houthi-launched Anti-Ship Cruise Missiles (ASCM) and One-Way Attack (OWA) drones.” The following sequence of events occurred after this: –

• • 1649Z – DCA aircraft launched and proceeded to their station. All had working Links.

  • 1711Z – E-2D Hawkeye AEW&C launched and initiated a CEC network.

  • 1815Z – USS Gettysburg reported loss of Link-16.

  • 1817Z – Strike package launched as per plan. All had operable Link-16.

  • 1821Z – E-2 reported three tracks (possible P-351 cruise missiles) at 175nm and directed the DCA flights for intercept.

  • 2003Z – Strike reported release of ordnance and commenced recovery. E-2 tracked additional 08 threats incoming. Some strikers were pooled as additional DCA aircraft along with those in tanker role.

  • 2151Z – All strike aircraft recovered onboard CVN-75.

  • 2109Z – Two cruisers engaged an incoming missile each with SM-2 SAMs.

  • All aircraft recovered except two DCA CAPs, buddy tankers and E-2D.

  • 2323Z – Gettysburg detects two incoming tracks. Three people are involved: the Anti-Aircraft Warfare Commander (AAWC), Tactical Actions Officer (TAO), and the CO.

  • 2324Z – “XW this is G, engaging track GB121 with birds, over” First SM-2 fired. Decision taken in ‘self-defence’.

  • Similar cycle followed in another 40 seconds and a second SM-2 fired on the trailing track.

  • At this time the first Hornet was at 300 kts, passing 2,000 ft and had checked in with carrier approach. Both aircraft had their systems set up for landing, meaning all Electronic Warfare (EW) equipment was turned off at this point. The first aircraft crew saw the missile launch and assumed it was targeting some cruise missiles. They realised the threat only once the missile updated its flight path towards them, by which time it was too late.

  • The second aircraft was passing 5,000 ft and trailing the lead by 5nm. The crew saw the missile impact and called out Mayday when they noticed a second missile launch which they knew was targeting them. The pilot manoeuvred the aircraft to defeat the missile, which the Weapon Systems Officer WSO tracked as the motor burned out just 5 seconds prior to the missile passing them at close range (1-2 aircraft length as per WSO).

  • At the time of the first firing, a helicopter was making an approach for Gettysburg’s deck with Night Vision Goggles (NVGs) and was not informed of the engagement. The first launch caused blooming in the NVGs, and the helicopter was waved off to the port side, but no Scram order was issued. The second missile was launched with the helicopter in close proximity, and the helicopter was placed under considerable risk during the entire engagement.

Take Aways

The mishap is a reminder to all combatants that operations, especially high-tempo operations like air operations, provide an extremely low margin for errors as far as decision-making is concerned. A clean air picture can turn cluttered very rapidly; a recognised air picture providing exceptional SA can quickly degrade and place commanders in a situation they have probably not trained for. The mishap, like all cases of fratricide, has much for all of us to take home.

• • Network Centric Warfare demands that all supporting equipment (links, IFF, etc) must be serviceable at all times for all participants in the area. A non-compliant unit will not only cause such mishaps but also degrade the Recognized Air Situation Picture (RASP) and reduce operational efficiency. Such compliance is easier to establish under a single authority where not only SOPs are common but also fallback mechanisms in cases of failure.

  • Airspace Control and Air Defence cannot be kept segregated. The US JP-3-01 ‘Countering Air and Missile Threat’ itself states that ‘The functions of the JFACC, AADC, and ACA must be integrated to ensure that joint air operations, OCA, DCA, and airspace control are fully integrated and synchronized.’ This was clearly a case where these functions were segregated to an extent that Battle Management and Air Defence were being executed in silos. This has become highly relevant for the Indian military at a time when concepts like ‘Air Littoral’ are attempting to segregate airspace without paying heed to the pitfalls of such actions.[4]

  • The Aegis-equipped vessels are known to set standards in air defence at sea with their powerful radar and highly automated Combat Information Center (CIC). However, such state-of-the-art equipment does not translate into operational results unless operators are rigorously trained in the same C2 architecture and scenarios they would face in reality. While the crew may complete all their individual training events and look good on paper, it is only integrated and realistic training that translates into combat efficiency. This means regular employment of the units and systems in Large Force Engagements (LFE) where both tactical proficiency and decision-making are stress-tested.

  • The ‘command by negation’ model for air defence is tailored for situations where battlefield transparency is high with all systems operational. With known problems in critical systems like IFF and Datalinks, tighter procedural control would need to be established, which was not done in this case. Essentially, this aspect points out that it is only through centralised control that the presence or absence of required networking standards can be established and the extent of autonomy/local-control orders be furnished to lower echelons.

  • The aftermath of this mishap caused a sharp reduction in flight operations, restrictive revisions of IAMD procedures and revaluation of equipment. Fratricide can cause a drastic loss in operational efficiency by degrading confidence and morale of operators. During active combat operations, this can be detrimental and may provide the adversary with a lucrative window to exploit.

Conclusion

At a time when Air Defence is the talk of the town in our country, it is essential to remain aligned to time-tested doctrinal precepts. All procedures, as far as Air Defence is concerned, are written in blood, and the two cases discussed in this paper are only a fraction of many such incidents.  Since the early 1990s, when the range of both air-air and surface-to-air systems increased drastically, the fusing of airspace management, air defence and air battle management functions has remained a core doctrinal precept, and these incidents only highlight the cost of deviation. Lastly, consistency and uniformity of training are one of the key aspects to avoid fratricide. With increasing ranges, SAM systems form a core component of the overall air battle and the line between offensive operations and defensive operations is blurred. Crews need to be trained in this environment with a wider tactical-operational canvas to get exposed to complex situations, debrief them thoroughly and apply these lessons to actual operations.

*****

CLICK TO VIEW THE PDF

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Centre for Aerospace Power and Strategic Studies [CAPSS])

 Notes:-

[1]  Victoria Samson, “The Patriot/Tornado Fratricide: It Could Happen Again,” Center for Defence Information, June 14, 2004, https://peters-ada.de/fratricide.pdf. Accessed on August 10, 2026.

[2] Oren Liebermann, “Two US Navy Pilots Eject Safely over Red Sea after Fighter Jet Shot down in Apparent Friendly Fire Incident,” CNN, December 22, 2024, https://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/21/politics/us-fighter-jet-shot-down-red-sea. Accessed on August 10, 2026.

[3] Merve Berker, “US Navy Intercepts Houthi-Launched Missiles in Gulf of Aden,” Anadolu Ajansı, December 02, 2024, https://www.aa.com.tr/en/africa/us-navy-intercepts-houthi-launched-missiles-in-gulf-of-aden/3410779#. Accessed on August 10, 2026.

[4]  Dushyant Singh, “Drone-Age Warfare: Why Indian Army Must Command the Air Littoral Battlespace,” Firstpost, December 10, 2025, https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/drone-age-warfare-why-indian-army-must-command-the-air-littoral-battlespace-13958553.html. Accessed on August 10, 2026.

The post Anatomy of a Fratricide appeared first on CAPSS India.

The post Nuclear Security Vol 20, No 20 appeared first on CAPSS India.

The post Nuclear Security Vol 20, No 19 appeared first on CAPSS India.

Keywords: Operation Safer Sagar, Operation Sindoor, Operation Bandar, Kargil War, Indian Air Force

The character of aerial bombing has changed more in the past decade than in the preceding three decades, and precision has been the constant thread running through that change. The United States of America (USA) and Israel remain at the frontier of this evolution, increasingly fusing space-based cueing, cyber disruption, electronic warfare (EW), and artificial intelligence (AI) into the targeting cycle itself rather than treating them as separate enablers of a strike, a fusion visible in how quickly recent Israeli campaigns have moved from decision to precision effect against dispersed, defended target sets. India’s own tryst with precision bombing began considerably more modestly, in the high Himalayas in the summer of 1999, and has advanced in fits and starts ever since, shaped as much by sanctions and improvisation as by deliberate long-term planning. Tracing that arc from Operation Safed Sagar to Operation Sindoor offers a useful lens on both how far the Indian Air Force (IAF) has come and how much distance remains to the frontier that Washington and Tel Aviv currently occupy.

Operation Safed Sagar: Precision Born of Necessity

Operation Safed Sagar was the Indian Air Force’s codename for its air operations in support of Operation Vijay during the 1999 Kargil War, the first large-scale employment of air power in the Kashmir theatre since the 1971 India-Pakistan War.[1] Its standout feature was not that precision bombing was planned for, but that it was improvised under fire. The IAF crews found themselves fighting at altitudes of 16,000 to 18,000 feet, where thinner air meant that bombs released using sea-level ballistic tables consistently overshot their targets, and where Pakistani infiltrators, dug in on the high ground, could bring man-portable Stinger missiles to bear on aircraft that were, unusually, flying below the enemy’s firing positions rather than above them.[2] This can reasonably be called the genuine start of precision bombing in Indian military aviation, rather than merely accurate bombing, because it was here that the IAF first integrated laser designation and satellite-aided targeting into a live campaign. India had purchased Paveway-series laser-guided bomb kits and Litening targeting pods, but the US sanctions following India’s 1998 nuclear tests had left the integration with the Mirage 2000’s 1985-vintage mission software incomplete; the IAF, with Israeli technical assistance, completed the integration in a reported twelve days once the war began.[3]

The operational payoff came at Muntho Dhalo and Tiger Hill. A single strike by four Mirage 2000s, each dropping six 250-kilogram bombs, destroyed a major supply dump and is credited with breaking the momentum of the Pakistani defence far more decisively than the more widely publicised Tiger Hill footage.[4] By early June the IAF had flown over 1,200 strike sorties, and the campaign is judged to have shortened the war by roughly three weeks.[5] The psychological effect was equally significant: an Indian Army message to the Air Headquarters at the time credited the Mirage strikes with breaking enemy command and control so thoroughly that troops “literally walked over the entire Tiger Hills area,”[6] a rare instance of an army field formation crediting air power directly for an infantry advance.

From Muntho Dhalo to Muridke: The Growth Chart

Precision bombing did not resurface as a headline capability for two decades, but it did not stand still either. The next major milestone came on February 26, 2019, when twelve IAF Mirage 2000s struck a Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) training camp at Balakot in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, in retaliation for the Pulwama attack, under the codename Operation Bandar.[7] While Op Safed Sagar relied on hastily integrated laser-guided bombs, Balakot employed Israeli-made SPICE-2000 precision munitions, pre-fed with Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates and using electro-optical terminal guidance, reportedly achieving an error margin of under three metres against targets fifty to sixty kilometres from the release point.[8] It also marked the first time since 1971 that the IAF had struck a target inside Pakistan’s mainland rather than Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), [9] a qualitative escalation in both reach and political signalling that Op Safed Sagar had not attempted.[10]

Operation Sindoor in May 2025 represents the next, and by far the largest, leap. Where Op Bandar was a single-target strike by one aircraft type, Op Sindoor saw the IAF strike nine locations, including the Jaish-e-Mohammed  (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) headquarters at Bahawalpur and Muridke, using a coordinated mix of BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles fired from Su-30MKIs, French-origin SCALP-EG cruise missiles and HAMMER precision-guided bombs delivered by Rafale fighters.[11] Nineteen BrahMos and nineteen SCALP missiles were reportedly employed in a single coordinated stand-off strike, marking BrahMos’s first use in actual combat after two decades in service and SCALP-EG’s combat debut in a state-on-state engagement.[12] The growth from Muntho Dhalo to Muridke, in these terms, is a growth from manually retrofitted gravity bombs to imported precision-guided munitions on a single platform, to a networked, multi-platform, multi-missile stand-off strike package capable of hitting targets roughly 150 kilometres inside Pakistan’s territory with, by the IAF’s own account, negligible collateral damage.[13]

The Platforms Behind the Progress

Each leap in precision has ridden on a corresponding leap in aerial platforms. The Mirage 2000 carried Indian precision bombing through both Op Safed Sagar and Op Bandar, and remains in many respects the IAF’s most combat-proven precision strike aircraft. Op Sindoor, by contrast, showcased the Su-30MKI as a heavy stand-off missile carrier and the Rafale, inducted from 2021, as a genuinely multi-role precision platform integrating French-origin munitions unavailable to earlier IAF fighters.[14] The shift also reflects a broader doctrinal change: where Op Safed Sagar and even the operation in Balakot required aircraft to approach relatively close to their targets, Op Sindoor’s cruise missiles allowed strike aircraft to remain within Indian airspace throughout, trading platform risk for munition sophistication.

Building an Indigenous Precision Arsenal

India’s growing awareness of its continued reliance on imported precision munitions- SPICE-2000, SCALP-EG and HAMMER- all of foreign origin, has driven a parallel indigenous effort. The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO)’s Smart Anti-Airfield Weapon, a 125-kilogram precision glide bomb with a range of roughly 100 kilometres, was employed operationally for the first time during Operation Sindoor against Pakistani airfields, and a satellite-guided variant is now being processed for wider fleet integration.[15] In April 2025, DRDO also completed release trials of the 1,000-kilogram-class Gaurav long-range glide bomb from a Su-30MKI, achieving close to 100 kilometres of range with reported pinpoint accuracy.[16] A jet-powered variant of the Smart Anti-Airfield Weapon (SAAW), under development since 2025, is intended to extend its range beyond 200 kilometres by converting it from a gravity-assisted glide munition into a self-propelled weapon, positioning it as an affordable complement to BrahMos rather than a replacement for it.[17] These programmes, alongside the Rudram family of anti-radiation missiles, mark a deliberate move from assembling imported precision kits toward owning the underlying guidance and propulsion technology. However, the gap between a successful trial and full squadron-level integration has historically stretched over several years for comparable Indian systems, a lag the IAF is now trying to compress.

The Distance That Remains

Set against the American and Israeli frontier, where precision strike is now routinely fused with pre-positioned intelligence assets, satellite cueing, cyber disruption of enemy command networks, and AI-assisted sensor fusion to compress the time between decision and impact to a matter of hours across an entire enemy air defence network, India’s progress from Muntho Dhalo to Muridke, though genuine, remains an evolution in munitions and platforms rather than in the full targeting ecosystem around them. Indigenous glide bombs and cruise missiles address the hardware gap; closing the gap in space-based cueing, offensive cyber integration, and AI-driven target prioritisation is the harder, and still largely unfinished, task ahead.

*****

CLICK TO VIEW THE PDF

 (Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Centre for Aerospace Power and Strategic Studies [CAPSS])

Notes:-

[1]“Remembering Operation Safed Sagar: When Indian Air Force Helped Indian Army to End Pakistan’s Kargil Ambitions,” The Week, May 26, 2025, https://www.theweek.in/news/defence/2025/05/26/remembering-operation-safed-sagar-when-indian-air-force-helped-indian-army-to-end-pakistans-kargil-ambitions.html. Accessed on July 25, 2026.

[2]Connor Kerr, “The Air War Fought at 18,000 Feet,” MigFlug, July 20, 2026, https://migflug.com/jetflights/kargil-1999-operation-safed-sagar-mirage-2000-high-altitude-air-war/. Accessed on July 25, 2026.

[3]Ajay Banerjee, “Hurriedly Configured Bombs Changed Course of Kargil War,” The Tribune, June 24, 2019, https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/archive/nation/hurriedly-configured-bombs-changed-course-of-kargil-war-792484. Accessed on July 25, 2026.

[4]Vishal Thapar, “The Man Who Bombed Tiger Hill Tells Us How the War Was Won from the Air,” SP’s Aviation, July 2019, https://www.sps-aviation.com/story/?id=2586&h=The-Man-Who-Bombed-Tiger-Hill-Tells-Us-How-the-War-Was-Won-from-the-Air. Accessed on July 25, 2026.

[5]Anshika Saxsena, “Operation Safed Sagar: The Untold Story of the Sky Warriors of Kargil,” The Unknown India, February 24, 2026, https://theunknownindia.com/operation-safed-sagar/. Accessed on July 25, 2026.

[6]The Week, n. 1.

[7]“Operation Bandar: IAF’s Code Name for Balakot Airstrike,” GK Today, November 2020, https://www.gktoday.in/operation-bandar-iafs-code-balakot-airstrike/. Accessed on July 25, 2026.

[8]“India Reportedly Used Israeli GPS-Guided Bombs in Air Raid on Jaish-e-Mohammed,” GlobalSecurity.org, March 03, 2019, https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/india/2019/india-190303-sputnik01.htm. Accessed on July 25, 2026.

[9]“Planning of Operation Bandar and Executing the Balakot Strike,” Defence Direct Education, February 26, 2021,  https://defencedirecteducation.com/2021/02/26/planning-of-operation-bandar-and-executing-the-balakot-strike/. Accessed on July 25, 2026.

[10] Rustam, “IAF’s Balakot Airstrikes: How ‘Operation Bandar’ Surprised Pakistan,” WION, February 26, 2021, https://www.wionews.com/photos/iafs-balakot-airstrikes-how-operation-bandar-surprised-pakistan-366360. Accessed on July 25, 2026.

[11]“Operation Sindoor: IAF Fired BrahMos from Sukhoi-30s and Scalp Missiles from Rafale Jets at Pak Targets,” The Week, December 24, 2025, https://www.theweek.in/news/defence/2025/12/24/operation-sindoor-iaf-fired-brah-mos-from-sukhoi-30s-and-scalp-missiles-from-rafale-jets-at-pak-targets.html. Accessed on July 25, 2026.

[12]“Debris from Indian Missile and Drone Strikes in Operation Sindoor Sparks Interest Among China and Global Partners,” Indian Defence Research Wing, June 20, 2025, https://idrw.org/debris-from-indian-missile-and-drone-strikes-in-operation-sindoor-sparks-interest-among-china-and-global-partners-us-defence-analyst/. Accessed on July 25, 2026.

[13]Vijay Mohan, “Operation Sindoor: How India Used SCALP and HAMMER Weapons to Pound Pakistani Terror Camps,” The Tribune, May 07, 2025, https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/defence/operation-sindoor-how-india-used-scalp-and-hammer-weapons-to-pound-pakistani-terror-camps. Accessed on July 25, 2026.

[14]The Week, n. 11.

[15] Press Information Bureau, Government of India, “DRDO Conducts Successful Release Trials of Long-Range Glide Bomb ‘Gaurav’ from Su-30 MKI Aircraft,” April 11, 2025, https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=2120989&reg=48&lang=2. Accessed on July 25, 2026.

[16]“India’s New Gaurav Glide Bomb Dropped from a Su-30MKI Fighter Confirms Long-Range Strike Capabilities,” Army Recognition, April 14, 2025, https://www.armyrecognition.com/news/aerospace-news/2025/indias-new-gaurav-glide-bomb-dropped-from-a-su-30mki-fighter-confirms-long-range-strike-capabilities. Accessed on July 25, 2026.

[17] Raunak Kunde, “DRDO’s Jet Powered SAAW set to double range to 200+km, enhancing IAF’s precision strike capability,” Indian Defence Research Wing,) July 30, 2025, https://idrw.org/drdos-jet-powered-saaw-set-to-double-range-to-200-km-enhancing-iafs-precision-strike-capability/. Accessed on July 25, 2026.

The post From Tiger Hill to Muridke: The Evolution of Precision Bombing in the Indian Air Force appeared first on CAPSS India.

Keywords: Kaveri, GEF404, Tejas, Journalism, Accountability

Recent commentary by a retired senior Indian Navy (IN) officer, Vice Admiral Raman Puri, on Chakranewz’s The Sandeep Unnithan Show created an unnecessary kerfuffle in the Indian strategic community. The podcast was released under a provocative title— ‘Who Killed the Kaveri Jet Engine’—and went on to suggest that it was an Indian Air Force (IAF)-led committee headed by an Air Marshal. The podcast has revived debate over historical choices in India’s Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas programme, with the outrageous allegation causing justified consternation in the air force community.

While Admiral Puri’s broader concerns about sustained funding for indigenous engine development deserve serious attention, specific claims attributing the selection of the General Electric (GE) F404 over the Eurojet EJ200, and the effective sidelining of Kaveri, to an IAF-led committee headed by an Air Marshal require scrutiny against the public record. These assertions lack supporting evidence and risk misrepresenting institutional roles, organisational responsibilities and attendant timelines.

The decision to employ the General Electric F404 family for Tejas was neither sudden nor the product of a late-stage committee intervention. Collaboration between the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) and GE on the F404 dates to the 1980s, when the engine was chosen as the interim powerplant for technology demonstrators and prototypes while the indigenous Kaveri programme (sanctioned by the Cabinet Committee on Security in 1989) proceeded in parallel. Ten F404-F2J3 engines powered the early aircraft. By 2003–2004, with Kaveri still facing technical challenges, including turbine blade issues, which led to unsuccessful high-altitude trials in Russia in mid-2004, ADA awarded GE a contract for 17 uprated F404-GE-IN20 engines for Limited Series Production (LSP) aircraft and naval prototypes. The Ministry of Defence subsequently ordered additional units in 2005 for the first production aircraft. These decisions were made by the leadership in ADA, in consultation with the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). These steps were driven by programme timelines and the need for sustained progress of the project. The IAF was consulted as a stakeholder and not a veto-holding partner. Official accounts from GE Aerospace and programme histories confirm the 2004 selection of the IN20 variant specifically for Tejas requirements.

The formal delinking of Kaveri from the Tejas production programme occurred in September 2008. The primary reasons were a shortfall in weight and thrust targets. By then, the engine had not achieved the minimum required thrust of 80 kN (wet). The announcement made clear that an in-production powerplant would be used for Tejas while the Gas Turbine Research Establishment (GTRE) would continue Kaveri development for other applications. This was a government-level programme decision involving DRDO, ADA, and the Ministry of Defence, consistent with earlier assessments (including a 2004 Cabinet Committee on Security judgement that Kaveri would not be available for LCA before 2012). It was not a sudden “pulling of the plug” by any single service. Subsequent statements by successive Defence Ministers and DRDO leadership have reiterated the technical shortfalls and the reorientation toward derivative applications such as the Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle (UCAV), Ghatak.

Importantly, there appears to be no publicly available official record: press releases, parliamentary replies, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) reports, or Ministry of Defence documentation, indicating an IAF Air Marshal-headed committee that selected the GE F404 as the sole powerplant and terminated Kaveri funding. Defence procurement and indigenous development programmes operate under the Ministry of Defence, with ADA (under DRDO) as the design agency and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) as the production agency. The IAF, as the user service, defines operational requirements, participates in evaluations, and provides feedback, but it does not possess unilateral authority to terminate or reconfigure major DRDO-led technology programmes. Claims that an IAF-led body made such a decisive choice therefore place an institutional responsibility on the Air Force that the established decision-making architecture does not support. In the absence of primary evidence or contemporaneous official statements, these assertions remain unsubstantiated. Responsible public discourse on national security matters benefits from claims supported by evidence rather than retrospective attribution.

The framing of the discussion itself warrants comment. Headlines such as “Who Killed the Kaveri Jet Engine” are effective at generating attention. Yet, they risk simplifying a multi-decade technical and organisational challenge into a narrative of deliberate sabotage or institutional obstruction. Journalistic standards ordinarily include seeking contemporaneous records and offering the institutions or individuals implicated an opportunity to respond before publication. When complex programme histories are reduced to dramatic attributions without accompanying primary sources, the public conversation suffers. A more measured approach-anchored in the documented sequence of contracts, test results, and government decisions would better serve the shared interest in strengthening India’s aerospace capabilities.

Finally, the suggestion that the Indian Air Force has been anything less than invested in the success of Tejas and related indigenous efforts does not align with the operational reality. It is IAF aircrew who will fly these aircraft into harm’s way, under some of the most demanding conditions. Success of the mission and the safety of the crew reside at the heart of the air force. Successive Air Chiefs have pressed for timely delivery and performance while engaging constructively with ADA, HAL, and DRDO. Historical records note IAF engineers working alongside GTRE and ADA on integration challenges. More recently, the Service has supported testing infrastructure and provided operational feedback as Kaveri derivatives advance and as Tejas Mk1A induction proceeds despite engine supply constraints. This engagement is not political theatre; it reflects the fundamental responsibility of ensuring that the men and women who operate these platforms have the most capable, reliable, and sustainable systems possible. Indigenous capability remains the long-term objective precisely because operational sovereignty matters to those who fly the missions.

India’s aero-engine journey has been marked by genuine technical hurdles, funding constraints relative to global peers, and the inevitable tensions between programme schedules and self-reliance goals. Acknowledging those realities honestly, while insisting on evidence for specific institutional claims, is the most constructive path forward. The Kaveri programme continues in derivative form, high-thrust efforts are under discussion, and Tejas itself remains a hard-won achievement. Progress will be best served by rigorous documentation, sustained investment, and collaborative focus rather than slanderous attribution of motive or authority.

*****

CLICK TO VIEW THE PDF

 (Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Centre for Aerospace Power and Strategic Studies [CAPSS])

The post Research, not Rage: Path to Journalistic Integrity appeared first on CAPSS India.

The post Nuclear Security Vol 20, No 18 appeared first on CAPSS India.

The post Nuclear Security Vol 20, No 17 appeared first on CAPSS India.

About this Paper

This Policy Paper presents new thinking and concrete recommendations on the strategic, doctrinal, and force-structure challenges confronting the Indian Air Force in the wake of Operation Sindoor (May 2025). It is written for policymakers, parliamentarians and their staff, defence industry leaders, the strategic-studies community, journalists, and the informed Indian public.

The paper makes three core arguments. First, the classical model of airpower — gain superiority, suppress defences, dictate terms — no longer holds against any capable and near peer adversary, including in the Indo-Pacific. What has replaced it is the Zone of Ambiguity: a contested space in which neither side can win the sky outright, but both can deny it, and in which political and informational uncertainty are as decisive as kinetic outcomes. Second, despite this, airpower remains the single most effective instrument of statecraft and power projection available to a nation — a point Operation Sindoor itself reaffirmed. The question is not whether airpower matters, but how to wield it in a denial-dominant environment. Third, given India’s structural and persistent shortfall in manned squadron strength, the only credible path to operational mass over the next decade runs through unmanned systems at scale — Collaborative Combat Aircraft, UCAVs, swarms, one way attack (OWA) drones and loitering munitions, and Manned–Unmanned Teaming–based effects. This wave is breaking globally right now. India must catch it in time, not after.

Executive Summary

For decades, airpower has been the reset button of modern statecraft. Bekaa Valley 1982. Desert Storm 1991. Kosovo 1999. The recent Israel-US campaign over Iran. A clean method — gain air superiority, suppress defences, dictate terms. That button no longer works as it once did — and yet airpower remains the single most effective tool of national power available to any modern state, including India. Operation Sindoor proved both propositions in the space of eighty-eight hours.

Three campaigns in five years — Nagorno-Karabakh, Ukraine, and India’s own Operation Sindoor in May 2025 — have demonstrated that classical air superiority is no longer achievable against any capable adversary. What replaces it is the Zone of Ambiguity: a contested space in which neither side owns the sky, but both can deny it to the other, and in which political and informational uncertainty are as decisive as kinetic outcomes.

The Zone has three faces. Politically, adversaries cultivate strategic uncertainty — China through salami-slicing along the LAC, Pakistan through hybrid war and proxy terrorism — to constrain India’s response options. Operationally, dense BVR envelopes, layered air-defence networks, and networked kill webs make manned penetration costly and uncertain. Informationally, global narratives of conflict outcomes are now contested in the first 72 hours, shaping strategic perception independently of battlefield reality.

Yet Op Sindoor — 88 hours, Indian strikes eliminating terror infrastructure, Pakistan’s anti-air counter attack, an Indian S-400 reaching out 300 kilometres to kill a PAF AEW&C platform, BrahMos missiles cratering five Pakistani airbases, destruction of PAF C4I centres and aircraft on ground, Pakistan requesting ceasefire on the morning of 10 May — reaffirms that airpower remains uniquely capable of delivering strategic effects rapidly, precisely, and reversibly. No other instrument of national power could have produced that outcome in that timeframe with that level of escalation control. The Zone of Ambiguity changes how airpower works. It does not change the fact that airpower works.

But the next conflict will be harder. The IAF is at 29–31 squadrons against an authorised 42. Tejas Mk1A is dribbling out of HAL. AMCA will not enter service before the mid-2030s. The PLAAF is heading toward a thousand J-20s by 2030. Pakistan has ordered Chinese J-35As. India cannot solve this gap with manned platforms alone on any realistic procurement timeline.

The only credible answer is mass through autonomy — Collaborative Combat Aircraft, attritable UCAVs, drone swarms, loitering munitions, and Manned–Unmanned Teaming, ingested at industrial scale and woven into doctrine. This wave is breaking globally right now: the USAF’s CCA Increment 1 has selected airframes flying in 2025–26; the UK-Italy-Japan GCAP programme has CCA wingmen baked into its architecture; the PLAAF has the GJ-11 Sharp Sword operational and J-20 manned-unmanned teaming in active development. This is the moment for India to enter the wave, not the moment to study it.

E I G H T   F I N D I N G S

This paper makes ten specific recommendations spanning doctrine, force structure, industrial policy, and strategic communications (Section VIII). Taken together, they describe a transition from an IAF organised around platforms to an IAF organised around ecosystems — networked, distributed, partially autonomous, and built to fight from mutual denial rather than assumed superiority.

Airpower remains the most effective instrument of statecraft a modern nation possesses. The Zone of Ambiguity does not contradict this — it makes the case for getting airpower right in a more urgent manner.

1.  The Long Shot

Somewhere over central Pakistan, in the early hours of 9 May 2025, a Pakistan Air Force Erieye airborne early warning platform was orbiting in what its crew believed was sanctuary. They were operating deep inside their own airspace, well behind their air-defence umbrella at over two hundred and fifty kilometres from the International Boundary (IB), doing what AEW&C aircraft do — looking east, painting the picture, feeding the kill chain that had given the PAF the tactical edge in the early hours of 7 May 2025, now degraded post the Indian Air Force Harop / Harpy SEAD strikes on 8 May 2025.

What the crew did not know was that an Indian S-400 battery had moved into ambush position near the western border. Silent. Patient. Waiting.

The engagement, when it came, was at roughly three hundred kilometres. By the IAF’s own subsequent acknowledgement, it was the longest recorded surface-to-air kill in combat history. That single shot did more than destroy an airframe. It redrew the entire Pakistani air picture. Within hours, surviving PAF radars across the western theatre were switching off voluntarily, expecting the next wave of Indian SEAD campaign. With the AEW&C eyes blinded and the ground-based eyes blinking out, the PAF lost the ability to repeat the coordinated, network-cued operations that had given it tactical success on the opening night, or for that matter mount any manner of effective Defensive Counter Air (DCA) in the air. This was the defining event of the war, beyond which the PAF was confined strictly to the bunker; the road now open for India’s 10 May strike package — BrahMos, SCALP-EG, Crystal Maze, Rampage — to roll across Sargodha, Nur Khan, Jacobabad, and Bholari, where another BrahMos would find an Erieye in its hangar.

One shot. Three hundred kilometres. And the air war turned.

But here is what matters: that shot was the easy part. It was kinetic. It was decisive. It was clean.

The hard part — the part this paper is about — was everything that happened in the seventy-two hours before that shot, and everything that has been happening for five years before this campaign. It is the murky, ambiguous, politically-constrained, information-contested space in which the Indian Air Force now operates. It is the space in which a kinetic victory in the second 48 hours can be drowned out by an information bias in the first 24. It is the space in which the next conflict will be fought.

This is the Zone of Ambiguity. It is not a place on a map. It is the operational, political, and informational space where nothing is clear, nothing is settled, and nothing is decisive — and where India must now fly, fight, and signal intent without breaking the world.

And yet — and this is the part that matters most — airpower delivered the strategic outcome at Sindoor. It was the IAF’s stand-off precision strikes, its long-range air defences, and its credible escalation control that forced Islamabad to request a ceasefire on the morning of 10 May. No other instrument of Indian state power could have produced that result in that timeframe, with that level of calibration. The Zone of Ambiguity does not diminish airpower. It raises the cost of getting airpower wrong.

This paper proceeds in three movements. First, it defines the Zone of Ambiguity rigorously across its three faces. Second, it draws the operational lessons of Sindoor and the broader pattern visible across Nagorno-Karabakh and Ukraine, mapping these onto India’s specific two-front problem. Third, it lays out a ten-point programme of doctrinal, force-structure, industrial, and informational reforms — with particular emphasis on unmanned systems at scale as the functional answer to India’s structural squadron gap.

2.  Defining the Zone of Ambiguity

The phrase has been used loosely. Let me be precise. The Zone of Ambiguity has three faces, and you cannot understand one without the other two

Face One — The Political Zone: Indecision as Strategy

The first face is political. It is the deliberate cultivation of strategic uncertainty by an adversary who knows India’s response options are constrained by the nuclear threshold above, the political cycle below, and an international audience all around.

China practises this through salami-slicing. A Chinese patrol pushes ten kilometres south of where it was yesterday. A road is built that wasn’t there last year. A tent appears, then a structure, then a permanent post. No single act crosses a threshold. The cumulative act redraws the map. Eastern Ladakh in 2020 was occupied by ambiguity.

Pakistan practises it through hybrid war. A terror attack in Pahalgam kills twenty-six civilians. Is it state action? Non-state action? State-tolerated non-state action? The label changes the response. The ambiguity is the strategy.

In this face of the Zone, the adversary wins by making you choose badly. React too hard, and you escalate to a war you didn’t want. React too softly, and you cede sovereignty, signal weakness, and invite the next slice. The Zone is where reasonable people inside your own government disagree about what just happened — and by the time they agree, the news cycle has moved on.

Balakot 2019 was India’s first serious answer to this dilemma. Op Sindoor 2025 was the second. Neither was a war. Both were not peace. Both demonstrated that airpower — specifically, calibrated stand-off air strikes — is the instrument best suited to operating in this face of the Zone, because it can deliver effects rapidly, precisely, at scale, and with reversibility built in.

Face Two — The Operational Zone: Contested Airspace Without Air Superiority

The second face is what airmen mean when they say “Zone of Ambiguity.” It is the physical airspace where neither side can establish air superiority — but both can deny it to the other.

For most of the post-Cold-War period, airpower theorists drew a clean diagram: phase one was counter-air, phase two was air interdiction, phase three was close air support. Each phase assumed the one before. The Bekaa Valley in 1982 fit this. Desert Storm in 1991 fit this. Even Kosovo in 1999 fit this, and the Israel-US air campaign over Iran eventually.

Nagorno-Karabakh 2020 did not fit. Ukraine 2022–present does not fit. Op Sindoor 2025 did not fit.

In the contested operational Zone, BVR missile envelopes overlap from both sides of the line. Long-range SAMs reach across borders. Sensors are everywhere — satellites, AEW&C, ground-based radars on the Tibetan plateau looking 500 kilometres into India. Networks fuse them. The result is an airspace in which manned penetration is possible only at the price of attrition you cannot easily replace.

Russia’s VKS has, for three years, been largely confined to lobbing glide-bombs from inside its own airspace because Ukrainian denial is too thick to penetrate. Russia has not lost air superiority — it never had it. Neither does Ukraine. Both deny it to the other. This is the future. Sindoor confirmed India is already in it.

Face Three — The Informational Zone: The First 72 Hours

The third face is newer and, in some ways, the most dangerous. It is the informational ambiguity that surrounds every modern operation.

Within hours of the opening engagements of Sindoor on 7 May 2025, Pakistani official channels were claiming multiple IAF aircraft shot down. Recycled images from older, unrelated incidents were circulating globally, labelled as Op Sindoor losses. International press went ballistic in repeating the claims without verification. The Indian government, working from a doctrine of operational silence, did not respond at speed. By the time the IAF demonstrated air superiority on 9/10 May — the 300-kilometre S-400 kill, the Bholari hangar strike, the cratering of Sargodha, the rollback of Pakistani air defences — the global narrative had already calcified around Pakistan’s opening-night version of events.

The kinetic war was won by India. The first 72 hours of the information war were lost.

 Why the Three Faces Are Coupled

The analytical bite of this framework is that the three faces are not independent. They are coupled — and the coupling is what makes the Zone of Ambiguity uniquely difficult.

An adversary exploits political ambiguity to create the operational space for a strike. It exploits operational ambiguity by deploying systems whose published catalogue specifications understate their actual capabilities. And it exploits informational ambiguity by saturating the global news cycle with contested claims before kinetic facts are established.

India’s response must therefore also be three-faced. A purely kinetic response wins the operational face but loses the political and informational faces. A purely communicative response wins the informational face but cedes the operational and political. The strategic skill is orchestrating across all three simultaneously — which is institutionally hard, because the three faces sit in three different parts of the Government of India: the CCS, the IAF and integrated commands, and a Strategic Communications function that does not yet exist in mature form.

This paper’s recommendations address all three.

3.  Airpower’s Enduring Primacy

It would be easy to read the previous section as a counsel of despair — if neither side can win the sky, perhaps the sky no longer matters. That reading would be wrong. Airpower remains the single most effective instrument of statecraft and power projection available to any modern nation, and the case is in some ways stronger today than it was in the era of clean air superiority. The Zone of Ambiguity changes how airpower works. It does not diminish what airpower uniquely does.

What Airpower Uniquely Does

Stripped to its essentials, airpower delivers five effects that no other military instrument can match — and all five were on display during Operation Sindoor.

(a)        S P E E D   O F   E F F E C T:     An airpower-led campaign delivers strategic effect in hours. Ground operations take days to weeks. Naval operations take days. Diplomatic and economic instruments take weeks to months, sometimes years. The decision to launch Op Sindoor was taken in the days after Pahalgam; the first strikes hit targets hundreds of kilometres in depth from launch points on the night of 7 May. No other instrument operates on that clock.

(b)       P R E C I S I O N   A N D   C A L I B R A T I O N:    Modern stand-off weapons — BrahMos, SCALP-EG, Crystal Maze 2, Rampage, Spice 2000, and a growing inventory of loitering munitions — allow targeting at metre-level accuracy from hundreds of kilometres away. This is what makes airpower the instrument of choice for operations in the political face of the Zone: the ability to put a precise effect on a precise target sends a precise message. A salvo against a terrorist training camp says one thing. A salvo against a military airbase says another. The choice of target is the message.

( c)       R E V E R S I B I L I T Y   A N D   E S C A L A T I O N   C O N T R O L:         An air strike can be halted at any moment. A ground assault, once committed, has its own momentum and cost-of-disengagement. Airpower is therefore uniquely suited to graduated coercion — the central requirement for operating in a nuclear-armed subcontinent. Op Sindoor’s 88-hour escalation curve, from terror-camp strikes on Day 1 to airbase strikes on Day 4, was choreographed almost entirely by air assets. Each rung gave Islamabad a decision point: escalate further, or de-escalate. The choreography is what made the ceasefire possible.

(d)        R E A C H   A C R O S S   T H E   C O N T I N E N T:         From bases inside India, the IAF holds at risk every target on the subcontinent and substantial portions of the Tibetan plateau. No other Indian instrument has that reach. Sindoor’s strikes hit Bahawalpur, Muridke, Muzaffarabad, Sargodha, Nur Khan, Jacobabad, Bholari and Rahim Yar Khan — a target set spanning the length of Pakistan. The same launch profiles, redirected northward, would hold at risk targets across the breadth of southern Tibet.

(e)       S T R A T E G I C   S I G N A L L I N G: Perhaps most importantly in the Zone of Ambiguity: the demonstrated capability to project airpower is itself a strategic instrument, independent of any actual use. The presence of S-400 squadrons, the existence of BrahMos inventory, the visibility of Rafale and Su-30MKI sorties, the publication of AMCA programme milestones — these shape adversary calculation continuously, not only during crises. Airpower deters and signals before it strikes.

The Implication: Get Airpower Right

If airpower remains the most effective instrument India possesses, then getting airpower right in the Zone of Ambiguity is not one priority among many. It is the priority. Every doctrinal, technological, industrial, and informational decision the IAF takes over the next decade will compound — either toward an air force capable of operating effectively under denial, or toward one that finds itself unable to deliver the strategic effects its political leaders will continue to demand.

The remaining sections of this paper describe what “getting it right” requires.

4.  The Geography of Denial

No country in the world faces a two-front strategic problem like India’s. To the north, a technologically advanced competitor with continental reach and a thousand-strong fifth-generation fleet projected by 2030. To the west, a nuclear-armed adversary increasingly integrated into Chinese kill chains. To the south, an Indian Ocean that is no longer an Indian preserve. Geography is destiny — but only if doctrine and force structure refuse to read the map.

The Northern Front: The Tibetan Air-Defence Belt

Along the LAC, the PLA has constructed an air-defence and offensive-strike complex that reaches 300–500 kilometres into Indian airspace from a series of upgraded airbases on the Tibetan plateau. Hotan, Ngari Gunsa, Shigatse, and Lhasa Gonggar host HQ-9B and HQ-22 long-range SAM batteries, with second-echelon S-3/400-class systems providing depth. J-10 & J-15/16 multirole fighters, J-20 stealth fighters, and KJ-500 airborne early warning aircraft operate from these bases under permanent IADS protection.

The PLAAF currently fields approximately 300 J-20s across at least thirteen regiments. RUSI projects the fleet at approximately 1,000 J-20s by 2030 — larger than the entire combined Western fifth-generation inventory. Two sixth-generation prototypes (J-36 and J-50) have flown. The GJ-11 Sharp Sword stealth UCAV is operational. The PL-15 family of long-range air-to-air missiles is mature, with the PL-16 enabling six-missile internal carriage on J-20 and the PL-17 (400-km class) designed explicitly to kill AEW&C and tankers from beyond escort range.

The Western Front: The Chinese-Pattern Threat Through a Pakistani Interface

What used to be a clean India-versus-Pakistan calculus is now something more complex. Pakistan is increasingly an extension of Chinese military power on India’s western flank — not in the sense of formal alliance, but in the sense of integrated weapons, doctrine, sensor architectures, and crisis behaviour. The visible inventory tells the story:

• • 30–40 J-35A stealth fighters ordered from China, with first deliveries expected from 2026–27 and PAF pilot training already under way at Hotan

  • J-10CE multirole fighter squadrons combat-proven during Sindoor

  • PL-15 / PL-15E long-range BVR missiles in active inventory, with reported performance exceeding publicly advertised export specifications

  • HQ-9BE long-range SAMs protecting Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad

  • Saab 2000 Erieye AEW&C providing networked sensor coverage to Chinese assets (Link 17) — the platform type lost on the ground at Bholari and in the air to the 300-km S-400 engagement

  • Reported real-time Chinese ISR feeds during Sindoor (per public statements by the Indian Deputy Army Chief), effectively giving PAF access to PLA-grade space-based and OTH-radar coverage.

The geopolitical reality is unavoidable: India did not fight just Pakistan in May 2025. India fought a Chinese-pattern force, operated by a Pakistani crew, on Pakistani territory. The next encounter — whether with Pakistan again, or directly with the PLAAF along the LAC, or in a two-front contingency — will be against a more confident, more networked, more capable version of the same architecture.

The Maritime Flank

To the south, the Indian Ocean is no longer an Indian preserve. Chinese naval presence in the IOR has grown steadily through the 2020s. Pakistani acquisition of Type 054 frigates and Yuan-class submarines closes the loop. Chinese UCAV exports to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt — and Turkish UCAV transfers to Pakistan — broaden the threat envelope across India’s western maritime approaches. The IAF’s responsibilities now include maritime strike at extended range, a mission set for which the BrahMos-equipped Su-30MKI and the future Tejas Mk2 are the only available platforms.

The two-front problem, in other words, has become a two-front-plus-maritime problem. The IAF cannot solve all of it simultaneously with manned platforms. This is the structural argument that drives the rest of this paper.

5.  The Kill Web

Two ambushes were attempted during Operation Sindoor. Looking at them together explains everything about how modern air combat actually works.

Ambush One — by the PAF, opening exchanges:    PAF formations executed an “air ambush” geometry from deep inside their own airspace: AEW&C orbiting in sanctuary providing sensor coverage, fighters operating radar-silent under that umbrella, long-range air-to-air missiles fired on offboard cueing and mid-coursed via tactical datalink, terminal acquisition only at the very end. The whole package was Chinese-pattern: Saab 2000 Erieye doing what a KJ-500 does for the PLAAF, J-10CE as the shooter, PL-15 as the missile, Pakistani Link 17 & Chinese XS-3 datalink as the connective tissue. No single Pakistani platform had to expose itself to risk. The kill chain was distributed across multiple nodes, any of which could have been substituted. The geometry gave the PAF opportunities to target IAF assets at over two hundred kilometres.

This is not Pakistan’s air force. This is a Chinese-pattern kill web with a Pakistani interface. Sindoor was the first time the world saw it employed in combat. It is just the beginning.

Ambush Two — by the IAF, forty-eight hours later: An S-400 battery was moved into ambush position close to the western border, deliberately silent. PAF AEW&C orbits at this point were still calibrated against the previously-known S-400 deployment locations and the publicly-cited engagement envelope. The new position changed the geometry. When a PAF AEW&C platform entered the redrawn envelope, the engagement was executed at roughly three hundred kilometres — beyond what Pakistani planners had assessed possible. The longest recorded surface-to-air kill in combat history.

What the Two Ambushes Have in Common

Notice the symmetry. Both ambushes worked the same way:

• • A sensor in sanctuary, well clear of the adversary’s retaliation envelope

  • A shooter that did not have to expose itself to detection until commit

  • A weapon with the legs to cross a large engagement volume

  • A datalink stitching the three together so they functioned as a single system

  • An adversary whose mental model of the engagement envelope was wrong — either because catalogue specifications had been under-classified, or because deployment geometry had been miscalculated, or both

Both sides were operating in the Zone of Ambiguity. Both demonstrated that the kill web has replaced the kill chain as the unit of analysis. And both ambushes shared a single deeper lesson:

Catalogue intelligence is dead. In the Zone of Ambiguity, the side whose intelligence picture is closest to the night’s actual capability holds the initiative. Everything else is a lagging indicator.

Five Operational Principles That Flow from This

If the kill web is the new unit of analysis, five operational principles follow. These are not nice-to-haves. They are how the IAF must fight in the next contingency.

6.  The Numbers Problem

The IAF is currently down to 29–31 active combat squadrons against an authorised strength of 42 — the lowest level since the early 1960s. The MiG-21 Bison fleet retired in September 2025, removing the last three squadrons. Even the most advanced multi-domain strategy fails if there isn’t enough mass to sustain a high-intensity, two-front conflict. And the structural problem is not that India lacks ambition. It is that India’s procurement and industrial timelines cannot close the gap with manned platforms alone — on any realistic schedule.

The Programme Timetable — and Why It Cannot Close the Gap

Here is the honest arithmetic of every major Indian fighter programme:

Add it all up. By 2035 — on optimistic assumptions for every programme above — the IAF reaches perhaps 36 squadrons of manned combat aircraft. Still six squadrons short of authorised. The shortfall is not a procurement crisis that can be fixed by signing one more contract. It is a fact of industrial physics.

The Only Available Answer: Unmanned at Scale

If manned aircraft cannot close the gap, what can? The answer is mass through autonomy — and the economic case is unambiguous.

India has the foundational programmes:

• • HAL CATS Warrior — a stealth UCAV designed to team with a two-seat Tejas as the “mothership,” intended as the first line of offence against heavily defended IADS networks

  • DRDO Ghatak — a delta-winged flying-wing stealth UCAV; SWiFT technology demonstrator has flown; full programme expected mid-decade

  • NewSpace Research Abhimanyu — iDEX-supported baseline CCA for the Indian Navy

  • A growing private-sector ecosystem — BEL, Tata Advanced Systems, L&T, Adani Defence, NewSpace, Raphe mPhibr, ideaForge, Sagar Defence, Bharat Forge subsidiaries — competing for CCA, UCAV, and loitering-munition contracts

The technology base exists. The industrial base is emerging. What is missing is the scale of order book required to make industry treat this as a serious line of business. The IAF has historically placed orders in tens. It needs to place orders in hundreds — even thousands.

This is not a leap of faith. It is what every peer air force is now doing.

7.  Catching the Wave

A single technology and doctrinal wave is breaking simultaneously across every serious air force in the world: the integration of Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), attritable UCAVs, swarms, and Manned–Unmanned Teaming (MUM-T) as the central mechanism of combat mass generation. The wave will define airpower for the next two decades. India must enter it now — alongside the United States, the UK-Italy-Japan consortium, France-Germany-Spain, and China — not after.

Why “With the World” Matters

It is not enough that India develop its own CCA and UCAV capabilities. India must develop them on the same clock as the leading air forces — for three reasons.

Technology lock-in: Datalink standards, autonomy frameworks, sensor fusion APIs, and weapons integration interfaces are being defined now, programme by programme. Air forces that show up late inherit the standards set by those who arrived early. India should be at the table when the standards are written, not buying compliance later.

Industrial capacity: The aerospace supply chain for autonomous combat aviation — composite airframes, propulsion at the 1,000–5,000 kgf class, mission systems, mesh-network radios, AI-enabled targeting payloads — is being built out globally right now. Indian industry that enters this supply chain early secures positions; industry that enters late competes against established incumbents on price alone.

Doctrinal alignment. If India fields its CCA fleet a decade after partners and adversaries, Indian doctrine will be a derivative of doctrines developed elsewhere. If India fields concurrent capability, Indian doctrine — shaped by Indian geography, Indian adversaries, and Indian operational experience including Op Sindoor — becomes a contribution to global airpower thinking, not a borrowing from it.

Manned-Unmanned Teaming as the New Combat Identity

MUM-T is not a feature added to manned aircraft. It is a redefinition of what the manned aircraft is for. In a mature MUM-T construct, the manned aircraft is a battle manager — orchestrating a formation of CCAs, UCAVs, and swarms that do the actual penetrating and engaging. The pilot’s hands are still on the controls of his own aircraft. But his mind is on the kill web.

This inverts the fighter-pilot identity that has dominated air forces since the 1950s. The next generation of IAF flight leads will be selected, trained, and equipped less as virtuoso individual operators than as network battle managers. The cockpit ergonomics of AMCA and Tejas Mk2 must be designed for this from day one. The selection pipeline must weight network and sensor management equally with weapons employment. EW literacy must be a baseline competency, not a specialist track.

None of this happens by accident. It happens because of decisions made by the IAF — in doctrine, procurement, training, and culture — over the next thirty-six months.

8.  Recommendations

Doctrine work is endless. Action items are finite. What follows is a short, fundable, executable list. Each item is concrete enough to be assigned to an office, given a budget, and tracked against milestones. None requires inventing new technology. All require political will and procurement courage.

A Note on Sequencing

The ten recommendations are not equally urgent. Recommendations 1, 2, 5, and 6 should be initiated in the next twelve months. Recommendations 3, 4, 7, and 9 should be funded and scoped in the same period, with execution over 24–36 months. Recommendations 8 and 10 are longer-cycle institutional reforms that should begin immediately but mature over five to ten years.

None of the ten requires inventing new technology. None requires foreign vendor approval beyond what India already has. All require political will at Cabinet Committee on Security level, and procurement will at Ministry of Defence level. The window in which these decisions can be made and still take operational effect before the next contingency is approximately 24 months. After that, the wave will have crested elsewhere, and India will be paying premium prices for partial capabilities while watching its adversaries field whole ones.

9.  Conclusion

Airpower remains the most effective instrument of statecraft a modern nation possesses. The Zone of Ambiguity makes that truth more urgent, not less.

What replaces the airpower implementation methodology of the past is a three-faced beast. Politically, the deliberate cultivation of uncertainty by adversaries who know India’s choices are constrained. Operationally, a contested airspace where neither side owns the sky but both can deny it. Informationally, a global narrative war that begins before the first missile is in the air and continues long after the last sortie has landed.

Operation Sindoor — 88 hours, a Chinese-pattern kill web employed against India through a Pakistani interface, an Indian S-400 reaching 300 kilometres to redraw the air picture, BrahMos missiles cratering Sargodha and finding an Erieye in its hangar at Bholari, Pakistan requesting ceasefire on the morning of 10 May — was the first encounter. There will be others. The next one will be against a more confident, more networked, more capable adversary with an unmanned backbone.

The IAF that flew on the night of 6 May 2025 was a Cold War air force adapting fast. The IAF that flew on the night of 10 May 2025 had already begun the adaptation. The IAF that flies in 2030 must be a different kind of force entirely — an ecosystem, not a collection of platforms. Networks, swarms, kill webs, dispersed bases, attritable mass, and stand-off precision. Manned aircraft as battle managers at the edge, unmanned systems at the tactical front, all conducted by an air force that thinks in minutes of dominance rather than air superiority.

Three Conclusions to Carry Forward

One — airpower still wins the strategic moment. Op Sindoor reaffirmed it. Nothing else in India’s national-power toolkit delivers strategic effect on the airpower clock with the airpower precision and the airpower reversibility. The Zone of Ambiguity raises the cost of getting airpower wrong. It does not displace airpower from the centre of Indian strategic options. Build the IAF accordingly.

Two — the structural squadron gap is real and will not close. Tejas Mk1A, Tejas Mk2, MRFA Rafale, Super Sukhoi, AMCA — none of them, individually or in combination, will bring the IAF to 42 squadrons on any realistic timeline. The arithmetic does not work. The only available answer is mass through autonomy — CCAs, UCAVs, swarms, loitering munitions, MUM-T — ingested at industrial scale over the next decade. This is not optional. It is the only option.

Three — the wave is breaking now. Every serious air force in the world is committing to the unmanned-wingman / CCA / MUM-T technology cycle this decade. The USAF, the UK-Italy-Japan consortium, France-Germany-Spain, Turkey and China are all at varying stages of the same wave. India must enter it alongside them — not five years late. The decisions that determine whether India catches the wave or watches it from the beach are being made right now, in this fiscal cycle, in this budget cycle, in this procurement cycle.

The sky has stopped being a canvas. It has become a contest. The side that masters ambiguity instead of trying to eliminate it — that buys its minutes, denies the adversary his, manages the information environment, and embraces unmanned mass at scale — will hold the initiative for the decade ahead.

The lesson of the May 2025 air war is not that India won. It is that India won the second half by playing a different game than the first half. The IAF that wins the next conflict will be the one that plays the second-half game from the first minute.

That is the New Normal.

*****

CLICK TO VIEW THE PDF

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Centre for Aerospace Power and Strategic Studies [CAPSS])

The post Indian Airpower in the Age of Denial Lessons from Operation Sindoor, the Unmanned Imperative and the Way Ahead appeared first on CAPSS India.

The post Nuclear Security Vol 20, No 16 appeared first on CAPSS India.