2025 India / Pakistan war

[ytz]

Decent summary that I've seen about the air battle.

Some takeaways for us.

1) AEW really matters. We should stop pretending it's a nice-to-have. Both on offence and defence.

2) Stealth would have dramatically improved the survivability of the Indian strike packages.

3) Working without datalinks and encrypted comms will get you killed.

 

[Garrison]

Full disclosure. I'm of Indian descent. And I think this should be absolutely embarrassing for India.

The way this has played out for India has been absolutely devastating. If this happened with any Western military, there would be many firings, forced retirements and hearings. Yet, in India? "Losses are part of war.". Losing several percentage points of a force, and possibly 10% of your most modern fleet, in one raid, is not normal. Even for war.

Let's go over what happened here:

They gave the Pakistanis diplomatic warning that kinetic strikes were imminent. No deception plan. Launched from within range of Pakistani AEW. So the Pakistanis were ready for them.

They used unencrypted comms. That's how the Pakistanis got recordings of Indian comms. So probably no emissions control plan or communications plan. Looks like they didn't have/use Datalink either. By comparison Datalink has bee na theatre entry standard for Western coalitions.

The Indians don't seem to have had enough of their own AEW or their Rafales wouldn't have been hit with a tail chase missile (based on damage seen). Which means no warning. Which also means their radar warning receivers might not have been properly programmed. So not if supporting assets and very likely a poor EW enterprise.

These guys would have lost a fight with F-22s and F-35s with that kind of poor tactics and strategy.

It gets worse. China and Pakistan both now know that the Indian military fights like it's the 80s, despite having newer kit. They will be even more emboldened now. However, instead of introspection at what should be seen as a massive strategic blunder, lots of Indians are chest thumping about blowing up a few buildings in Pakistan, while losing a billion dollars worth of assets and exposing their rear to the world. This is not a culture that lends itself to learning and improvement. And a good part of the reason why they got to where they are today is because they don't seem to have learned anything from 2019.

For the rest of us, I fear this only makes conflict and escalation more likely. The Chinese are very likely to be even more successful proliferating their aircraft, their AAMs and their IADS gear after this.

I am trying to be as unbiased as possible, and the source for the Indian losses appear to be just twitter propaganda, without any legitimate proof, the Indian army did however provide proof of the nur khan and other successful bombing, also claiming to have disabled the entire pak air defence.

There was a air tank drop in Kashmir that was labeled as a Rafael crash,

One thing that I confirmed though is that no sides flew thier planes on to the other side, people in India are saying that they the bombing of nur khan resulted in a nuclear leak, hence why America needed to step in.

A lot of chest thumping from both sides but I honestly don’t see how the operation was a failure,

I highly suspect all this is being orchestrated by China.

 

[PrairieFella]

I highly suspect all this is being orchestrated by China.

I wouldn't be so sure. It's not in China's interest to have countries adjacent to their main water supply risk going nuclear. Instability is good for them in the region, but not war. In this case, I'm more in the Hanlon's Razor camp, we have two deeply unintelligent, increasingly authoritarian governments who can't control their local assets. India is certainly more competent than Pakistan, which is essentially an Army pretending to run a failed state and has lost control over their own terrorist cells, but India can't even figure out encrypted comms. Embarrassing.

If China is doing anything with this situation, they're sucking back all the data they can to improve and make a shit ton of money off their air to air missiles and planes.

 

[ytz]

I am trying to be as unbiased as possible

Nah. You're going off all the nationalistic Indian denialism that is screeching for proof on the internet. And that's fine to protect their ego and pride.

But it won't change objective reality.

That they launched and were picked up near the border is a fact. This shows either arrogance or just ignorance to the need for tactical deception.

That the Pakistanis picked up and played their comms is a fact. This shows that they either don't have or didn't use encrypted comms. You know what the alternative explanation is? That the Pakistanis got their crypto. That's not better.

That they warned Pakistan about an impending attack is a fact. Hell, they did it in the press.

The above is all before even getting into debates over what was lost.

And all this, for what? A few hangars and camps (which the Pakistanis mostly emptied out)? Meanwhile, there's Strat analysts sitting in Rawalpindi and Beijing who are absolutely calculating that Indian forces:

1) Don't understand modern networked warfare.

2) Don't understand basics like operational and tactical deception.

3) Have a Mish Mash of kit that they can't make work cohesively.

Do you think this means India is going to be safer going forward?

I would have said it was bad for India and a large blunder. What is going to make it a catastrophe for India, are reactions like yours, which care more about protecting national pride, than learning from the mistakes and making sure they don't happen again.

 

[ytz]

If China is doing anything with this situation, they're sucking back all the data they can to improve and make a shit ton of money off their air to air missiles and planes.

Less money. More experience. China just got a massive chance to test their sensor-shooter loop, their kit and TTPs against the Indians. That's worth a lot more to them than any sales.

The only hope here is that the Indians were so incompetent that lessons learned don't, hopefully, threaten Western/Asian forces.

 

[Garrison]

Nah. You're going off all the nationalistic Indian denialism that is screeching for proof on the internet. And that's fine to protect their ego and pride.

But it won't change objective reality.

That they launched and were picked up near the border is a fact. This shows either arrogance or just ignorance to the need for tactical deception.

That the Pakistanis picked up and played their comms is a fact. This shows that they either don't have or didn't use encrypted comms. You know what the alternative explanation is? That the Pakistanis got their crypto. That's not better.

That they warned Pakistan about an impending attack is a fact. Hell, they did it in the press.

The above is all before even getting into debates over what was lost.

And all this, for what? A few hangars and camps (which the Pakistanis mostly emptied out)? Meanwhile, there's Strat analysts sitting in Rawalpindi and Beijing who are absolutely calculating that Indian forces:

1) Don't understand modern networked warfare.

2) Don't understand basics like operational and tactical deception.

3) Have a Mish Mash of kit that they can't make work cohesively.

Do you think this means India is going to be safer going forward?

I would have said it was bad for India and a large blunder. What is going to make it a catastrophe for India, are reactions like yours, which care more about protecting national pride, than learning from the mistakes and making sure they don't happen

 

[ytz]

As I said above, the Chinese got to test out a bunch of things. Like their ability to provide satellite imagery and surveillance products in near real-time. This also speaks to how naive the Indians were to not understand this risk and plan deception.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Several YT commenters got a taste of the Pak-Indian Internet war, where hordes of supporter on each side swarmed their comment sections.