The four-day Operation Sindoor was India’s first stand-off weapon war with Indian armed forces using SCALP, Rampage, Crystal Maze, BrahMos missiles and long range 155 mm Ex-Calibur howitzer shells. The counter-terror operation was unlike 2018 Surgical Strikes and 2018 Operation Bandar (Balakot) where Indian armed forces crossed the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir to strike at terror camps in Occupied Kashmir and as far as Manshera in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan.
During Operation Sindoor, the Indian armed forces used only long range missiles against nine terror camps in Pakistan and Occupied Kashmir including the Lashkar-e-Tayebba headquarters in Muridke, Lahore and Jaish-e-Mohammed headquarters in Bahawalpur. While terror camps in PoK were targeted by Indian armed forces using loitering ammunition, one BrahMos and one SCALP missile was used to destroy JeM facilities in Bahawalpur, and one Rampage and one Crystal Maze missile was used against Muridke.
Not only that, India used radar kill kamikaze ammunition like Harpy and Harop to destroy Chinese air defence systems in Lahore, Sialkot, Sargodha and Karachi. Such was the Indian dominance and lethal capability that Pakistan shifted all its functioning aerial platforms to its Quetta and Peshawar air bases to escape Indian missiles. Same was the case with Pakistan naval assets, which were moved to naval bases in Balochistan like Omara, Pasni and Gwadar.
While Indian S-400 and Meteor air to air missiles put down at least six Pakistani fighters and surveillance aircraft in the air, the air launched BrahMos missile damaged a number of fighters and transport aircraft on ground during the strike at 11 air bases during the high intensity operation.
If long range missiles did their job in Pakistani hinterland, the Indian Army using Ex-Calibur ammunition pulverized the Pakistani bunkers over a spread of 50 kilometers across the LoC. The firing was so intensive that Pakistan army had abandoned positions at least 10 kilometers across the LoC.
Even though only the Indian Air Force used its air launched BrahMos missiles, the Army and Navy were on the standby with their missiles in launching positions. However, the most significant aspect of Operation Sindoor was that Indian air defence system intercepted the Fatah-1 rockets and Turkish drones fired by Pakistan without any minimum collateral damage.
Post Op Sindoor, India has invested heavily into stand-off weapons and loitering ammunition as no contact war is the future. It has also asked the IAF to take precautions to ensure that its manual flying assets are out of reach of Pakistani radars and air defence systems. Fact is that India is gone into next level of stand-off weapons with 160 km range RVV-BD air to air missiles from Russia, 300 km range rockets like PULS, and next generation surface to air missiles to protect Indian warships. The future warfare is not about more troops but about top technology as the era of land battles is gone.
