Pakistan-India Conflict 2025: News Updates and Discussion

[Ali_Baba]

So you agree, the Indians hit their objectives lol? For all we know, we could have erased the IAF, but my question is, were Indian objectives met?

I would say that India hit her targets, but that is not the same as achieving her objectives. If you consider the level of blackout training, civic medical training, movement of troops, navy that was happening before the strikes, it is obvious that India was planning a much larger and longer war and the response from the PAF killed those plans stone cold dead.

The Indians stopped the progression towards their real objectives because they did not think their air force would have been that ineffective in a fight with the PAF as it was. So, yes, India hit their targets for day #1 of their plans, but their actual strategic objectives they actually failed in. I say that, because you look at the level of engagement that the middle east has with Pakistan right now, it was precisely this that the Indians and the Israeli's wanted to stop.

The fact that the Israeli attack on Iran, and the Indian attack on Pakistan being so closely timed together is not a coincidence, but a strategic plan that both India and Israel had concocted together, that did not go to their plans. The goal was to take away both Iran and Pakistan as strategic heavy weights in the middle east/Muslim world so that Israel and India could then dominate the middle east from either ends of the middle east when the USA starts to wind down its military presence.

Why do you think Pakistan reacted the way it did to the attack on Iran? Why did the Defence Minister have those choice words for Reza Pahlavi ??? Because, it was all related, and they were aware of the strategic plans of Israel and India, it was obvious at that point that they were working together on a joint plan.

I don't have evidence for my view point, but it is my reading of the situation based on the events to date and what is "now" happening in the middle east, and the attack was part of something far bigger and more strategic than some random buildings in Pakistan being "successfully hit".

So, is the change in the middle east right now what was planned and people tried to stop it, or a consequence of the failure of the plans of India/Israel ?

So, imho the Indians failed in their actual objectives.

 

[Tariq Habib Afridi]

As for India’s messaging and overall result - India wanted to demonstrate utter dominance - Phuddu.
But it wanted to demonstrate a norm of attacks - yes but they also learned the cost of it. The IAF was left with little to show as a professional service barring IADS.

Post the skirmish you had Rafale’s flying NoE to launch a scalp or two and the rest was their Brahmos TELs doing not even shoot and scoot that no one in Pakistan’s MDO or Daddu command bothered to even try to get.

BuM, the YIHA bait was smoothly ignored but then once a CM-400 and F4 were sent the S-400s way both Bhuj and Adampur batteries went silent.

As this is happening - what are the Indian Chiefs telling Modi?
What are hotlines on?
Come clue comes from Trump…
Contd

F4??? it was only F1 and even F2 is not confirmed yet. from confirmation i mean visual evidence?

 

[AeronautIR]

Can u tell why did the fighting continued?

I mentioned it before too... the bombing was a pretext for objectives of violating Pakistani airspace and shooting down some PAF jets.

 

[Vkdindian1]

Just to be clear, Sargodha was not taken out for a single minute. Even from this runway, take offs are possible as the crater is 9000' down the runway.

Moreover, I don't know about taxi tracks but I have myself landed on the parallel which is officially a secondary runway. The leader had hydraulic failure and without brakes, switched off on the runway. I was low on fuel and with main runway blocked, landed on the parallel taxi track. It is a contingency practiced by all.

There are two cross runways at Sargodha and the longer one is 10000’ long. There were two craters on the runway. One at the intersection and another further down. The distance between these craters is 4600’. That doesn’t leave 9000’ of runway length of operations a mentioned by you. The other runway is shorter and didn’t seem to have adequate length free of take offs.

Secondary parallel runway was intact but number of aircraft that can get airborne and land is likely to be degraded on that on. It doesn’t seem to have any lighting etc.

Damage to the runway wasn’t a great disabler though due to rapid repair plans likely to be in place.

Had it been a bigger attack and more damage caused to the runway then few hours of runway not available can severely impact operations. To my understanding that kind of attack wasn’t launched. It was a calibrated attack to cause limited damage and display the capability to strike accurately.

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[Tariq Habib Afridi]

I think to have a reasonable discussion on Deterrence, it has to be operationally defined for the context of the discussion. The back and forth b/w the members has been because of their individual take on what deterrence mean. One side is taking it as an "absolute military superiority" (where India can never launch a strike at us) while the other side is taking it as an "attrition penalty" (where India can launch a strike but can't establish operational advantage).



IMPO (and admittedly a narrow one) - India probably thought their platform superiority (Rafale and S-400) gave them sufficient operational advantage to pick a conflict with Pakistan and continue to maintain operational advantage. It is evident from their tactics post May 7 (esp night of May 9/10) how they didn't have a contingency plan once their platform dependent bubble bursted. In an ideal timeline, India wouldn't have felt the need to use CMs (that was their last tier of weapons system below a nuclear threshold and a full-scale war).

There is one another issue with Deterrence, if your enemy is a mature wise person, for he/she the deterrence level is much lower and if your enemy is a pure idiot then deterrence is much higher. I still do not understand how on hell indians started launching brahmos ALCM as well as SSM. They completely ignore our nuclear deterrence.

 

[Tariq Habib Afridi]

I mentioned it before too... the bombing was a pretext for objectives of violating Pakistani airspace and shooting down some PAF jets.

Or IAF was here just to target those 9 sites and when they launched their SOWs, PAF may have locked on one or two fighters and shot them. So, when they got an aircraft shot they tried to continue a-to-a in hope of getting revenge ? but in doing so they lost more maybe?

 

[AeronautIR]

There are two cross runways at Sargodha and the longer one is 10000’ long. There were two craters on the runway. One at the intersection and another further down. The distance between these craters is 4600’. That doesn’t leave 9000’ of runway length of operations a mentioned by you. The other runway is shorter and didn’t seem to have adequate length free of take offs.

Secondary parallel runway was intact but number of aircraft that can get airborne and land is likely to be degraded on that on. It doesn’t seem to have any lighting etc.

Damage to the runway wasn’t a great disabler though due to rapid repair plans likely to be in place.

Had it been a bigger attack and more damage caused to the runway then few hours of runway not available can severely impact operations. To my understanding that kind of attack wasn’t launched. It was a calibrated attack to cause limited damage and display the capability to strike accurately.

. View attachment 167354View attachment 167355

Another crater? Do you have any image of it? I have only seen the 1 at intersection.
The number of aircraft in DCA package on 7th was 42. With no hits on western bases, it can be debated that even if Sargodha runway was out of play for some time, IAF could get any advantage of parallel taxi track operations. You don't need all aircraft in air for such conflicts.
The Su-30 will need to fly much closer to border to attack any base in West of Sargodha. It will be very risky with PL-15's now proven range.

 

[AeronautIR]

Or IAF was here just to target those 9 sites and when they launched their SOWs, PAF may have locked on one or two fighters and shot them. So, when they got an aircraft shot they tried to continue a-to-a in hope of getting revenge ? but in doing so they lost more maybe?

I have seen the radar tracks of fight. The attempts to ingress into Pakistan were quite clear.

 

[AeronautIR]

There is one another issue with Deterrence, if your enemy is a mature wise person, for he/she the deterrence level is much lower and if your enemy is a pure idiot then deterrence is much higher. I still do not understand how on hell indians started launching brahmos ALCM as well as SSM. They completely ignore our nuclear deterrence.

Again, these concepts are subjective and whole base of deterrence theory is assumption that actors are rational. If they become irrational, deterrence theory can't be academically applied.

 

[Ali_Baba]

There are two cross runways at Sargodha and the longer one is 10000’ long. There were two craters on the runway. One at the intersection and another further down. The distance between these craters is 4600’. That doesn’t leave 9000’ of runway length of operations a mentioned by you. The other runway is shorter and didn’t seem to have adequate length free of take offs.

Secondary parallel runway was intact but number of aircraft that can get airborne and land is likely to be degraded on that on. It doesn’t seem to have any lighting etc.

Damage to the runway wasn’t a great disabler though due to rapid repair plans likely to be in place.

Had it been a bigger attack and more damage caused to the runway then few hours of runway not available can severely impact operations. To my understanding that kind of attack wasn’t launched. It was a calibrated attack to cause limited damage and display the capability to strike accurately.

. View attachment 167354View attachment 167355

Saragoda airbase flight operations were taken out for some hours while the runway was being repaired. There is no way around that, and militarily, it was a significant achievement by the IAF on that night ( alongside some damage on a AEW&C).

I don't buy the suggestion that you can use the slip way that runs parallel to the runway because it is too narrow and also because the surface of the slipway is not contiguous/compromised as indicated in red on the screen shot below where it is not a uniform surface.



There is enough area for a proper parallel runway to be added as I have shown in orange( I am sure someone can come up with a better more resilient design and looking at the land around the airbase, there is plenty of land that can be used it seems), but something does need to be done to make the most important airbase in the PAF more secure in its operations and not be taken out again like it was. The cost of a new runway may well be just the cost of a fighter aircraft, or two given how much infrastructure already exists.

Given the location of the airbase itself in a heavily populated area, the chances of a SHORAD being able to successfully defend against cruise missile is limited due the the clutter effect of buildings which will affect the performance of the SHORAD itself. Physical resilience has to be addressed in addition to new systems.

( i know side-winder has suggested that the slipway could be used, but I truly don't buy it as the slipway is not wide enough for operations that happen at speed with any level of margin for operating at those speeds ).

 

[hasssanali8998]

i know side-winder has suggested that the slipway could be used, but I truly don't buy it,

i mean @HemlockKhalid/AeronautIR has landed on it in an emergency .

 

[Vkdindian1]

Another crater? Do you have any image of it? I have only seen the 1 at intersection.
The number of aircraft in DCA package on 7th was 42. With no hits on western bases, it can be debated that even if Sargodha runway was out of play for some time, IAF could get any advantage of parallel taxi track operations. You don't need all aircraft in air for such conflicts.
The Su-30 will need to fly much closer to border to attack any base in West of Sargodha. It will be very risky with PL-15's now proven range.

There were two craters. The location is marked in the image I have uploaded. The pictures are available on this thread itself. You may have to look up a little.

To my understanding, no IAF aircraft attempted to cross that side as threat of PL15 was too big and loosing an aircraft across the border would have been too risky. The weapons fired were all standoff types and didn’t require that either. @Oscar and @side-winder had given good insights on these aspects in there previous posts.

The number of craters at Sargodha were just two and would have been repaired in maybe 8-10 hours. What if the numbers increased to 8-10? Would the repair timelines still the same? It is likely to be longer.

Wouldn’t that have significant impact considering the various types of aircraft that operate out of Sargodha?

 

[AeronautIR]

What stopped Pakistan from providing irrefutable evidence rather than a blurry image that didn’t even convince Pakistan supporters?

We can only speculate... for example, 1 reason can be Trump promising V-kits for F-16s if we allow Modi to save face and not humiliate him by rubbing S-400 kills in.

The capability is already gone and can't be used in a future conflict. We know it, they know it and the world knows it. If the public has doubts, it doesn't has any strategic impact and if I am gaining something for the country, I can live with the jibes of all.

 

[Vkdindian1]

I don't buy the suggestion that you can use the slip way that runs parallel to the runway because it is too narrow and also because the surface of the slipway is not contiguous/compromised as indicated in red on the screen shot below where it is not a uniform surface.

That is my assessment too. It is narrower with no approach lights. It can definitely be used but not to the extent of normal take offs and landings. There are likely to be penalties.

What if more missiles were launched to truly degrade the runways then, that is likely to be have serious operational constraints.

 

[AeronautIR]

There were two craters. The location is marked in the image I have uploaded. The pictures are available on this thread itself. You may have to look up a little.

To my understanding, no IAF aircraft attempted to cross that side as threat of PL15 was too big and loosing an aircraft across the border would have been too risky. The weapons fired were all standoff types and didn’t require that either. @Oscar and @side-winder had given good insights on these aspects in there previous posts.

The number of craters at Sargodha were just two and would have been repaired in maybe 8-10 hours. What if the numbers increased to 8-10? Would the repair timelines still the same? It is likely to be longer.

Wouldn’t that have significant impact considering the various types of aircraft that operate out of Sargodha?

Let me try to find that photo.

You have misunderstood me about other point. If you are targeting Sargodha, you can stay well within India. If you have to target Peshawar, you have to come another 150km forward inside India and that means far higher risk.

Now we are going to if and hypothetical, so let's assume all 3 surfaces of Sargodha were damaged. It can only be achieved by ALCMs because accuracy of Surface launched Brahmos was not same. For 8-10 craters, with 80% interception rate, you need both Su-30 squadrons that are Brahmos capable.

So unless IAF upgrades all Su-30s in future, for now the worst they can do in a surprise attack is just take out 1 base with pinpoint accuracy.

If that complete surprise is achieved somehow, it is over now. The question is: can PAF get airborne 42 hi-tech aircraft before another strike? Answer is, absolutely.

Now we can talk about Pakistani response which was restrained this time, but the cruise missiles are available with us too. So let's not go into that hypothetical scenario.

This war-gaming has been done with all scenarios since May and current capability is not enough to take out a significant portion of PAF out of action.

PS: Sargodha is F-16 base and unless they get upgraded, they are not our front line fighters now. J-10C / JF-17 blk 3 base didn't get a single hit, but again, it's a separate debate.