Preface:
I appreciate the premise of this thread very much. No matter how I have been self-critical of Pakistanis and Pakistanis, the one thing that I have always known us to be better at than the Indians is our closer relationship with facts, reality, and critical analysis. Unfortunately, on the last day (yet) of the conflict showed some disturbing trends from our media and general public where I feel like a lot of exaggerations, false-bravados, and propaganda were seen, not as bad but in the same vein as the Indians. I feel VERY STRONGLY that we should NOT become like the Indians in this very important aspect, which is why I really appreciate the creation of this thread. With all of this said, I feel like a lot of people will inevitably do adhominem attacks and call me traitor in the time of war. While I am used to this when I used to call out the military pre-PTI, this will be in a different context, where the whole country is apparently on the same page. I can only request that you please read what I have to say with a cool mind and believe that I do have Pakistan's best interest at heart.
The air-to-air battle:
This happened on the first night and we have essentially undeniable evidence of the losses suffered by IAF at the hands of PAF. Obviously, I wouldn't know exactly why PAF overpowered IAF in this way but I have some theories:
1. The IAF did not expect PAF to shoot at them while they were inside their airspace because PAF did not shoot at them until they crossed or were about to cross in 2019.
2. The PAF has a very well-oiled network-centric doctrine that has been shown to be superior to IAF's slightly hotch-potch doctrine that results from the plethora of systems that they operate.
I feel like PAF has discovered that PAF's best bet is to create panic inside IAF and that is easy to do and creates a favorable situation for PAF.
The drone strikes by India over several nights:
Every night, we would be hit by volleys of all kinds of drones - even target drones. Clearly this was meant to saturate our ADGE and to illicit a response.
1. It is good that we did not activate our main missile defense for hitting them.
2. There was mixed success in EW-based defense against these.
3. I understand that it is nearly impossible to defend against such mass attacks totally effectively.
The mistakes we made:
1. Relying too much on big systems like HQ-16 HQ-9 etc spread over TWO services (PAF PA). It is almost like we were not expecting to deal with drone swarms.
2. Not responding.
Delayed Response: "Time and Place of Our Choosing"
It is exceedingly obvious that in the Indo-Pak theatre mounting defense is tricky. You really have to do offense. Pakistan's failure to respond for days emboldened the Indians to keep terrorizing Pakistani pubic.
Receipts:
The delayed response would be digestable if we actually had receipts for our response. I am sorry but Indians have totally outclassed us in the realm of battle damage assesment. They showed before/after pictures of our bases that will be shared with the world for years. We on the other hand were only able to show videos of radar pictures and everything else was trust me bro. In this day and age it is crucial to have some kind of BDA - as we had in 2019 with the videos using H weapons. Even if someone wants to argue that Pakistan did an amazing response after waiting alot, they cannot because there's no evidence for it.
Key Weakness for Us:
1. Speed of Response: We need to have gameplans and responses preplanned and excercised by units. We can't be caught waiting and doing nothing. Call it restraint or whatever - the delay hurt us.
2. The magnitude of the response: Unfortunately, our response was NOT proportionate - the Indians had been terrorizing us for 3 nights and launched so many Brahmos, Harops, Target drones at us. We only launched some F1 and F2. I understand that we are a poor country that can't afford much, but our response was weak.
3. Ability to give evidence of our response: We need satellites or drones to be part of our response plan because a strike that has no evidence for might as well not have happened.
4. Lack of defense of AFBs against drone swarms - we need cost effective HARD KILL measures against drone swarms that don't rely on using our air defense systems.
People will get angry but I feel that Pakistan's detterence has been greatly damaged if not ruined by this episode. A consequence of this is India will surely repeat something like this, with even more intensity next time something happens on their side and they want some war mongering.
After 2019 our deterrence was solidified, after 2025 our deterrence has been weakened. This begs the question why India did 2025 if 2019 had made such a great detterence? Well,
a. They are kind of beholden to their internal politics too much.
b. The shoot down of so many of their jets really had them out to balance things.
c. They had prepared and improved a LOT since 2019 - they had a whole new strategy this time.
