The May 2025 Air war between India and Pakistan was a unique development in the history of warfare, where Pakistan Air Force (PAF) downed 7 jets of the Indian Air Force (IAF), within a matter of minutes. It astonished observers all across the globe, considering the comparable difference in the size of both forces and their respective performance. One year ahead of the May 2025 Air War between India and Pakistan, failure of the Indian narrative in the face of the globally acclaimed Air dominance of PAF has shifted the global posture in favour of Pakistan. The military, strategic, and economic response from the international actors has certified the victory of Pakistan against the Indian misadventure.
Militarily, the peculiar dynamics of the conflict attracted significant global attention. Military strategists focused on the tactics and technologies used by PAF and extracted Air doctrine lessons from the conflict. The IAF had a two-fold preliminary advantage; firstly, it shaped the course of escalation as per its own convenience as an offensive actor, and secondly, it had a numeric advantage. However, the astonishing retaliation from the PAF, despite being dragged into the conflict by a force much larger in size, neutralised the Indian advantage. Thus, the doctrinal debate shifted from numeric advantage to network-centric and multidimensional warfare. Furthermore, both states resorted to the use of drone technology for the first time in the decades-long rivalry. In the aftermath, military strategists have highlighted the significant role of counter-drone technologies in the future of Air warfare.
Similarly, on the strategic front, the May 2025 Air war depicted that future of Air wars will be multi-domain and network-centric. The Numeric advantage of IAF could not stand against the network-centric approach of PAF. Moreover, the propensity of India to escalate on the Air front has raised questions about deterrence, whereas the apt response from PAF has highlighted the relevance and strength of Pakistan of conventional deterrence. Furthermore, beyond the conventional fronts, the narrative propagation has complicated the strategic calculus even more, as the role of successful narrative projection during the conflict has also gained strategic attention in the aftermath of the conflict. While Indian media went all out to propagate the false narrative, aligned with the Bharatiya Janta Party’s anti-Pakistan jingoism, Pakistan’s Inter Services Public Relations provided credible media coverage as well as evidence-based reports regarding the status of the conflict. Overall, independent sources verified the facts presented by Pakistan and determined that narrative warfare, based on misinformation, cannot stand fact-based, transparent official narrative.
Furthermore, multiple layers of the conflict have attracted strategic calculations in the aftermath. Firstly, the conflict depicted that air supremacy is a prerequisite for land or naval conquests. Secondly, the conflict has also been framed in the matrix of great-power politics between the U.S. and China. The victory in the air war has brought relative strategic autonomy to Pakistan in the aftermath, as it has been able to balance its regional and global foreign policy instead of resorting to the camp politics. Lastly, the success or failure of technologies in the conflict has gained a great deal of attention. PAF’s seamless performance has highlighted the efficiency of Chinese J-10 C jets, whereas IAF’s misadventure has raised concerns about the reliability of the French Rafale jets.
The military and strategic calculations have impacted the economics of defence procurement as well. The seamless performance of PAF turned out to be a successful debut of Chinese fighter jets in a combat situation. The trend subsequently shifted in favour of China, as Chengdu Air Corporation gained USD 7.6 billion due to the spikes in the sale of J-10 C fighter jets. Furthermore, the demand for drones, stealth aircraft, and electronic warfare systems has also increased in the aftermath of the conflict.
In a nutshell, Pakistan has emerged as a victor out of the Indian misadventure in the region. One year ahead, Pakistan is standing as a proponent of peace in the region and beyond, whereas India is still stuck with Sindoor 2.0. Thus, the long-lasting reverberations of the Air Clash between India and Pakistan have shifted the regional strategic balance in favour of Pakistan. Over the past decade, India has developed a pattern of exploiting nationalist military escalation as a tool for domestic electoral campaigns. However, the political cost inflicted by the May 2025 air war on India, in addition to the economic cost, is likely to demand thorough recalibration from the Indian side to demarcate domestic politics from military misadventures in the future. Overall, the global response in the military, strategic, economic, and political domains has certified the victory of Pakistan in favour of a stable South Asia.
Ayesha Shaikh is a Research Assistant at the Centre for Aerospace & Security Studies (CASS), Islamabad, Pakistan.The article was first published in The News. She can be reached at [email protected]
