India's Operation Sindoor Against Pakistani Terrorists

"Pakistan and India have enough nuclear weapons to wipe the other side out several times over."

"Their nuclear weapons create a scenario for mutually assured destruction."

"[The arsenals are a defensive move to prevent and deter further fighting, because] neither side can afford to initiate such a war or hope to achieve anything from it."

Syed Mohammed Ali, security analyst, Islamabad, Pakistan 

"Pakistan has every right to give a robust response to this act of war imposed by India, and a strong response is indeed being given."

"[The] heinous act of aggression will not go unpunished".

Pakistan Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif

 

"Missile strikes by India in Pakistan-administered Kashmir targeted at least nine sites] where terrorist attacks against India have been planned."

"[The strikes - named] Operation Sindoor [were part of a] commitment [to hold] accountable [those responsible for the 22 April attack in Pahalgam, Indian-administered Kashmir, which left 25 Indians and one Nepali national dead]."
India Defence Ministry

People inspect a damaged mosque following India's strikes in Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-administered Kashmir   AFP via Getty Images

"Throughout 2024, violence continued in Kashmir in response to increasing efforts by New Delhi to consolidate territorial control. Attacks specifically targeted Indian travelers and workers in the region. In June 2024, militants opened fire on a bus carrying pilgrims traveling to a Hindu shrine in the town of Reasi. The attack killed nine and injured over thirty. In October, militants killed seven in Kashmir at a construction site for a tunnel project connecting Kashmir to the northern region of Ladakh."

"On April 22, 2025, tensions escalated after militants attacked Indian tourists in Kashmir, killing twenty-five Indian nationals and one Nepalese national. The incident marked the deadliest terrorist attack in Indian territory since the 2008 Mumbai attacks. India blamed Pakistan for harboring the group responsible for the attack and arrested two Pakistani nationals as suspects. Pakistan denied any involvement, and its defense ministry even suggested the attack was a “false flag operation.” Although no group has been officially identified as responsible for the attack, the Kashmir Resistance—an offshoot of LeT—claimed responsibility online."

Global Conflict Tracker

Both India and Pakistan have a stockpile of nuclear weapons, each 'reminding' the other of a guarantee of mutually assured destruction with neither country publicly disclosing their nuclear capabilities. Each is thought to have amassed between 170 and 180 warheads; short-, long- and medium-range. Each country has its own system of delivery to launch and propel their weapons to targets. The arsenals serve as a defense in prevention and deterrence of conflict beyond the conventional. 

 

Each is aware that neither Pakistan nor India could survive a first nuclear strike and be able to retaliate through "second-strike capability"; a sobering perspective for any government. Both lay claim to Kashmir in its entirety. Border skirmishes equate to instability in the region and have for decades. A heavily militarized border divides each country's part of Kashmir where three wars have been fought in the past. Armed insurgents on the Pakistan side of the divide resist Indian rule, with Muslim Kashmiris in support of the goal of uniting Kashmir under Pakistani governance. 

 

The number of border flare-ups and attacks in India's portion of Kashmir, prompted New Delhi toward an increasingly tough position on Islamabad, accusing it of supporting 'terrorism', which more than adequately describes the reality of the situation. India, as the most populous nation on the planet, spent $74.4 billion on defence in the current year; one of the world's largest arms importers.

 

Indian army Trucks on highway leading to Ladakh, Kashmir    Danish Ismail, Reuters

 

Although Pakistan spends a considerable sum -- $10 billion last year -- in arms, India has over double the number of active armed forces personnel than Pakistan. But there is another looming threat that India has that Pakistan doesn't share; its neighbour China, with its aggressive maritime security stance in the Indian Ocean. On occasion both Pakistan and India launch operations into airspace and territories controlled by the other, intended for the most part to damage check-points, installations or sites used by militants. Their lethal antipathy toward one another is religion-driven, not territorial. 

For every step that India takes -- from closing down Pakistan's embassy in India, shutting off a traditional water supply agreement to Pakistan, closing its airspace to air traffic, to targeting sites in Pakistan known to harbour Islamist terrorist groups -- Pakistan follows suit and vows vengeance. Following missile strikes in Punjab province and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, a heavy exchange of fire between the two nations ensued. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif commended his armed forces for shooting down five Indian jets, hit, he claimed after firing their missiles, while still in Indian airspace.

 

Three planes fell onto villages in India-controlled territory, although India made no official comments. During the April attack in Kashmir, some survivors informed Indian media that the gunmen singled out Hindu men and shot them dead at close range. Pakistan stands accused by India of being behind the attack by a new militant group, Kashmir Resistance. India has identified the group with links to Lashkar-e Taiba, a Pakistani militant group long accused by New Delhi of being supported by Pakistan. 

Adnan Abidi, Reuters  An Indian soldier stands guard on a highway in Kashmir

 

Superpower Status Nuclear-Powered Competition

"China now has the capability to directly threaten our homeland from a ballistic missile submarine. That's a pretty watershed moment."

"China is on a trajectory to be a strategic peer to us by the end of the decade. So, for the first time ever the U.S. is going to face two peer-capable nuclear competitors in Russia and China who are different, who you have to deter differently."

"We have never faced that before."

Admiral Charles Richard, Commander, U.S. Strategic Command

"The U.S. armed forces are now preparing for an age of great-power competition and rightly so. The 2018 National Defense Strategy shows the Defense Department is focused on the threats posed by Russia and especially China to U.S. interests, allies, and established partners such as Taiwan."

?For now, U.S. forces appear poorly postured to meet these challenges. That’s because both Russia and China have developed formidable networks of missiles, radars, electronic warfare systems, and the like to degrade and potentially even block U.S. forces’ ability to operate in the Western Pacific and Eastern Europe to defend allies and partners in those regions. China in particular is developing increasingly impressive capabilities to project military farther afield, including through systems such as aircraft carriers, long-range aviation, and nuclear-powered submarines. Together, these forces have tilted the military balance over places such as Taiwan and the Baltic states from unquestioned U.S. dominance to something much more competitive."

Elbridge Colby, David Ochmanek, Foreign Policy.com

Three Chinese warships are seen docked at Garden Island naval base in Sydney on June 3, 2019. - Australians were surprised by the sight at Sydney Harbour, forcing the prime minister to reassure jittery residents. (PETER PARKS/AFP/Getty Images)

China has been busy the world over, for it's an all-consuming target they have set for themselves to change the world order of influence and military strength and dominance in every sphere of human activity that matters. There is one dominant world power at the present time. And another that at one time in recent history shared world dominance with the United States. Now, the long-range plans of the world's most populous nation, the country with the second-largest economy, is to rival and then overtake the United States as sole global superpower. 

 

In expanding in so rapid a manner, the scope and scale of its geography, its maritime and air sovereignty -- despite disputed claims -- through territorial aggression, it has become a formidable competitor to reckon with. China's diplomacy too has turned to bellicose aggression. It uses the power of its trade supremacy as a cudgel to beat other nations into a state of submission. Its tentacles are long and its aspirations as wide as the globe. And nor has it forgotten that space and extraterritorial visions of 'might is right' also beckon.

 

Admiral Richard, speaking before Congress in September, addressed China's nuclear capability of some 200 nuclear warheads which will double in short order. The U.S. itself has a massive nuclear arsenal of 3,800 warheads. China is intent on moving steadily forward, reality to match aspirations. Its next generation nuclear missile submarines and advanced missiles they are meant to carry could target the U.S. coastline from China's, simplifying moves without advance warning.

 

The US is facing a more robust Chinese presence in the South China Sea  Getty Images

 

The Pentagon has reported that China has placed silos south of Mongolia whose intended use could be the development of new, solid-fuelled intercontinental ballistic missiles even while it may be constructing new silos in Henan province for liquid-fuelled missiles. All of which are potentials of concern to the United States. Which is pursuing a new arms-control approach for the purpose of establishing a broad "framework" agreement with Russia, hoping to persuade China to join.

For the time being China appears indifferent to negotiations. Its economy is steadily expanding, as is its outreach around the world. The hope, needless to say is that arms-control negotiations may succeed in limiting the world's current superpower and its two competitors' plans to continue investing in military armaments such as maritime hypersonic missiles. In the world's favour is that these huge economies have, through trade established economic interdependent links difficult to extricate themselves from, and useful to preserve.

What the U.S. faces, however, is an undeniable threat, one that regional allies such as Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and India have long recognized in China's ambitious declarations of sovereignty over disputed regions on land and sea and air. Its recent Himalayan dust-up with India, one such adventure. They are each, in turn and comprehensively vulnerable to China's expanding nuclear threat. 

 

Both Russia and China  have a practical view of their geopolitics, to enhance their presence in the world order as superpowers. They are impatient to see the U.S. shift over and make room. Russia longs for a return of the 'respect' and recognition it basked in when the USSR was just such a world superpower. China, however, sees its world dominance as merely a matter of time it is swiftly compressing into reality, for this is their destiny. 

• Russian state media has announced the first test of the Zircon hypersonic missile.
  
• Zircon is a ship-launched anti-ship and land attack missile system.   Peter Kovalev : Getty Images