On the Op Sindoor anniversary, much is made rightly of India’s air power prowess that laid Pakistan low a year ago. The standout performance of the Integrated Air Command and Control System — a complex of airborne and landbased radars and other sensors linked to ballistic and cruise missile batteries, drone systems and even the old time anti-aircraft guns, worked beautifully, in providing excellent situational awareness, and both an effective defensive shield and a base for the offensive punch, and ought justly to be celebrated.

The record of the Indian Air Force per se, however, was wanting on May 7 — when it flew blindly into an Erieye-J10-P15 ambush and lost 3 high value combat aircraft — a Rafale, a Mig-29 and a Su-30, dimming the performance of the Brahmos striking terrorist markazes in Muridke and Bahawalpur, but was stellar on May 9 when missiles launched from standoff range and various platforms hit their mark. It made nonsense of Pakistan’s less than credible warnings over the past three decades of a nuclear strike in case India conventionally struck anything in its Punjab heartland.

But the occasion could have done with some serious pondering of the extraordinary missed opportunity on May 9 when, with air dominance achieved, the army could have, and should have, swung swiftly into action. Special Forces should have sliced off the Haji Pir Salient on the Uri-Poonch line, permitting infantry units, supported by armour and artillery, from the garrisons in Uri, Poonch and Mandi to converge on the Bulge to destroy Pakistani forces in the cauldron, and capture this piece of territory for good. It would have instantly shut down the main ISI channel for infiltrating terrorists into the Srinagar Valley, and shortened the Uri-Poonch link to just 60 kms (not the 260 km detour and lots of time it takes to go around the Salient).

The LOC’s ceasefire line status would, moreover, have endowed the Indian action with absolute legality and, more significantly, laid down a policy — and a warning to GHQ, Rawalpindi, habited by “Field Marshal” Asim Munir and his cohort, that any terrorist event that LeT or other jihadi elements staged in J&K or anywhere else in India would result — as certain as day follows night — in the cleaving off of large portions of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and their assimilation into the Indian Union, until nothing remained of POK but the name! It would have incentivised Islamabad to give up terrorism as an asymmetric means of wafare, and to formalise the international border on the new LOC.

But the army, CDS, Defence Ministry, GOI, whatever else they planned, they did not for cashing in on any opportunity to capture large parts of POK territory. So, in terms of planning a decisive war in the fortnight between April 22 — the day of the Pahalgam massacre and May 7, 2025 — D-Day for Op Sindoor, it was a wash. Instead, India jumped to comply with the first Pakistani request for a ceasefire that came its way on May 9th, when Indian forces were in a position to do virtually anything they wanted with regard to rearranging the Line of Control!

Incidentally, while the Indian armed forces planned for no contingency to take Haji Pir or anything else for that matter, just such an operation was outlined in my April 30, 2025 post — Capture of Haji Pir Salient and Skardu — eminently doable, is what the Indian military’s goals ought to be for the retaliatory actions — a whole week before the onset of Sindoor!! In its aftermath, the Defence Ministry and the military were left (and still are) justifying their reluctance to score really big by singing the virtues of “restraint” and “responsible” behaviour, and Rajnath Singh by issuing warnings of India doing more the next time around!

The Indian military’s intent on hewing strictly to the political directive, was fine. But surely, should it not, as self-respecting armed services, have nevertheless planned, prepared, and gotten the garrisons in Uri, Poonch and Mandi and other proximally situated forward units on the LOC ready to exploit any opportunity and, at a moment’s notice, to initiate a lightning fast operation to take Haji Pir, which was there for the taking?

Is it anybody’s case that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would have upbraided the military and hauled up a general or two for DISOBEYING his express instructions and capturing Haji Pir? Few political leaders are Winston Churchills. They know less than nothing about military matters but will happily feast politically on any military successes that come their way. After all, when is an election not round the corner?! This basic fact of life is apparently not appreciated by the Indian military, which once again strove manfully to do little, and succeeded!