A year has passed since India and Pakistan exchanged fire, including ballistic missiles, during their four-day war in May 2025. The conflict, which was triggered by a massacre in India-controlled Kashmir that New Delhi attributed to terrorist groups it claims are harbored by Pakistan, marked the first large-scale air war between nuclear-armed rivals. Both sides used long-range stand-off weapons to strike targets deep in the other’s territory, and both also claimed victory in the conflict, often through exaggerated assessments of battle damage.
The anniversary offers a useful moment to assess the war’s successes and failures, as well as the ways in which the state and nonstate actors involved have adapted to it. For India, the conflict provided a testing ground for the use of calibrated force below the nuclear threshold. For Pakistan, the conflict exposed vulnerabilities in military capability and command and control, while jihadist outfits operating out of Pakistani territory have been forced to adjust tactically and operationally.
Yet, given Kashmir’s centrality in Pakistan’s strategic culture, India’s shift in retaliatory posture for attacks committed there has not prompted Islamabad to act meaningfully against anti-India jihadist groups. That does not bode well for what future escalation under the nuclear shadow may look like.
The Four-Day War
The conflict last May was triggered by the April 22 Pahalgam attack in Kashmir, in which militants of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) killed 26 civilians, most of whom were singled out for their Hindu identity. India responded nearly two weeks later with Operation Sindoor, launching strikes on May 7 against nine targets it characterized as terrorist headquarters, launchpads, and bases located inside Pakistan.
Pakistan responded by firing PL-15 long-range air-to-air missiles at Indian aircraft, reportedly downing two fighter jets. India’s then-chief of defense staff, Gen. Anil Chauhan, acknowledged “tactical mistakes” in the early phase of the air attacks, but rejected as exaggerated Pakistan’s claim that it had downed more than six Indian jets. Islamabad has not produced any evidence for that claim to date. The conflict then expanded along the Line of Control (LoC)—the de facto border in Kashmir—with exchanges of artillery and mortar fire damaging civilian infrastructure on both sides.
The suppression of Pakistani air defenses enabled the Indian Air Force to launch major strikes between May 9 and 10 against 11 airbases, targeting runways, radar systems, air-defense batteries and military equipment. Third-party-sourced satellite imagery showed significant damage at sites such as Sargodha and Rahim Yar Khan, while Pakistan’s claims of retaliatory strikes on Indian bases lacked any corroborating visual evidence.
At this point, intervention from the White House prompted both sides to agree to a ceasefire that brought the war to an end. The immediate takeaway from the brief but high-intensity conflict was clear: Militarily, Operation Sindoor demonstrated India’s ability to achieve air superiority despite Pakistan’s nuclear deterrence. Since then, however, the longer-term takeaway has become equally clear: Strategically, the war did nothing to change Pakistan’s calculus with regard to providing sanctuary to anti-India jihadist groups on its territory.
Operational Readjustments of Terrorist Organizations
The initial phase of Operation Sindoor also imposed significant operational setbacks on Pakistan-based jihadist groups by striking sites tied to their command, training, logistics and infiltration networks. These included headquarters, training facilities, forward base camps and launchpads in Kotli, in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Yet rather than collapsing, these groups have adapted. Under the alleged protection of Pakistan’s civil-military establishment, organizations such as LeT and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) have restructured, rebranded and expanded their reach.
For its part, Pakistan has bowed to international pressure by formally banning LeT and JeM, but those bans have not meaningfully disrupted the groups’ operations. Rather, both outfits have shifted into layered organizational structures that preserve their operational capabilities while providing a veneer of political legitimacy.
India is building the capacity to strike faster and deeper, while Pakistan is concentrating nuclear and military decision-making in fewer hands.
The clearest example is the Pakistan Markazi Muslim League (PMML), widely understood to function as LeT’s political front. Its leadership includes veteran LeT commanders and ideologues, including figures designated by the U.S. as terrorists. Although Islamabad barred the PMML’s predecessor, the Milli Muslim League, from contesting elections, the PMML was allowed to compete in 2024. This accommodation raises serious doubts about Pakistan’s counterterrorism commitments.
At the same time, LeT and JeM are expanding beyond their traditional strongholds in Punjab into Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. LeT leaders Saifullah Kasuri and Faisal Nadeem recently held a large gathering in Quetta, while JeM has reportedly launched recruitment drives in remote areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. This expansion diversifies recruitment and funding sources for the groups, while helping them rebuild capacity damaged by Indian strikes last year.
Post-Conflict Military Restructuring
After the May 2025 conflict, Pakistan undertook one of its most consequential military restructurings in decades. The 27th constitutional amendment elevated Gen. Asim Munir to the rank of field marshal and appointed him to the newly created post of chief of defense forces, consolidating his control over the army, navy and air force. It also introduced operational reforms that brought Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, as well as its missile and drone capabilities, more directly under the army-led chain of command.
Together, these reforms appear designed to shorten wartime decision-making cycles and address weaknesses exposed during the conflict, particularly Pakistan’s inability to inflict lasting damage on Indian military infrastructure. But this centralization carries serious risks. A compressed command structure may enable faster responses, but it also reduces deliberation time during military crises and weakens civilian institutional checks over nuclear decision-making.
India’s post-conflict reforms, by contrast, have been more organizational than political. New Delhi has accelerated the creation of Integrated Theater Commands to improve joint planning across services, while developing integrated battle formations and light commando units for rapid operations along the LoC. The contrast is revealing, as India is building a more integrated, theater-level warfighting architecture, while Pakistan is consolidating an army-led deterrent model centered on speed and centralization. These reforms could make the next crisis more dangerous and complicated as India is building the capacity to strike faster and deeper, while Pakistan is concentrating nuclear and military decision-making in fewer hands. That would leave less room for restraint or outside mediation, eventually increasing the risks of severe and rapid escalation.
Credibility of Pakistan’s Nuclear Resolve
Kashmir remains central to Pakistan’s military doctrine and is routinely used to justify the Pakistani military’s dominance over the state. This doctrine also aligns ideologically and operationally with anti-India jihadist groups such as LeT and JeM, which seek to sustain a perpetual conflict over Kashmir. Pakistan’s support for these groups, whether tacit or explicit, reflects its longstanding strategy of “bleeding India with a thousand cuts,” while the political accommodation of these groups through fronts like the PMML further embeds militancy within Pakistan’s state structure. Under these conditions, another India-Pakistan confrontation is not a question of if, but when.
Since 2016, India has steadily expanded the scope and geographic range of its kinetic responses to terrorism originating from Pakistan. In response to an attack on Indian troops in India-controlled Kashmir in 2016, New Delhi launched cross-border special forces raids. Following another attack on an Indian paramilitary convoy in 2019, India launched airstrikes in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. That was followed by last year’s deeper strikes on Pakistani military infrastructure. Pakistan has repeatedly relied on nuclear threats to restrain Indian conventional operations, but India has increasingly tested that deterrent.
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s nuclear signaling remains weak because its arsenal is designed mainly to deter a large Indian ground offensive, not calibrated Indian strikes. Moreover, without a survivable nuclear triad, Pakistan cannot credibly guarantee second-strike capability. India’s completed triad gives it greater survivability, making Pakistan’s nuclear threats less likely to deter future Indian operations.
War Under a Nuclear Shadow
India has increasingly recognized that Pakistan’s nuclear signaling is designed less to deter war than to trigger third-party intervention, especially from Washington. During the May 2025 conflict, Islamabad’s warnings of nuclear escalation helped secure President Donald Trump’s involvement after Indian strikes on Pakistani airbases. New Delhi is therefore likely to keep testing Pakistan’s nuclear resolve in future crises. Indian Army Chief Gen. Upendra Dwivedi’s statement that Operation Sindoor has not concluded, and that territory is the real “currency” of victory, suggests India may consider seeking limited territorial gains beyond the LoC.
Pakistan’s suspension of the 1972 Line of Control framework during the May conflict could also create legal and operational space for India to act in contested areas. In such a scenario, India could attempt to recapture strategic positions such as Haji Pir Pass, which would disrupt militant infiltration routes into Kashmir and improve Indian logistics along the western front. Such an operation could be explicitly framed by New Delhi as a limited action in disputed territory below the nuclear threshold, as a way to delegitimize and discourage any potential nuclear first use by Islamabad.
Without dialogue or credible intermediaries, however, the risks of escalation remain severe. A small terrorist attack in India could rapidly spiral into a conventional war under the shadow of nuclear use. And a major conventional war unfolding under the threat of nuclear escalation would not only destabilize South Asia but also test the assumptions that have long underpinned nuclear deterrence in the subcontinent.
Siddhant Kishore is an independent geopolitical consultant specializing in open-source and geospatial intelligence. He previously worked as an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, where he tracked irregular warfare in the Middle East and South Asia. You can follow him on X at @SidhKishore.