Why India Must Embrace an Attritional Strategy After Operation Sindoor

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The terrorist attack that claimed the lives of 26 civilians in Pahalgam on April 22, 2025, was a brutality foretold. Being a motivated and disciplined adversary, state-sponsored terrorism is a low-cost and low-risk strategy for Pakistan. India responded with the launch of “Operation Sindoor” on 6-7 May with air strikes against nine terrorist bases inside Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Pakistani Punjab. The hostilities came to an end on 10 May following the Indian Air Force’s (IAF) overnight precision strikes against key Pakistani air bases — including Sargodha, Rahimyar Khan, and Nur Khan — compelling the Pakistani Director General of Military Operations (DGMO) to call his counterpart to discuss a cessation of armed action.

The Pakistanis blinked. For the first time since the 1971 war, the Indian Air Force (IAF) launched offensive air action, striking terror sites in Muridke and Bahawalpur, which respectively house the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) in Pakistani Punjab. This action marked a sharp shift upwards along the escalation ladder, which began with the heinous terrorist attack in Pahalgam.

The use of military force, even if it is primed to punish Pakistan, is only one element of India’s strategy. Even if force were deemed to be a vital component of Indian strategy against Pakistan, its scope would need to be expanded to include more intensive covert action that breaks Pakistan’s jihadi firewall, especially emanating from Pakistani Punjab.

New Delhi, under the Modi government, has been more audacious in pursuing a coercive strategy against India’s enemies, especially Pakistan, relative to previous dispensations under Narsimha Rao, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and Manmohan Singh — which tended to be more hesitant about employing coercive strategies that involved the overt use of military power following Pakistani terrorist attacks.

India’s military success against Pakistan as a result of ‘Operation Sindoor’ is at best provisional or temporary. Both senior Pakistani military officials and some Indian strategic experts concur that the next round of escalation could be greater or “sharper”. Undoubtedly, the Modi government, but more significantly, the Indian armed forces, have their task cut out to prepare for the very distinct possibility of more intense escalation in a future crisis. Addressing this denouement means that the three branches of the Indian military have no choice but to evaluate what they got right and wrong during the four days of hostilities in May 2025 and what they will need to plan for in a future crisis.

The use of military force, even if it is primed to punish Pakistan, is only one element of India’s strategy. Even if force were deemed to be a vital component of Indian strategy against Pakistan, its scope would need to be expanded to include more intensive covert action that breaks Pakistan’s jihadi firewall, especially emanating from Pakistani Punjab.

Punjab lies at the core of the Pakistani state. The region has long served as a jihadi hub, as Pakistan’s military draws most of its recruits from Punjab, and many of its major military installations are based there. Demographically, Punjabis are the most dominant group in Pakistan, and jihadi recruits to terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) often come from districts in the Punjab province that share borders with India.

A key manifestation of this strength is the evident success of Pakistan’s internal intelligence apparatus in rendering Indian intelligence relatively ineffective at penetrating the country’s Punjabi jihadi fortress.

As one knowledgeable and generally sympathetic observer of Pakistan noted many years ago, Rawalpindi’s counterintelligence is extremely robust. A key manifestation of this strength is the evident success of Pakistan’s internal intelligence apparatus in rendering Indian intelligence relatively ineffective at penetrating the country’s Punjabi jihadi fortress.

Neutralising all the India-centric proxies nurtured by the Pakistan Army (PA), such as the LeT and JeM, and their tanzeems will require more than air strikes — which are lethal, yet escalatory and risk-laden. As Israel has done against Iran, India will need a more disciplined, patient, purposeful, and resource-intensive strategy involving covert action as much as overt military measures to target terrorist infrastructure in Pakistani Punjab. Notwithstanding the success security forces have had in neutralising at least two of the Pahalgam attack perpetrators — including the mastermind, who are all Pakistani, as the National Investigation Agency (NIA) recently concluded — the Indian security establishment’s failure to either apprehend or neutralise the LeT terrorists who brutally mowed down 35 civilians in Chittissinghpura in 2000 is a terrible indictment of its capabilities.

Defenders of overt military action — in the form of air power, limited land offensives inside Pakistan, and naval action — may take issue, contending that the relative ineffectiveness and failures of covert action compel New Delhi to take a more ambitious military approach to deter Pakistan from carrying out terrorist attacks against India. However, there are two consequences of opting for robust military action following a terrorist incident that triggers a crisis. First, in each case, India will need to be able to impose fairly substantial costs on Pakistan and emerge “victorious”, compelling the Pakistani military to cease sponsoring terrorism. Anything equivocal or even amounting to a semblance of victory for Pakistan will not be sufficient to prevent further terrorist attacks, because Islamabad is a viscerally motivated adversary. If anything, overt action may prove an invitation for further attacks. Second, the burden of escalation will fall on India every time there is an attack on Indian soil traced to Pakistan.

As Israel has done against Iran, India will need a more disciplined, patient, purposeful, and resource-intensive strategy involving covert action as much as overt military measures to target terrorist infrastructure in Pakistani Punjab.

The real test of Operation Sindoor’s success can only be measured or credibly ascertained prospectively – that is, if it can deter mass-casualty terrorism sponsored by Pakistan in the coming months and years. However, if terrorist massacres like the ones perpetrated in Chittisinghpura in 2000, Mumbai in 1993 and 2008, Pulwama in 2019, and Pahalgam in 2025 recur, Indian responses will run the gauntlet of oscillating between overt military action and doing nothing. The latter is as much a possibility as the former, because future Indian dispensations might not react or respond as the Modi government has done. One key caveat here would be if future governments, cutting across party lines, were to consistently pursue the approach taken by the Modi government in 2019 and 2025, in which case, India could potentially achieve deterrence against mass-casualty terrorism.

India has not fought a conventional war against Pakistan since the 1999 Kargil conflict, which New Delhi won decisively, notwithstanding Pakistani attempts to spin it as an example of tactical brilliance. The reason for India’s deterrent success in the conventional domain is due to a high number of conventional military losses that Pakistan has suffered at India’s hands. As Jonathan Shimshoni – the Israeli military strategist and retired Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) officer – so convincingly demonstrated in his analysis, recurring conventional military defeats can cement or render conventional deterrence very durable. Both Israel and India stand as vivid examples of successful conventional deterrence. Nevertheless, meeting the conventional deterrence benchmark that India has, to a significant degree, achieved vis-à-vis Pakistan, is a demanding requirement and a tall order against Pakistani sub-conventional violence and its variant—terrorism. The latter is more cost-effective for Pakistan, because it can carefully modulate the heat of terrorist violence directed at India to prevent significant Indian retribution, even if New Delhi resorts to overt, Operation Sindoors-type responses. Therefore, in a nutshell, while overt military action is often necessary, it may also prove insufficient.

This is where New Delhi will need to recognise what Hans Delbrück – the German military historian, observed about two types of military strategy – Niederwerfungsstrategie and Ermattungsstrategie. The former is the strategy of annihilation, which mandates decisive military action to eliminate the adversary’s military or its proxies. Yet the conventional military means for India are simply not at hand, and even if India were to possess the means, they would be costly to exercise. Indian conventional forces will need to be significantly stronger than they are at present. All three services will require more robust capital allocations, and the pace of acquisitions must be substantially accelerated. The division of conventional military capabilities between China and Pakistan will also pose a challenge—especially if Beijing were to threaten to open a second front or actually do so in a show of solidarity with Pakistan.

Meeting the conventional deterrence benchmark that India has, to a significant degree, achieved vis-à-vis Pakistan, is a demanding requirement and a tall order against Pakistani sub-conventional violence and its variant—terrorism.

Moreover, India must demonstrate a readiness to press home its advantage, as some critics within the Indian strategic establishment argued following the heavy losses inflicted by the Indian Air Force (IAF) on Pakistani air bases during the night of 9–10 May 2025. However, this would require New Delhi to be prepared for a more intense conventional escalation—one that would entail greater costs, just as it would impose further costs on Pakistan by prolonging hostilities.

Indeed, the Modi government’s justification for launching “Operation Sindoor” as a “non-escalatory” move betrayed any commitment to sustained conventional escalation. This was further reinforced by India’s decision to promptly accept a ceasefire after the Pakistani Director General of Military Operations (DGMO) contacted his Indian counterpart to request a cessation of hostilities.

Ironically, it was the Pakistanis—by retaliating and then conceding quickly within three days—who ended up handing India a tactical victory, albeit a temporary or provisional one. This outcome is shaped by Pakistan’s enduring commitment to anti-India jihad, which will likely compel it to be better prepared militarily for the next crisis.

The alternative, Ermattungsstrategie – a strategy of exhaustion, is in all likelihood the only credible strategy available to India. Although Delbrück’s conception and definition of Ermattungsstrategie was restricted to the operational level of war, in its contemporary form it is called “attrition”— which encompasses economic, demographic, and industrial instruments of warfare.

The Modi government has grasped the importance of attritional warfare against Pakistan, evident from its decision to place in abeyance the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) and the push to get the international community to place Pakistan on the grey list of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). The Modi government will need to add another arrow in India’s quiver: robust investment in covert action capabilities. This will necessarily be intelligence-intensive, time-consuming, demand great discipline, linguistic proficiency, diligence, and resources—covering monetary, human, and technological elements. It will help New Delhi balance risk and cost in a more efficient manner. An attritional strategy with a strong covert action component is thus the only credible approach for New Delhi, ensuring high pay-offs in the long run.

Kartik Bommakanti is a Senior Fellow with the Strategic Studies Programme at the Observer Research Foundation.

• Defence and Security
• India
• india pakistan conflict
• military operation against pakistan
• Operation Sindoor
• operation sindoor aftermath
• operation sindoor success
• pahalgam attack
• pakistani jihadi agenda
• pakistani terrorsit groups

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