Red Teaming After Operation Sindoor: From Tactical Wins to Strategic Security

Recently, the Indian military has said it used the process of “red teaming” during Operation Sindoor to simulate the capabilities, intent, will, and resolve of the adversary in its planning and decision-making. Red teaming also includes challenging existing or established assumptions and providing alternative interpretations to thinking within a military organisation. It enhances understanding of both context-specific and broader operational and strategic problems.

A critical appraisal of the enemy’s strengths and weaknesses against one’s own helps establish a course of action to exploit the latter’s vulnerabilities and cultivates the knowledge and competence to frame and implement comprehensive plans that align with real-time action. New lines of inquiry for existing problems can also be found. Aggressive red teaming would help discover gaps and vulnerabilities before India’s adversaries do. Against this backdrop, these seven questions are critical for the post-Op Sindoor strategic environment.

Red teaming also includes challenging existing or established assumptions and providing alternative interpretations to thinking within a military organisation.

First, what should be India’s threshold for starting another Op Sindoor-like response? Is it the number of killings, the psychological impact on the morale of the security forces, or on the whole nation? Should India establish the operation as a precedent for India’s military model against the menace of cross-border terrorism? The willingness to resist immediate victory for the long-term goal of strategic security is a variable that needs to be assessed in a careful manner.

Second, should India prepare for swift wars that entail a decisive victory? The Pakistani military has shown that it can fight back. There is a fixation with short wars in the age of emerging military technologies. But the Israel-Hamas and Russia-Ukraine wars suggest that the element of attrition in warfare is still relevant, which demands a set of preparedness and capabilities different from what is needed in short wars.

Third, has Pakistan been deterred enough after India’s multi-domain response? Post-Op Sindoor, the Pakistan military has regained some of its lost legitimacy in domestic politics. General Asim Munir has assumed the mantle of Field Marshal and he may take more risks against India. Will Rawalpindi accept coercive terms imposed by the Indian military in the long term?

Fourth, how will nuclear deterrence between India and Pakistan factor in a future crisis? China is also helping modernise Pakistan’s vectors and is aiding its nuclear capabilities. This may constrain India’s options to conduct preemptive conventional military strikes against Pakistan. India needs a clearer assessment of Pakistan’s undeclared red lines for the nuclear threshold, keeping the China factor in mind.

Fifth, how will Pakistan’s military modernisation, along with interoperability with the PLA, impact the operational level of war? Cyber and electromagnetic spectrum warfare, along with the acquisition of fighter jets via the Chinese defence exports route, adds to Rawalpindi’s existing operational capabilities — a key factor in real-time conflict.

India needs a clearer assessment of Pakistan’s undeclared red lines for the nuclear threshold, keeping the China factor in mind.

Sixth, will China maintain Pakistan as its relatively less costly option against India to limit the latter’s ambitions in the regional and global sphere? Post-Galwan especially, Pakistan has been serving as China’s proxy to strategically constrain India. These adversarial pathways need critical insights from red teamers to tackle national security issues.

Seventh, is India well-positioned to manage Pakistan and China on the global stage? This question includes considerations not only related to national will and capabilities, but also managing international pressure efficiently.

Sun Tzu captured the essence of red teaming in his seminal work, The Art of War, as he wrote, “…Who knows the enemy and knows himself will not be endangered in a hundred engagements.” Red teaming is critical to temper complacency and foster flexibility. The element of unfamiliar unease is important to challenge entrenched mindsets and self-constructed narratives about an adversary’s thinking and behaviour. The cost of failure to learn in peacetime can bring more disastrous consequences in wartime.

The element of unfamiliar unease is important to challenge entrenched mindsets and self-constructed narratives about an adversary’s thinking and behaviour.

Post Operation Sindoor, signalling the resolve and fight against terrorism is not an end goal in itself. It is just a piece of the puzzle in the larger geostrategic chessboard marked by the convergence of China-Pakistan’s multi-dimensional interests against India.

A robust red teaming infrastructure serves as an objective feedback loop for planning and decision-making. The effectiveness of the whole exercise rests on the extent to which policymakers use it.

This commentary originally appeared in The Indian Express.

• International Affairs
• India
• Pakistan
• China-Pakistan threat
• cross-border terrorism
• cyber warfare
• Indian military strategy
• military modernisation
• nuclear threshold
• Operation Sindoor
• Pakistan deterrence
• red teaming
• strategic planning

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