By Dr. Sanjaya Baru
The recent cross-border hostilities between India and Pakistan have stirred much interest around the world, especially among defence equipment manufacturers. The most striking new development was the use of drones and the deployment of the Rafale fighters by India and the Chinese J-10s and JF-17 fighters by Pakistan, in addition to the S-400 surface-to-air missile systems by India and its Chinese counterpart, the HQ-9s by Pakistan. Wars are always a testing ground for new equipment. Indeed, cynics have often argued that wars are sometimes launched by defence equipment manufacturing and exporting countries to test their equipment and market their wares.
While this cannot be said for the India-Pakistan conflict of May 2025, the fact is that interest around the world has been focused on the performance of Chinese, French and Indian platforms and systems. The American media was the first off the ground with Reuters reporting the downing of a Rafale fighter jet of the Indian Air Force, allegedly by Chinese jets. Reuters quoted a United States official as stating, on condition of anonymity, that “there was high confidence that Pakistan had used the Chinese-made J-10 aircraft to launch air-to-air missiles against Indian fighter jets, bringing down at least two. Another official said at least one Indian jet that was shot down was a French-made Rafale fighter aircraft.” Most interestingly, however, Reuters made sure to mention that ‘officials said Pakistan’s F-16 aircraft, made by Lockheed Martin, were not used in the shootdown.’
The downing of the Rafale has, reportedly, created issues between India and France, with the Indian Air Force not yet willing to share the facts of the case. On the other hand, the US has been actively promoting the sale of F-21 and F-35 fighter jets as future options for India.
For China, the India-Pakistan war was a coming-out event. It displayed the prowess of its fighter jets and, though not confirmed, its airspace guidance capability via its satellites and using the Swedish-made Erieye airborne early warning aircraft used by Pakistan. China has been a long-standing supplier of defence equipment to Pakistan and presently accounts for over 70 per cent of Pakistan’s requirements.
What makes the recent battle interesting is the fact that the US, Europe, the UK and China are all interested in securing a share of the growing South Asian market, knowing well that this will remain a growing market for some time to come. Despite the intensity of their hostilities and the more recent failure of diplomacy to deal with the challenge, it is expected that both countries will seek to boost their defence capability in the near future. Not to be left behind, Russia, too, is engaged in conversations with Pakistan, concerned that its share of the Indian market has been dwindling.
India’s defence spending as a proportion of its GDP has been steadily going down in recent years, but now both India and Pakistan are expected to increase their defence spending. There has been an interesting pattern in India’s defence spending over the past seven decades. After every war, from 1948 (when Pakistan-backed insurgents invaded the state of Jammu and Kashmir) to 1962 (the India-China war) to 1965, 1971 and 1999 (the India-Pakistan wars), there has been a surge in defence spending in South Asia. Given the likelihood of an escalation of such spending in the near term, there would be global interest in this market on the part of major manufacturers.
What has changed? In 1962 and 1965, India reached out to the United States for help, even to the extent of requesting US air cover for India. The US began a programme to provide India military aid but terminated it in 1965 when the India-Pakistan war led to a US embargo on both countries. In 1971, it was the Soviet Union that stood with India and extended whatever support was sought. In 1999, the Kargil war gave India the opportunity to deploy the Swedish-made Bofors guns and French Mirage fighters. This time, it was French and Chinese-made fighter jets that were competing for global attention. Russian S-400 and Chinese HQ-9 SAMs also made their presence felt. India’s own domestically manufactured equipment, especially Akash SAMs, anti-drone systems and the Indo-Russian Brahmos supersonic missiles, along with the Indo-Israeli LRSAMs, have also been on display.
What of the geopolitics of the recent hostilities? Something new has happened. While the West, especially the US and UK, were sympathetic to Pakistan in 1948, 1965 and 1971, supporting India only in 1962 in the war with China, this time the West, in particular, but the international community as a whole, remained neutral. The gains India made since the 1999 Kargil war, when the US not only supported India but used the opportunity to declare its support to the essence of the Simla Agreement, that the Line of Control (LoC) ought to be viewed as the de facto border between the two countries, seem to have been lost.
While most countries condemned terrorism in principle, few came out in support of India’s military action against Pakistan. In fact, barring Israel and Afghanistan, no country openly endorsed the Indian action. Afghanistan soon diluted its stance. To rub salt into India’s diplomatic wounds, the Group of Seven (G-&) major industrial economies voted as one to sanction an over $2 billion loan to Pakistan through a lending window of the International Monetary Fund. India was left alone to abstain in the vote, with all other members of the IMF board favouring Pakistan’s application. The final nail was US President Donald Trump’s repeated claims through the media, despite insistent Indian denial, that a ceasefire had been declared on May 10th, thanks to his intervention.
The international assessment of the conflict has, by and large, been that there were no winners. That both India and Pakistan managed to make a point and, in the end, chose to limit the conflict. While President Trump has taken the credit for this, the Indian CDS, General Chauhan, gave credit to the rationality of men in uniform.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, India’s Chief of Defence Staff, General Anil Chauhan, officially admitted to the downing of IAF jets, without specifying the make and the number. He went on to offer a military perspective on war. “It is my personal view,” he told a journalist in Singapore, that the most rational people are people in uniform when conflict takes place. That is because they understand the conflict can swing either way. They understand the consequences of this kind of conflict. …. In every step that happened during Operation Sindoor, I found both sides displaying a lot of rationality in their thoughts as well as actions.”
It is worth noting that India-Pakistan hostilities have always been restricted to a few days, at most a few weeks. In the past, and even today to an extent, this is in part due to their limited defence capability, their dependence on imported equipment, and in part to the interference of the international community. Both may be less susceptible to external diplomatic pressure but are not wholly immune. In many ways, these remain the effective guardrails against long-drawn-out wars.
Dr. Sanjaya Baru is a political commentator and policy analyst. He served as Secretary General of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry. He is a Distinguished Fellow with the United Service Institution of India.
