The 2019 Balakot airstrike gave India a slogan: ghar mein ghus ke maara (hit them inside their own homes). Last year’s Operation Sindoor may have given India a new military strategy: ghar mein reh ke maara (hit them while staying home).
Both Balakot and Sindoor were military operations launched in response to terrorist attacks planned and sponsored from across the border. Balakot will be remembered for the tactical brilliance of Indian Air Force jets crossing the Line of Control (something not seen even during the Kargil war) to bomb areas in Pakistan.
Sindoor might ultimately be remembered for something more strategic: With longer-range weapons, advanced fighters, and air defence systems that can threaten aircraft hundreds of kilometres away, India no longer always needs physical intrusion to complete its military objectives.
Especially because of a geographical disadvantage Pakistan cannot escape: Its lack of strategic depth. At around 900 kms from east to west, Pakistan is narrow. India lies to its east. The Arabian Sea sits to its south. Afghanistan and Iran press against the west.
This geography is not new. Pakistan has always had a problem of depth against India. What Operation Sindoor did was make that problem starkly visible.
STANDOFF ATTACKS
Operation Sindoor began as a limited counter-terror strike in response to the April 22, 2025, Pahalgam terror attack in which 26 people — most of them Hindu tourists — were gunned down at point-blank range.
On May 7, India said it struck nine terrorist camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir in a pre-emptive operation that was “measured, non-escalatory, proportionate, and responsible”. Importantly, the Indian aircraft that carried out the strikes never crossed into Pakistani airspace.
The following days saw Pakistan respond first with drone strikes and then missile attacks. India soon climbed the escalation ladder. By May 10, India said it had carried out precision strikes on Pakistani military targets, including airbases and radar sites.
The targets hit ranged from the Nur Khan base in Pakistan’s north all the way down to Bholari in the south. Around 10 sites were struck, many of them roughly 100 kms from the international border. Once again, the Indian Air force jets that delivered the strikes did so from the safety of Indian airspace.
That is where Pakistan’s geographical disadvantage becomes stark.
THE TECH THAT BRINGS THE EDGE
In a podcast conversation for the one-year anniversary of Operation Sindoor, defence expert Sandeep Unnithan made the point sharply: technology, he said, has converted territory that once appeared vast into “a barrel”.
Unnithan points out that Pakistan’s air bases have long been arranged around the logic of defending against India and being close enough to respond quickly. In an earlier era where aircraft had short ranges, that was not irrational.
But in the modern day, those forward bases are easier to target thanks to the military assets that India now possess.
The Rafale jet is able to fly farther out and fire the 200-km-range Meteor missiles without the pilot having to physically “see” the enemy aircraft.
Then there is the S-400. Primarily an air-defence asset, its ability to take down aircraft, drones, and missiles in a 300-km radius can effectively turn the airspace near it into a no-fly zone.
And finally, you have the BrahMos cruise missile. The partly indigenous missile can fly at speeds of two to three times that of sound and hit targets at ranges of up to 450 kms. (The final May 10 salvo that got Pakistan to ask for a ceasefire all featured strikes by BrahMos missiles.)
Taken together, systems like these exploit Pakistan’s lack of depth by allowing India to conduct stand-off strikes from comparatively safer distances.
Pakistan’s air force may still be capable. Its Chinese-origin platforms and missiles should not be taken for granted. It is a fact that India did suffer tactical setbacks early on during Operation Sindoor. But the geographical disadvantage remains: Pakistan’s geography is narrow enough to bring all of it within India’s range.
This is something that was highlighted by an analytical paper published by the US think tank The Stimson Center in May 2025. The paper noted that India had demonstrated an ability to deliver precise stand-off attacks across large parts of Pakistan, especially on May 7 and May 10. The paper also highlighted that while Pakistani air defence may have been able to thwart some of the strikes, the country faced a “meaningful and serious vulnerability” to Indian air attack.
THE STRAIGHT COAST
It is not just on land and in the air that Pakistan’s lack of depth creates vulnerabilities. Its roughly 1,000-km coastline (India’s coast expands to around 11,000 kms, for comparison) is commercially vital but militarily vulnerable. Roughly 90 per cent of Pakistan’s trade moves via sea, giving the Pakistan Navy a problem: It must defend an economy heavily dependent on maritime trade while operating with its back up against the wall.
Unnithan put it more bluntly in the podcast: Pakistan’s coast is “just straight”, leaving it open to the Arabian Sea. “You can’t run, you can’t hide,” he said. More importantly, he added, Indian missiles aimed at ports and harbours need not necessarily come from the sea; they could also come from land, including from Gujarat.
India did not fully open the maritime front during Operation Sindoor, perhaps realising that doing so would act as a significant escalation. But the naval threat was a significant factor.
An analysis of satellite imagery by India Today TV’s OSINT desk indicated that Pakistan had moved several of its warships from Karachi, which is closer to India, to near the Iran border. And in December 2025, Navy chief Admiral DK Tripathi said that the positioning and posturing of Indian warships had confined the Pakistan Navy to its ports.
A DISADVANTAGE HERE TO STAY
And this was perhaps the biggest takeaway — intended or otherwise — of Operation Sindoor: India has the capability to exploit a geographical disadvantage that can’t be easily mitigated.
It would be foolish to assume that Pakistan will not adapt. It will seek more advanced air-defence systems. It will look at upgrading underground facilities and investing more in electronic warfare to combat incoming threats. It will also be looking at diplomatic fall-backs (such as the mutual defence pact it signed with Saudi Arabia in September 2025).
But none of those measures can create geography. They can complicate targeting. They cannot move Karachi. They cannot bend the coastline. They cannot add hundreds of kilometres between India and Pakistan’s heartland. They cannot make a narrow map wide.
The basic fact remains.
Operation Sindoor may not have re-discovered Pakistan’s map. But it changed the military meaning of that map, likely forever.
– Ends