The spark of the recent conflict between India and Pakistan was the terrorist attack on the Indian side of Kashmir on April 22. India points to its neighbors’ history of asylum terrorist groups and launches a cross-border military campaign.
It quickly escalated into four nights of conflict, in which the two countries are deeper into each other's territory rather than at any time in half a century, which creates a dazzling escalation in the sky with the use of new generations of technologies.
While the damage on both sides will take weeks and months, especially in the space of media blackouts and extreme disinformation, this is our understanding of how the conflict plays out.
The first batch of lenses
In the hours before Wednesday's dawn, India's targets within enemy territory were deeper than decades, and in all respects, India's targets are close enough to facilities related to terrorist groups that could win.
But it soon became clear that it was not a clean strike, but a lasting interaction between the two air forces – both sides were flying against each other in the sky, and the border between them was a two-line, neither of which had crossed. India lost its planes in exchanges, including at least two state-of-the-art fighters.
The losses of strikes are contradictory. The Indian Defense Minister told parliament briefing that they killed “100 terrorists”. Pakistan caused the death toll from India's initial strike at around 30.
upgrade
On the second day, as diplomatic pushes for increasingly larger measures, India said it thwarted Pakistan's overnight attempt to hit military targets in more than a dozen border cities and towns. In response, it took the kind of action that analysts were almost always escalating the conflict: it constituted sensitive military targets, especially the air defense system in the Pakistani city of Lahore.
“The move is very rapid and involves Pakistani forces because in other cases, air defense is the prelude to more serious actions,” said Kim Heriot-Darragh, a strategy and defense analyst at the Institute of India India, Australia. “You will eliminate the defense to open a corridor where the aircraft can fly and hit its actual target.”
Diplomats and analysts were unsure how the incident happened early Thursday morning, but it was clear that the main thing had changed and was considered an important shift in the escalation model. Whether Pakistan is using a large number of drone invasions and missiles to actually attack India's military sites, or is it just warning India and exploring its air defense system, it is unclear whether it will be in the future.
Pakistan’s surprising official response – totally denying doing anything the next night – left two explanations for the incidents: It was just an investigation mission, that Pakistan did not want to be distracted from the actual revenge that was coming, or that the initial revenge was unsuccessful.
However, India still took the opportunity to actually destroy the crucial Pakistani military ruins, and all bets went bankrupt. Pakistan vowed to retaliate. The only way to upgrade is always the way: external forces intervene and tell both sides to knock it down.
Alerts for strategic websites
On Friday and Saturday nights, the situation quickly escalated into air combat, barely banned, but no relocation.
Pakistan launched a massive drone and missile attack targeting military bases in several Indian cities – this time it was a clear recognition by India that not only caused damage to certain bases and equipment, but also lost security personnel.
There is clear evidence that India has also managed to cause losses in Pakistan, targeting airfields and more defense systems, and attacking near a crucial strategic headquarters in Pakistan.
The shocking U.S. and exacerbated diplomatic push for the ceasefire announced late Saturday, not only is the increase in strikes on sensitive locations between the two sides, but also the addition of two shocking nuclear power what the next step might mean.
What's ahead
While the score is still being calculated and evaluated for damage, these four days may fundamentally change the reality of conflict in this part of the world, towards contactless war: from a distance to the final stage of combat, but still lead to escalation and potential losses of restraint.
Initially, a large number of new generation technologies, especially cheap drones and wandering ammunition, may have set more precise targets with less artificial costs. But in this latest India-Pakistan conflict, these technologies still trigger a cycle of escalation, leading to fears of the use of nuclear weapons.
