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India has just attacked three Pakistani army bases near the Kashmir region with missiles. There are some indications that power infrastructure in a Pakistani town was targeted as well. Troops are also clashing along the line of contact. This is as far as I know the biggest escalation in the region since the Kargil war. If this were any other two nuclear powers the world would be on a state of panic now. What are the culture war implications of a full scale nuclear war in South Asia?
UPDATE Unconfirmed reports that Pakistan is carrying out a military response, including air strikes on Indian bases in Kashmir.
UPDATE Pakistani Prime Minister has confirmed ongoing Pakistani military response. Heavy gunfire, artillery and air strikes heard on live feeds along the line of control on Kashmir
UPDATE Multiple Pakistani news outlets claim that Pakistan has shot down two Indian Rafael fighter jets. Some Indian news agencies are now reporting that a jet was downed.
UPDATE: Second round of missile strikes in the early hours of May 8. Sources confirm that the aerial engagement yesterday that caused the loss of 2-5 aircraft had over 125 fighter jets from both sides involved.
There's pictures floating around of what looks like MICA shaped debris (a fairly exclusive European missile that mounts on the Rafale).
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Rafale.
Rafail.
It's inspired this recent skit, if nothing else.
Ouch the Indians need to step up their meme game.
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God dammit. I was planning to head back home for a few weeks and now I'm genuinely worried about flights being canceled. Guess I'll just have to take the risk.
First the terrorist attack in Kashmir that my family missed by a few hours, now this. Can't catch a break.
Please instruct a non-anglophone - isn't your family missing that attack you already catching a break?
I think the anxiety induced by near-misses is bad enough. I certainly don't want to contemplate the effects of an airspace lockdown at this point of time.
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I would caution against taking these early rumors too seriously. Propaganda claims and people just plain being wrong on the internet run wild in the early phases of anything like this. It is undoubtedly true that the Pakistani army is firing artillery across the border and that skirmishes are happening between the two sides in Kashmir, but the organized Pakistani retaliation has almost certainly not started yet. Their national security council was summoned this morning (that's morning their time, as in, just a few hours ago at most) for a closed door meeting and has not yet made public statements declaring or claiming a response (other than the vague ones I highlighted in my previous post).
For the shootdown claim specifically I am skeptical. In the initial Indian attack their jets used long-range weapons and did not cross into Pakistani airspace, making an interception of those jets unlikely. Any subsequent shootdown would have to be from further Indian attacks into Pakistan, which do not appear to have happened; as part of Pakistani air raids into India, which also do not appear to have happened yet and would more likely be part of a more organized retaliation operation which, again, has not yet happened; or from air-to-air combat over Kashmir which certainly could be happening, but would be a big deal compared to the usual (and confirmed) infantry skirmishes and artillery duels. I have seen this claim as "2 Indian Rafales shot down", "1 Indian MiG shot down", and "1 Pakistani JF-17 shot down". We don't yet know if any of these various claims are true.
I will say I am particularly skeptical of the specific double-Rafale-shootdown claim. These would be brand-new jets for India; they would both be relatively difficult to bring down and, more importantly, would almost certainly not be used in a high-risk situation this early into a conflict. It would be a pretty big deal if they were, and frankly it smacks of war-fever propaganda to me: "yeah, they hit us with some missiles, but we took down two of their best jets! Pakistan (still) strong!" Not to say it's impossible of course but both sides' media have incentive to lie about this kind of stuff, and a history of doing so.
We will know more soon.
I heard it was a Mirage 2000...
But agree 200% on the importance of skepticism at this point in the conflict.
Pakistan has bought Chinese military hardware including 100+ mile range BVR missiles with datalinks and AWACS aircraft that can guide such, so .. not that unlikely.
There's a whole bunch of footage out there this morning showing various aircraft parts lying on the ground.
Yes, my initial skepticism was... well, not exactly unwarranted, but neither was it correct. French intelligence now confirms one Rafale was shot down (and at least one or two other Indian fighters are being reported shot down in increasingly-credible media), and the use of the PL-15 missiles (for the first time in combat, incidentally) is separately also confirmed -- I suspect those two things are connected. Pakistan's increasingly close relationship with China seems to be paying off for it (and China is surely getting some valuable combat performance data as well).
I would continue to emphasize caution when seeing the stream of wreckage photos (I recall in particular seeing one photo of a crashed Indian jet yesterday that was actually from a previous round of India-Pakistan fighting) but Pakistan does seem to be asserting a meaningful technological edge in the air, thanks to their Chinese purchases.
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Ha! One more for the list then. It's still possible that no aircraft was shot down at all, too.
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Nuclear war between India and Pakistan, Thales Group hardest hit?
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If these two powers enter into a non-meme war I have to imagine the west will get completely drowned by a tidal wave of immigration. RIP my chill software engineer job
Worry slowly. War between India and Pakistan has historically been a limited affair, with both wasting resources on an inconclusive border conflict and then going back to the status quo.
It's a push factor, true, but only one among many.
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From what I have seen (to be fair information is still hazy, but this much seems to be clear) India very deliberately did not hit actual Pakistani military targets. India claims to have only struck confirmed terrorist targets, and Pakistan claims they fired on civilian targets. The reported blackout in Muzaffarabad would imply at least some civilian infrastructure was fired upon but whether this was deliberate, or even if it is correct, is not yet clear.
All things considered the Indian retaliation here was quite restrained. Nine targets divided across three towns (showing ability and willingness to strike over a large geographical range, since not all the targets were near Kashmir); no actual Pakistani regular forces were targeted; and all missiles were fired from Indian territory or from aircraft which stayed within Indian airspace. To me it appears to be more of a demonstration of capability than actual intent to harm: “look, we have the ability to hit you but we’re choosing to hold our punches at this time.”
Essentially India is kicking the can back to Pakistan. They have retaliated for the terror attack but in a limited way, moving only very slightly up the escalation ladder. Pakistan now has the choice to back down or to escalate further. There are reports of artillery duels and skirmishes across the border kicking off shortly after the airstrikes but this doesn’t mean much given the baseline in the region. What might be more significant are the official statements of the Pakistani defense minister, claiming that the strikes were all targeting civilians and that “our response will be greater”, and of a Pakistan Army spokesman: “The temporary pleasure of India will be replaced by enduring grief.”
So, Pakistan will almost certainly retaliate for this retaliation. Their leadership, much like that of India, has put itself in a position where backing down looks like weakness rather than wisdom. The question now is, now that the ball is in their court, whether and how much they choose to escalate.
Edit to correct: I previously said all missiles were fired from Indian aircraft, in truth some appear to have been air-launched while others were surface-launched. The point that no Indian aircraft entered Pakistani airspace to conduct these strikes remains true.
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I don't mean to be a conspiracy theorist, but it looks to me like the powers that be in India are deliberately angling for a nuclear war with Pakistan because they see it as inevitable in the long term but think that the results will be more favorable for them the sooner it happens. Moreover, they're also angling for Pakistan to launch the first (nuclear) strike because they expect the rest of the world will be more sympathetic to them in that case.
I wouldn't say they're angling for nuclear war, exactly, but I do think they believe they'd win one if it came to it. The political situation in both countries makes it very unlikely that either will back down, not this early in the conflict at any rate. India's Hindu-nationalist government absolutely cannot be seen to take a targeted anti-Hindu terror attack lying down, and has been putting out a lot of rhetoric about national strength (think of the "India superpower by 20XX" memes). At the same time, their chosen method of retaliation was quite restrained, and optimized for the appearance of strength: it was flashy and geographically-expansive but does not appear to have actually caused much damage. So it can satisfy the voters' need for blood while also giving Pakistan every opportunity to still back down. The Pakistani government, for its part, has been through a lot of internal turmoil in recent years and, on top of the general autocratic impulse/need to look strong for the audience at home, would surely appreciate a chance to rally the public against their hated foreign enemy as a simple distraction. It is possible that Pakistani intelligence encouraged, or even orchestrated, the Kashmir terrorist attack as a deniable means of starting a conflict -- but even if they didn't the government will not be too broken up about the situation.
It is difficult for me to see either side backing down absent some sort of externally-brokered peace talks (which don't look very likely, at least not yet). But it doesn't need a conspiracy to cause a larger war, just good old-fashioned power politics, and there are many steps of escalation for the two sides to go through without resorting to nuclear weapons. Both sides seem confident that they can beat the other in a conventional, limited war. If that confidence holds on both sides then escalation is likely, since both sides know the other is willing to fight without breaking out the nukes.
Uh, doesn’t India have gigantic conventional superiority? Why would Pakistan think they can win a conventional war?
India does have conventional superiority through sheer force of numbers, yes, but I wouldn't call the margin gigantic necessarily -- a significant amount of Indian forces are located away from the Pakistani border, and Pakistan does have some technological advantages with modern Chinese and semi-modern American missiles and radars that can outrange Indian kit, at least under certain circumstances. This appears to have come into play already -- French intelligence has confirmed that one Rafale fighter was indeed shot down, and it's looking increasingly credible that at least one or two other Indian jets were shot down during the Indian strike mission and/or in air-to-air fighting over Kashmir, as well. Relatedly there is strong evidence that Pakistan deployed Chinese-made PL-15 missiles as part of their counter-air operation, the first use of the type in combat -- these are more or less state-of-the-art missiles, at least comparable to the American AMRAAM and quite possibly superior, including modern radar/seeker tech that is supposed to be more effective against countermeasures than older weapons. They are likely superior to anything India can field and, at least on paper, represent a qualitative jump from Pakistani capabilities in past conflicts.
So, I do think India would win pretty decisively in a truly full-scale war, but Pakistan may think they can bleed India enough on the way up the escalation ladder that India will get off the ladder before the war reaches the scale where India's numerical advantage comes fully into play. This is not a gamble I personally would bet my country on, but Pakistan's government is notably a dysfunctional autocracy and the public appears to be swept up in nationalistic war fever (and the same applies to India, albeit a bit less dysfunctional and a bit less autocratic); these are not conditions that lead to cautious decision making.
Notably, as of now Pakistan is still publicly vowing to retaliate for the Indian retaliation -- if they choose to escalate with a more deadly counterattack it is very hard for me to see India backing down absent a concerted effort from foreign countries (or perhaps the UN) to bring the two sides to the table. The US has halfheartedly warned India to "exercise restraint" but has been generally staying out of it; the UN has issued boilerplate calls for restraint and negotiation but nothing more; Chinese officials have been meeting with the Pakistani government in Islamabad, but it is not clear what they were discussing and China has not made overt public declarations of any formal stance on the war.
Edit: actually, while the majority of Pakistani statements have continued to vow further revenge, the defense minister did at one point make a statement saying essentially that Pakistan was ready to cease hostilities if India was. It is not clear, at least to me, if this is supposed to imply they will be ready for a ceasefire after a retaliatory strike against India or instead of such a strike; I am also not sufficiently keyed-in to Pakistani media to be confident if this implies some kind of disagreement within the Pakistani government or if it is entirely compatible with their otherwise-bellicose posture. But there does seem to be some hope of cooler heads prevailing in Pakistan.
India has the Meteor, which I believe should be [contingent on public figures being ~true] comparable to if not superior than an export PL-15 in range (Pakistan gets downgraded stuff, I believe) unless the Indian Meteor is also downgraded. The Meteor's ramjet should give it an edge in certain circumstances, but I don't think the Meteor has an AESA seekerhead, and I believe the PL-15 does, so that definitely gives the PL-15 an edge of its own.
I didn't know India used Meteors, thanks for that -- so they do have range -- but yes the AESA seeker radar is what I believe gives the PL-15 its edge over India's air-to-air arsenal. I'll confess to not having much knowledge of how modern radars actually work in detail (I know what AESA means conceptually but not much about the implications in context) but my understanding is that it gives a significant improvement against countermeasures compared to older weapons.
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Why would it be more favorable sooner? Do you think they expect Pakistan's arsenal to get considerably stronger? Wouldn't India's BMD benefit from more development and deployment time, or do you think it's already capable of meaningfully blunting a Pakistani attack?
I don't know much about India/Pakistan so I don't have a strong opinion, very curious!
That is my assumption, yeah. At the moment, nuclear war between Pakistan and India wouldn't actually be an MAD scenario; Pakistan would be completely destroyed (and you can't get any more destroyed than that) while India would "merely" suffer the worst disaster in memory. Pakistan and India have similar-sized nuclear arsenals (in terms of number of bombs - India's bombs are much stronger), but India is of course much larger, and they also have much more sophisticated nuclear delivery systems; Pakistan's arsenal is dangerous but it's currently one of the easier nuclear powers in the world to foil an attack from. In the future they'll most likely be more evenly-matched and a nuclear war would actually spell the end of both India and Pakistan.
Do we know India has a sufficient amount of deployed thermonuclear warheads to actually destroy Pakistan?
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Hypothetically, if India were to blow its hot nuclear load on Pakistan—in which case, as you mentioned, it would likely suffer the worst disaster in history—would India then have the (nuclear or conventional) wherewithal to prevent, say, a Chinese invasion of the contested northeastern borderlands? Or other violations of its territorial integrity?
If not, this may be reason enough for India not to pursue escalation to nuclear war, even if a nuclear exchange with Pakistan would technically be survivable.
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Interesting, thanks! Looks like Pakistan has mostly SRBMs and MRBMs and cruise missiles? Pakistan definitely doesn't have the strategic depth that the US/USSR have but I don't know enough about ABMs and in particular India's ballistic missile defense program to know if that gives India much of an edge there.
Definitely makes striking the launchers prior to launch easier though!
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Nothing ever happens ¯\_(ツ)__/¯
More seriously, I would like to believe that everyone has enough skin in the game to recognize that the use of nuclear weapons is a bad thing for the globe. Beyond the direct human suffering of New Delhi getting turned into radioactive slag, the memes are at least partially true, nobody wants a trillion Indian/Pakistani refugees so the rest of the world et al. will do their damnedest to prevent nukes from flying. But maybe the interest of everyone else in the world isn't enough and Modi lets fly. Historical Events seem to be occurring more and more often.
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