It was a remark that invited much scorn on social media.
The Pakistan defence minister Khawaja Asif told his country's Parliament on May 9 that "the drone attack (by India) was mounted to detect our locations. It's a technical thing that I can't explain. We didn't intercept the drones, so that the location of our aerial defence units won't get leaked."
The statement, made to defend how India's drones managed to strike Pakistan, came at a time of heightened tensions between the two neighbours.
All 24 missiles that India launched over 25 minutes on nine sites—beginning with a strike on the Abbas terrorist camp in Kotli at 1:04 am on May 7—found their targets: four in Pakistan (including Bahawalpur in Punjab, Muridke, and Sialkot) and five in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).
With 'Operation Sindoor' catching Pakistan yawning in this comprehensive a manner and inflicting such debilitating blows, strategists are questioning the defence capabilities of Islamabad.
The failure in thwarting the operation comes despite a defence budget of Pakistani Rs 2.12 lakh crore (INR 64,082 crore) for FY 2024-25, which translates to 1.7 percent of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
According to media reports, the Pakistan coalition government, quoting the conflict, has endorsed an 18 per cent increase in defence spending to over Rs 2.5 trillion in the new fiscal beginning July 1.
In India, Rs 6.81 lakh crore was allocated for the defence sector for FY 2025-26, including Rs 1.8 lakh crore for the modernisation of the military.
India's defence budget accounted for 1.9 per cent of India's projected GDP for 2024-25.
The most extensive military action in five decades
'Operation Sindoor' marked India's most extensive, coordinated multi-service cross-border military action in five decades, surpassing the scale and depth of the 2016 surgical strikes and the 2019 Balakot airstrikes.
The Pakistani armed forces failed abysmally in repelling these attacks.
The failure to gain any bragging rights in the aerial skirmish has left the Pakistani establishment with no option but to confuse and distract its population with patently false claims and absurd denials, sometimes riddled with multiple contradictions in the same sentence.
In contrast, India perfectly calibrated its response to the Pahalgam terror attack that saw 26 tourists being slaughtered. Balakot was an excellent operation in itself, but it did not escalate sufficiently enough to allow India's quantitative superiority to assert itself. As a result, Pakistan army could brag to its people of having downed a MiG-21 while hiding its own losses.
Under 'Operation Sindoor', India expanded the scope of response to nine locations, including one in Bahawalpur, located around 100 km inside Pakistan's Punjab province. This outwitted Pakistani generals, who took the bait and resorted to a much larger response but to no gain.
The false claims of the Pakistan army of shooting down five Indian jets ran hollow at a time when Rawalpindi, Lahore, Karachi, Multan, Sargodha and Islamabad reeled under Indian reprisals.
Failure of Chinese and Turkish drones
The other significant aspect of this conflict has been the utter failure of Chinese and Turkish (drones) arsenal employed by the Pakistan army.
The much-touted HQ-9 system (long-range semi-active radar homing (SARH) surface-to-air missile (SAM) developed by the People's Republic of China (PRC) was rendered useless thanks to Indian Harop drones.
Similarly, multiple specimens of intact PL-15 (a highly advanced long-range air-to-air missile developed by China's People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) to enhance its beyond-visual-range (BVR) combat capabilities) have been recovered in Punjab in India suggesting that the pilots who launched them at Indian aircraft may have overestimated the kill range. The missile didn't work like it was touted to do.
The Pakistani counterattack with Chinese and Turkish drone barrages also failed miserably against the Akash/MRSAM (medium-range surface-to-air missile) and even anti-aircraft guns, suggesting they are not only wanting in manoeuvrability but also are easily detectable by radars.
Conscientious Pakistanis and critics—a vanishing breed in Pakistan—must be wondering why after having spent over Rs two lakh crore a year on defence spending, the army has come up short in a limited conflict.
Masterstroke
India's planning also helped.
The use of indigenously-built SkyStriker 'Kamikaze' or suicide drones—loitering munitions—to carry out precision strikes in Pakistan and PoK, along with SCALP cruise missiles and Hammer bombs, turned out to be a masterstroke.
Developed by the Bengaluru-based Alpha Design (ADTL) in collaboration with Israel's Elbit Systems, these are GPS-guided loitering munitions that can carry a payload of up to 10 kg. This is lethal enough to dismantle eight to 10 bunkers or a three-storied building.
These are low-cost missiles that can be launched from within India and hit targets located up to 100 kilometres.
After Operation Sindoor, Pakistan will now be wary of them even as their blustering Defence Minister Khawaja Asif talks up the prospect of war.
