Islamabad, Pakistan – In Pakistan, May began with major city streets adorned with banners and posters honoring the military leadership that, according to official accounts, guided the country’s defenses and led the nation to victory in last year’s four-day aerial war with India. On Thursday, at the Nur Khan Auditorium in Rawalpindi, the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) held a ceremony commemorating its ‘achievements’ in shooting down Indian jets. On Friday evening in Lahore, a government-organized concert at Liberty Chowk celebrated the conflict’s success in what Pakistan refers to as the ‘Day of the Battle of Truth’. However, across the border, India is also celebrating what its government and military assert was their victory. On Thursday, May 7, Prime Minister Narendra Modi changed his profile picture on X to the official logo of Operation Sindoor, India’s designation for the May 2025 military operation against Pakistan, and encouraged every Indian to follow suit. ‘A year ago, our armed forces displayed unparalleled courage, precision, and resolve,’ Modi wrote on X. ‘Today, we remain as steadfast as ever in our resolve to defeat terrorism and destroy its enabling ecosystem.’ Both governments showcased their militaries. At a news conference in New Delhi lasting over two hours, Air Marshal Awadhesh Kumar Bharti stated that India had ‘destroyed 13 Pakistani aircraft’ and ‘struck 11 airfields’. Meanwhile, in Rawalpindi, Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, director general of Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the media wing of Pakistan’s armed forces, informed reporters that the country had defeated an enemy ‘five times larger than itself’ and had demonstrated only ’10 percent’ of its military potential. ‘We are prepared,’ he stated. ‘If anyone wants to test us, they are welcome to do so.’ Analysts, however, suggest that despite the public claims of victory and celebrations in both nations, crucial questions persist regarding whether the South Asian neighbors have learned lessons, both from their respective gains in the conflict and from the weaknesses revealed during and after the fighting. The ‘wins’ India and Pakistan are celebrating. On April 22, 2025, gunmen attacked tourists in Pahalgam, Indian-administered Kashmir, killing 26 civilians. India attributed the attack to Pakistan, an accusation Islamabad denied. India launched Operation Sindoor on May 7, 2025, striking multiple sites deep inside Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. It maintained that it was targeting ‘terrorist’ infrastructure, but Pakistani officials stated that civilians bore the brunt of the assault. Pakistan retaliated with Operation Bunyan al-Marsoos. Contrary to official narratives from both sides, the ensuing four-day conflict did not conclude in a clear victory for either nation. Pakistan can highlight the aerial exchange on the night of May 6-7. Its Chinese-built J-10C jets shot down Indian aircraft, including Rafales, during the initial phase of the conflict. At the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore in June 2025, India’s second chief of defense staff, General Anil Chauhan, admitted to jet losses on the first day of the fighting. Air Marshal Bharti had stated it more directly days earlier: ‘Losses are a part of combat.’ Pakistan also gained what many analysts perceived as a diplomatic and narrative advantage. It accepted US President Donald Trump’s assertion that he had brokered the ceasefire that ended the war on May 10, nominated Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize, and has, over the past year, emerged as a significant diplomatic force, serving as the primary mediator of a ceasefire in the US war on Iran. For its part, India can also highlight significant military outcomes. Its BrahMos long-range missiles struck multiple Pakistani airbases, including Nur Khan in Rawalpindi and Bholari in Sindh province. India also employed Israeli-made drones that penetrated as far as Karachi and Lahore, and withdrew from the Indus Waters Treaty on April 23, 2025, a pact that governs river-water sharing between the neighbors. This decision carries consequences far beyond the military exchange. While commercial satellite imagery released by Western companies extensively documented damage at Pakistani military installations, the same companies, Maxar (now renamed Vantor) and Planet Labs, released no imagery of the Indian military sites allegedly struck by Pakistan during or after the conflict. Meanwhile, Pakistani losses were subjected to open-source scrutiny, whereas Indian losses were not. Both interpretations of the conflict contain elements of truth. Yet, neither is complete. The disparity between the two narratives is not merely rhetorical, analysts contend. It has consequences for how honestly each side is internalizing what the conflict truly revealed, and how seriously the task of addressing genuine vulnerabilities is being undertaken. Pakistan’s unresolved gaps. At Thursday’s news conference in Rawalpindi, Pakistan’s military provided its most detailed public account to date of its efforts to bolster capabilities over the past year. Lieutenant General Chaudhry announced the formal operationalization of the Army Rocket Force Command (ARFC), which the military described as being ‘equipped with modern technology and capable of targeting the enemy with high precision from every direction’. The presentation unveiled a series of newly inducted systems over the last 12 months: the Fatah-III supersonic cruise missile; the Fatah-IV, with a stated range of 750km (466 miles); and the Fatah-V, described as a 1,000km (621-mile) deep-strike rocket system. ‘The Rocket Force was not created specifically to ‘solve’ the BrahMos problem,’ said Tughral Yamin, a defense analyst and former brigadier in the Pakistani army. ‘Its purpose was institutional and doctrinal: to streamline and accelerate conventional missile decision-making while maintaining a clear separation from Pakistan’s nuclear deterrent architecture.’ Muhammad Faisal, a Sydney-based defense and foreign policy analyst, agreed with that distinction but highlighted the practical implications. ‘Pakistan now possesses credible and usable conventional strike options,’ he told Al Jazeera. ‘It will not halt India’s high-speed standoff strikes. But in the next round, India could anticipate Pakistan’s conventional cruise missile retaliation.’ However, Adil Sultan, a former Pakistan Air Force commodore, cautioned that the ARFC remained a work in progress. ‘The rocket force appears to still be in its evolutionary phase,’ he said, adding that newer systems, such as the Fatah-III, seem to provide ‘a credible response against BrahMos and other high-speed projectiles.’ Pakistan’s broader military procurement has continued in parallel. Islamabad increased its budget by 20 percent, allocating 2.55 trillion Pakistani rupees ($9bn) for military expenditure, according to budget documents presented by Minister of Finance Muhammad Aurangzeb last June. That included 704 billion rupees ($2.5bn) for equipment and physical assets. A 2025 report by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission noted that Beijing had offered to sell Pakistan up to 40 J-35A fifth-generation fighter jets, although no deliveries have yet occurred. In December 2025, Washington notified Congress of a proposed $686m package to upgrade Pakistan’s F-16 fleet, extending its operational life to 2040. Christopher Clary, a political scientist at the University at Albany, cautioned against interpreting the upgrades as a straightforward shift in capability. ‘We don’t know whether this will be just a ‘Red Queen’s race,’ where both sides race as fast as possible just to stay in the same relative position against one another,’ he told Al Jazeera, ‘or if one party will pull away the next time around.’ Beyond the hardware. Despite these upgrades, Pakistan’s air defense posture remains its most exposed vulnerability, analysts point out. Its Chinese-supplied HQ-9B surface-to-air missile system failed to intercept the BrahMos missiles during the May 2025 conflict. Islamabad, according to Pakistani defense analyst Yamin, is now pursuing the longer-range HQ-19 ballistic missile defense system, with induction anticipated later in 2026. Faisal, the Sydney-based analyst, described the Pakistani Air Force’s (PAF) opening performance on May 7, 2025, as impressive, but stated that the later stages of the conflict exposed significant weaknesses. ‘The PAF’s performance in the first phase of the conflict was genuinely remarkable,’ he said. ‘It displayed both coherence and escalation discipline. However, later BrahMos strikes on airbases depicted gaps in ground air defenses.’ New weapons systems alone, Faisal argued, would not suffice. ‘Pakistan will have to meet this challenge through hardened shelters, dispersals, and urgent runway repair capacities to avoid being incapacitated in the next conflict,’ he said. The University at Albany’s Clary noted that the BrahMos missile’s combat debut had altered the strategic calculations for both sides. ‘The BrahMos had never been used before in combat,’ he said, ‘and so its use in 2025 will have given Pakistani air defense planners, and the Chinese manufacturers that make many of the Pakistani systems, a look at the technology.’ Whether there are straightforward countermeasures, or whether dealing with a hypersonic cruise missile like BrahMos remains beyond Pakistan’s current technological reach, is still unclear. Yamin argued that the conflict also underscored the diminishing value of geography as strategic depth. Strikes reached Nur Khan, Bholari, and installations as far south as Sukkur. ‘The conflict demonstrated that geography alone no longer provides strategic depth in the age of long-range precision weapons, drones, cyber capabilities, and satellite-guided systems,’ he said. Faisal articulated the doctrinal implications more directly. ‘Deep strikes into Lahore, Karachi, and Rawalpindi demonstrate that ‘geographic immunity’ has eroded,’ he said. ‘Doctrinally, Pakistan’s military is indicating preparation for conventional strikes from both ground and sea-based platforms to strike the Indian heartland, even at its southern shores, far from Pakistan.’ But that assessment is complicated by fiscal realities. Islamabad increased defense spending even as it cut overall federal expenditure by 7 percent to comply with its International Monetary Fund loan program. Meanwhile, India’s defense budget for 2025-26, according to Indian budget documents, stands at approximately $78.7bn, nearly nine times Pakistan’s official allocation. India’s quieter reckoning. India’s official posture since the conflict has largely been one of vindication. Praveen Donthi, a New Delhi-based analyst at the International Crisis Group, described it as an ‘opaque conflict’ between two nuclear-armed nations. Alongside the military exchange, he said, a parallel war of misinformation was waged online. ‘Such misinformation had surprisingly allowed for an interesting end, as both sides could claim victory,’ he told Al Jazeera. ‘Neither side wants to concede its losses.’ Second Chief of Defense Staff Chauhan’s remarks in Singapore remain the closest India has come to accountability for its aircraft losses. He stated India had lost aircraft, ‘rectified tactics,’ and returned ‘in large numbers’ to strike Pakistani airbases. But he had declined to specify how many aircraft were lost. C Uday Bhaskar, a retired Indian Navy officer and director of the Society for Policy Studies in New Delhi, defended India’s reticence as operationally necessary, noting that Operation Sindoor still remains active, only on pause according to the government, in India’s framing. But, he said: ‘It would have been more appropriate for a democracy like India if this statement had been made in parliament by the defense minister,’ he told Al Jazeera. The diplomatic fallout has also proven uncomfortable for New Delhi. India insisted that the ceasefire that ended the war was settled bilaterally, rejecting repeated claims by Trump that he deserved credit, even as Pakistan publicly thanked the US president and nominated him for the Nobel Prize. The contrast shaped how the aftermath was interpreted internationally. Pakistani Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir’s subsequent trajectory underscored the shift. Last June, Trump hosted him for a White House lunch, the first time a US president had privately received a Pakistani military chief without civilian leadership present. By April 2026, Munir’s global rise had taken him to Tehran as the first regional military leader to travel there since the US and Israel launched war on Iran on February 28. He played a central role in the April 8 ceasefire between Washington and Tehran, and has continued to play a prominent mediatory role since. Meanwhile, India’s evolving doctrine, which treats major attacks as acts of war, carries its own risks. The International Crisis Group’s Donthi stated that New Delhi believes it has ‘called Islamabad’s bluff over what it terms nuclear blackmail by engaging in a limited conflict below the nuclear threshold.’ India’s primary condition for diplomatic re-engagement, he said, is ‘the credible and verifiable enforcement of the prohibition on all anti-India militant groups.’ Thus, the inherent conditions that led to last year’s war remain unresolved. ‘Due to mutual distrust and the absence of reliable communication channels, the likelihood of conflict reigniting is significant,’ Donthi said. The water front. Of all the vulnerabilities exposed by the conflict, the one that appears to be attracting the least concrete policy responses is the water issue, analysts say. India suspended the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) on April 23 last year and has yet to reinstate it. The treaty underpins one of the world’s largest contiguous irrigation systems, supplying more than 80 percent of Pakistan’s agricultural water, according to the World Bank, and sustaining the livelihoods of more than 240 million people. Pakistan’s effective water storage capacity stands at roughly 30 days, compared with India’s – between 120 and 220 days. Pakistani Minister for Planning Development Ahsan Iqbal, addressing a government meeting on water on April 30, said that India’s attempts to use water as an instrument of pressure highlighted ‘a serious external dimension to Pakistan’s water security.’ Experts caution against viewing the move as an immediate operational crisis. Erum Sattar, a US-based independent water law and policy scholar, argued that India’s invocation of ‘abeyance’ from the pact has no basis in the treaty’s legal framework. Under the treaty’s terms, she said, India remains obligated to share data on water releases and river conditions. ‘While not having this information certainly impacts Pakistan’s water security and needs to be cataloged and contested, its immediate effects are limited,’ she told Al Jazeera. Naseer Memon, an Islamabad-based environmental specialist, agreed. ‘India’s suspension of the IWT is illegal and unethical, but it does not pose any imminent threat,’ he said, arguing that internal failings, including poorly maintained canals, outdated farming practices, and unsuitable cropping patterns, posed more immediate dangers. Hassan Abbas, an Islamabad-based water and environment consultant, offered a sharper assessment. ‘The worst outcome for Pakistan’s water security is not hypothetical,’ he told Al Jazeera. ‘It already occurred and was legitimized by the Indus Waters Treaty.’ Abbas argued that the treaty had, from its inception, formalized rather than prevented Pakistan’s water insecurity. ‘In effect, the treaty let India take all the water that could be taken, and ‘gave’ Pakistan what couldn’t,’ he said. The longer-term outlook is less reassuring. Sattar argued that the infrastructure Pakistan is now rushing to build may offer diminishing returns as temperatures rise. If global temperatures increase by 3-4 degrees Celsius (37-39F), she said, between one-third and half of the region’s glaciers could disappear. ‘Pakistan will need to learn how to build an economy that delivers for its people with a drastically reduced amount of water,’ she said. ‘That is the real threat to national security, not, per se, transboundary water challenges.’ Clary offered a more measured assessment. A collapse of IWT cooperation would become ‘a major political and economic irritant in the India-Pakistan relationship for the indefinite future,’ he said, but noted that ‘irritants are rarely triggers for conflict.’ India has stated that the treaty will remain suspended until Pakistan takes what New Delhi describes as credible and irreversible steps against cross-border armed groups that target India and Indian-administered Kashmir. But 12 months after the missile exchanges, no diplomatic resolution is in sight. Faisal, the Sydney-based scholar, said the doctrinal logic on both sides was still playing out. ‘Pakistan has to demonstrate long-range conventional missile strikes and drones flying… over major Indian cities during the next crisis,’ he said. ‘Only then will this option be disavowed by both sides.’ Bhaskar, for his part, offered a warning that resonated across both capitals. ‘Both sides ought to invest in Plan B diplomacy and quiet channels to control the escalation,’ he said. ‘For when it occurs, it will be very rapid.’
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