Five Strategic Insights from India’s Defence Awakening: Echoes from the NDTV Summit

By Ninad D Sheth

India’s defence posture, long characterised by cautious restraint, appears to be undergoing a profound transformation. The NDTV Defence Summit 2025, held amid the aftershocks of this year’s brief but intense border conflict with Pakistan, offered a rare window into this evolution. Drawing on presentations from military leaders and industry figures, the event distilled key lessons from Operation Sindoor—the codename for India’s May 2025 strikes against terrorist strongholds in Pakistan. What emerged was not just a chronicle of tactical successes, but a blueprint for a more assertive, self-reliant India in an era of multi-domain warfare. Here are five takeaways, blending the operation’s kinetic realities with subtler strategic undercurrents.

The Art of Swift Retribution

Operation Sindoor exemplified India’s emerging doctrine of rapid, precise response to provocation. The summit revealed how the Indian Air Force (IAF) devised a strike plan within 48 hours of the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack, which killed 26 people, including pilgrims. Air Marshal Narmdeshwar Tiwari detailed the operation’s execution: on May 7-10, 2025, IAF jets targeted Lashkar-e-Taiba’s headquarters in Muridke and Jaish-e-Mohammed’s base in Bahawalpur, both deep inside Pakistan. Remarkably, fewer than 50 munitions were expended to compel a ceasefire, showcasing efficiency born of years of preparation.

This speed marks a departure from past hesitations, such as the prolonged deliberations following earlier attacks. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, addressing the summit, highlighted the role of indigenous systems in these strikes, noting that “the world has seen India’s defence capabilities” through such actions. The operation’s success hinged on integrated command structures, with the Army handling seven targets near the Line of Control while the IAF struck farther afield. A hidden gem here is the psychological impact: by limiting escalation yet achieving dominance, India signalled that future aggressions would invite calibrated but overwhelming reprisals. In an age of hybrid threats, this doctrine could deter not just state-sponsored terrorism but also grey-zone incursions along disputed borders.

Unveiling the Shadow Coalition

Beyond the bilateral India-Pakistan narrative, the summit exposed a more insidious reality: Operation Sindoor pitted India against a tacit alliance of adversaries. Lieutenant General Rahul R Singh disclosed that China provided Pakistan with real-time intelligence on Indian deployments during DGMO talks. “Pakistan was getting live inputs of our deployment from China,” he stated, underscoring Beijing’s use of the conflict as a “live lab” to test its weaponry against Indian forces. With 81% of Pakistan’s arsenal being Chinese-origin, this support effectively turned a regional skirmish into a proxy testbed.

Turkey added another layer, supplying Bayraktar drones and personnel to bolster Pakistani defences. This three-front dynamic—Pakistan as the primary foe, with China and Turkey as enablers—reveals a hidden gem in modern geopolitics: the convergence of revisionist powers through technological and intelligence sharing. Singh described China’s strategy as “killing with a borrowed knife,” allowing it to probe Indian capabilities without direct involvement. For India, this necessitates a recalibration of threat assessments, treating isolated incidents as potential nodes in a broader network. The summit’s discussions suggested that countering such coalitions will require not just military hardware but diplomatic manoeuvres to isolate enablers, perhaps through strengthened ties with the Quad or other Indo-Pacific alliances.

The Self-Reliance Revolution

At the heart of India’s Sindoor success was the Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative, transforming the country from arms importer to budding exporter. Defence exports surged to Rs. 23,622 crore in 2024-25, a 34-fold rise from a decade ago, fuelled by demand for systems like Pinaka rockets and Akash missiles. DRDO Chairman Samir V Kamat projected reaching Rs. 50,000 crore by 2028-29, bolstered by Operation Sindoor’s demonstration of indigenous platforms.

Defence Secretary RK Singh noted that all warships are now built domestically, a milestone in self-reliance. Yet challenges persist: the Tejas Mk-1A fighter jet programme faces delays, with the first two deliveries expected by September 2025 due to engine supply issues. A subtle insight from the summit is the export ripple effect; Sindoor’s use of homegrown munitions has sparked interest from Southeast Asian and African nations, potentially turning defence into a economic multiplier. This shift reduces vulnerability to supply-chain disruptions, as seen with foreign components during global conflicts. In Economist terms, it’s a classic case of import substitution yielding export dividends, positioning India as a counterweight to China’s dominance in the global arms market.

The Cognitive Battlefield

The summit delved into warfare’s intangible frontiers, with Adani Defence CEO Ashish Rajvanshi framing cognitive warfare as the fusion of human and machine intelligence. Likening it to “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” he argued that future victories will belong to those mastering AI-driven decision-making in data-saturated environments. Operation Sindoor illustrated this: AI-enhanced command centres provided real-time threat analysis, enabling precise strikes amid electronic jamming and drone swarms.

This represents a paradigm shift from kinetic dominance to cognitive superiority, where training focuses on human-AI symbiosis rather than marksmanship alone. A hidden gem is the deterrence value; by showcasing cognitive capabilities, India signals to adversaries that information warfare—disinformation, cyber intrusions—will be met with superior processing power. Rajvanshi emphasised adapting to autonomous systems like loitering munitions, which demand operators who can thrive under uncertainty. For a nation like India, with its vast tech talent pool, this could be a force multiplier, but it also raises ethical questions about AI’s role in life-and-death decisions.

Water as a Weapon of Strategy

Finally, the summit’s reflections on Operation Sindoor highlighted water diplomacy’s emergence as a non-kinetic tool. India’s decision to place the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance allows for unrestricted dam construction and water diversion, targeting Pakistan’s agriculture-dependent economy. Plans include short-, mid-, and long-term measures to reroute flows, such as expanding dam capacities in the Indus basin.

This move exploits the treaty’s vulnerabilities, long a point of contention, without violating international norms outright. Pakistan has decried it as potential “act of war,” with threats of missile strikes on new infrastructure. The strategic insight? In water-scarce South Asia, hydrological leverage can achieve what missiles cannot, compelling negotiations without escalation. Coupled with India’s pursuit of strategic autonomy—diversifying defence partnerships across 53 nations while building indigenous tech—this underscores a holistic security approach. Autonomy here means technological sovereignty, as in the Safran engine collaboration, reducing reliance on single suppliers.

In sum, the NDTV Defence Summit painted India as a rising power shedding its defensive crouch. Operation Sindoor’s lessons—from rapid strikes to cognitive edges—suggest a nation ready to navigate multi-adversary threats with ingenuity. Yet success hinges on sustaining self-reliance amid global turbulence. As geopolitical fault lines deepen, India’s blend of hard power and strategic finesse could redefine regional stability.