Even as a war reporter who cut my teeth in journalism with frontline coverage of the Kargil conflict in 1999, the scenes I witnessed on the ground during Operation Sindoor were unprecedented, surreal, and harbingers of what modern warfare will look like. Travelling by road through Punjab and Jammu — the airports were shut — one had to adjust to driving blind through precautionary blackouts. If I looked up, I would often see balls of orange fire light up the thick, black sky. Often this would be accompanied by the sound of explosions or the rat-a-tat of distant firing. When it was further away, you could only see the silent sliver of a red streak across the skyline. Of course, it soon became evident that this was India’s fabulous integrated air defence system bringing down Pakistani drones, and in some cases, missiles, before they could hit any target, civilian or military in India.

By now, there is enough satellite imagery coupled with the very granular and effective military briefing by India’s armed forces to know the scale of damage India inflicted on Pakistan’s air defence systems and air bases, including Nur Khan, Sargodha and Rahim Yar Khan. This was the tipping point that flipped the Pakistan military and left them with no option but to call India for a ceasefire. From burnt transport planes to destroyed hangars, from a hit on the entrance to a nuclear storage facility to depleting stocks, Pakistan could not withstand the precision strikes by India, despite China being a ghost in the........

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