Technological Discord and Tactical Misjudgment: India’s Military Setback in the May 2025 Crisis
Victory in multi-domain warfare depends on the effective integration of military resources within a contested battlespace, not merely their quantity. The May 2025 India-Pakistan conflict highlighted India’s challenges in managing technologically fragmented platforms. India’s reliance on diverse Russian, Western, and indigenous systems—such as American-Israeli electronics, Russian S-400 air defense systems, and French Rafale jets—created operational discord. Conversely, Pakistan leveraged a cohesive Chinese-backed arsenal, including J-10C and JF-17 fighters, localized drone swarms, and electromagnetic warfare (EMW) tactics unified by a centralized Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) framework.
This essay analyses Pakistan’s tactical edge through Chinese technology and EMW, India’s limited success with BrahMos missile strikes, and how India’s doctrinal and technical fragmentation undermined its military effectiveness. In doing so, this essay highlights both sides’ strengths and weaknesses in a shifting regional context.
India: Perils of Non-Integration
India’s diversified procurement from Russia, France, Israel, and the United States was intended to safeguard strategic autonomy and reduce the dependence on a single supplier. Such assets as the Israeli Heron drones, American surveillance platforms, French Rafale jets, and the Russian S‑400 air defense system offered advanced capabilities but lacked interoperability. Even the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), a leading Indian think tank, underscored same in 2023, when it noted that India’s military modernization is hampered by service-specific preferences resulting in the weak integration of weapons and intelligence systems, limiting their ability to conduct network-centric warfare. Military analyst Michael Dahm echoed similar concern by underlying India’s absence of unified architecture for sensor-to-shooter continuity, which constrained its air defense grid. India’s air force, though large, suffers from interoperability issues due to its diverse fleet of aircraft and missile systems from multiple countries. Dahm argues this complexity hinders real-time coordination and has turned strategic variety into a liability in today’s fast-paced, AI-driven warfare environment.
During this 2025 conflict, Pakistan exploited these gaps with drone saturation tactics against India’s Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat states, both with drones and missiles and EMW tactics to overwhelm Indian command and communication networks. Defense Security Asia reported Pakistan’s “flawless kill chain” integrating Chinese-origin radars, airborne early warning platforms AEW&C (most likely KJ-500), and datalink-enabled fighters, all integrated under a China-supported C4ISR system. Although the majority of the technology and hardware used in Pakistan’s C4ISR system comes from China, the Pakistani military has strategically and tactically integrated it. Think of it as a network with a Chinese backbone and a Pakistani brain, where China supports the network and Pakistan controls integration, tactics, and implementation.
In contrast, India’s own Rafale squadrons experienced latency issues and radar inconsistencies due to an eight-year delay in upgrading gallium nitride (GaN)-based radars for its Rafale fighter jets and lack of joint communication protocols. The 36 Rafale aircraft that India has received since 2020 are still outfitted with gallium arsenide (GaAs)-based RBE2-AESA radars, which are less effective at managing multiple targets and peak power. This resulted in leaving those systems vulnerable to Pakistan’s beyond visual range (BVR) missile engagements.
Moreover, in conflict areas like Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan’s Defense Science and Technology Organization (DESTO) is thought to have created domestic EMW ground stations with the ability to intercept communications intelligence (COMINT) and provide signals intelligence (SIGINT), giving them electronic dominance and real-time tactical awareness. This capability enabled Pakistan to intercept Indian communications, coordinate precision strikes, and disable Indian drones via EMW using “soft kill” techniques.
India’s experience during May 2025’s India-Pakistan conflict demonstrates that inducting advanced military and intelligence platforms without a complimentary doctrine and network architecture can produce ineffective military outcomes. To that end, India requires urgent reforms in jointness, digital integration, and concepts and doctrine to avoid future vulnerabilities and military failures.
Pakistan’s Use of Chinese Technology and Coordinated Warfare Doctrine
Throughout the four-day conflict, Pakistan’s strategic alignment with China paid off well. Over the past decade, Pakistan undertook extensive acquisitions from China, including J-10C multi-role fighter jets fitted with PL-15 long-range air-to-air missiles and HQ-9 and LY-80 air defense systems. Both countries have collaborated on the JF-17 Thunder, particularly its advanced Block III variant, which is increasingly becoming the PAF’s primary combat aircraft—phasing out the aging Mirage III and V platforms. Among these, during the May 2025 conflict, the J-10C established air superiority by neutralizing Indian Su-30MKIs and MiG-29s with BVR tactics and led PAF to dominate key sectors.
Likewise, Pakistan targeted Indian aircraft trying to obtain intelligence over the Line of Control (LoC) with the PL-15E, which has a range of 145 km and active radar homing. Justin Bronk, air power expert at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), assessed that during aerial engagements, the PAF fired a large number of PL-15 (E) air-to-air missiles from either J-10CE, and/or possibly JF-17 fighters, along with a number of HQ-9 long-range surface-to-air missiles. Consequently, the Indian Air Force (IAF) lost several fighters, including a Dassault Rafale, a MiG-29, and likely a Su-30MKI, in addition to one or two other losses for which no clear wreckage has been publicly revealed.
During the conflict, Pakistan’s employment of Chinese-supplied drones, UAVs, jamming devices, and electronic warfare platforms provided Beijing, with a low-risk window into how its technology functions under duress. French lawmaker Marc Chavent has called for a comprehensive upgrade of the Rafale fighter jet’s SPECTRA electronic warfare system following its alleged failure during May’s India-Pakistan clash. In a formal inquiry to the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, Chavent cited intelligence from NATO partners and assessments by U.S. defense analysts, claiming that the Thales-developed SPECTRA suite failed to detect and jam a PL-15E beyond-visual-range missile launched by a Pakistani J-10C equipped with a KLJ-10A AESA radar.
Pakistan’s Electromagnetic Warfare Breakthrough
Pakistan deployed a mix of organic, and Chinese DWL-002 passive detection systems to detect and track electronic signatures of airborne threats. In order to interfere with incoming Indian drones, Pakistan installed a number of Chinese manufactured commercial-grade GPS jammers. Furthermore, on April 29, 2025, the advanced EMW technology carried by Pakistan’s J-10C fighter aircraft reportedly interfered with the control systems of Indian Rafale aircraft operating along the international border, forcing mission cancellation. On May 15, 2025, Pakistan utilized electromagnetic waves EMW to destroy an Indian loitering munition drone near Lahore Airport that was identified as a WARMATE, created by Poland’s WB Electronics. In the midst of the war, Pakistani military planners had a unique opportunity to analyze the state-of-the-art a foreign unmanned aerial system (UAS). A “soft-kill” electronic countermeasure was used to bring it down instead of physical interception. Pakistan’s use of EMW demonstrates that even the most cutting-edge military systems can be rendered useless by an excessive dependence on off-the-shelf technologies without thorough joint integration.
BrahMos Strikes: India’s Limited Success
India made a major display of its precision strike capability with the deployment of the BrahMos supersonic missile. The Indian authority claimed that BrahMos missile, a joint Indo-Russian project, on 9-10 May 2025, was employed in both air-to-ground (Su-30MKIs) and ground-launched versions to target high-value Pakistani airbases and radar stations, including Rafiqui, Murid, Nur Khan, Bolari, and Skardu. However, Pakistan Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) confirmed that Indian military forces attempted to strike three key PAF bases—Nur Khan, Murid, and Shorkot—during a recent escalation. Nevertheless, Pakistan’s air defense systems successfully intercepted the threats, ensuring that all PAF assets remained fully secure and undamaged. The BrahMos’s supersonic speed (Mach 2.8 to 3.0), low radar cross-section, and great maneuverability enabled effective retaliatory strikes. However, these strikes failed to shift the strategic balance of the conflict due to India’s lack of integrated platforms across multiple domains.
In recent years, Pakistan’s air defense capabilities have been greatly enhanced. In October 2021, for instance, the Pakistani military introduced the Chinese-built HQ-9/P Surface-to-Air Missile System. The HQ-9/P is a long-range, high-precision platform that can intercept ballistic threats, cruise missiles, and aircraft. The HQ-9/P is sometimes equated to Russia’s S-400 system due to the HQ-9/P’s high single-shot kill probability and detection range of up to 125 kilometers. The LY-80 (HQ-16A), a low-to-medium altitude air defense system, created by China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, was previously deployed by Pakistan in 2017. This system can destroy contemporary fighter planes, drones, and cruise missiles up to 18 kilometers in the air using semi-active radar guidance. However, concern was raised by Pakistan’s failure to intercept the BrahMos missile that entered its airspace despite this sophisticated technology. The BrahMos strikes on Pakistan underscored that even the most powerful weapons require integrated joint doctrine to maximize their impact.
Conclusion:
The May 2025 India-Pakistan conflict underscores that success in multi-domain warfare depends on integrated technology, effective joint doctrine, and sound and timely decision-making. India’s BrahMos strikes showed tactical prowess but were undermined by structural challenges. Pakistan’s Chinese-origin hardware integrated with Pakistani software enabled superior battlefield agility. In a theater of modern warfare characterized by speed, complexity, and information supremacy, military success depends not just on capabilities but also on unified systems and good joint integration.
