2025 India-Pakistan Conflict: High-Level Notes Plus Pro

From 07 to 10 May 2025, Pakistan and India fought a brief – but intense – military conflict. After about four days of fighting, the conflict was stopped through an American-mediated ceasefire, announced by President Donald Trump on 10 May.

In the course of the short conflict, the world witnessed a long list of important warfare shifts: a large-scale air battle between multirole fighters, heavy use of drones and loitering munitions, the deployment of supersonic to near-hypersonic ballistic and cruise missiles, and even a declaration of cyberwarfare on infrastructure.

Overall, the 2025 Indo-Pak Conflict offered a prelude to the next generation of conventional warfare between major states, i.e., a conflict where well-equipped, well-integrated militaries employed full system-of-systems against each other.

Quwa will explore how Pakistan’s prior procurement and planning had fared in the conflict, and the potential outcome this conflict could have on Pakistan’s future procurement and development programs through a series of articles and other content pieces.

As a starting point, this article will examine a few key observations at a high level – these will be unpacked in greater detail in future content in the coming weeks and months.

One of Quwa’s earlier projections was that the PAF would continue enlarging its J-10CE fleet; after all, the PAF generally plans to acquire at least 80 units of every fighter type it inducts. In this sense, additional J-10CEs could potentially be bought relatively affordably and, given the heightened threat environment, inducted in an accelerated timeline. AVIC has shown that it is capable of honouring urgent delivery timelines, at least to the PAF.