May 12, 2025
Note
This article was written on the night of 12 May 2025 on X, after AVM Aurangzeb’s press briefing post PAF’s retaliation in Operation Bunyan um Marsoos.
PAF didn’t chase theatrics and cinema, its response was professional, textbook to inflict surgical, multi-domain, and demonstrably kinetic pain. From this slide, it seems maps 14+ high-value IAF assets across the western front – Srinagar, Ambala, Pathankot airbases, C2 hubs like Barnala, and deep targets like Kandala. ISR-confirmed precision strikes followed, demonstrated with post-strike imagery in the press brief.
Unlike Indian one-dimensional attempts limited to asset’s capability, PAF went to full-spectrum offensive:
- Electronic Warfare (EW) blinded key radar corridors.
- Cyber ops staggered IAF’s IACCS response loop.
- Space support likely fed orbital ISR for dynamic targeting.
- Kinetics were executed through long-range vectors –– air-launched, surface-deployed, possibly hypersonic and stand-off PGMs.
MDOs: Multi-Domain Operations –integrated all of the above, synchronised across time and geography.
The EBAO: Effects-Based Approach to Operations was clear: don’t chase strike counts, paralyse the air defence posture. Force the adversary to disperse, degrade C2 integrity, and inject ambiguity into their BMD and radar grid. The slide marks Delhi at “>400 km” flirts with strategic reach? Lol. This wasn’t escalation – it was calibrated dominance. PAF struck, filmed, briefed, and disengaged, all within escalation control parameters. This is how “ascendency in effects” is achieved in a 5th-gen battlespace, without having to cross the border.