TWENTY-SEVEN years after Pakistan`s nuclear tests, a pressing doctrinal dilemma has come into focus: while the nuclear arsenal has succeeded in deterring full-scale war, a troubling pattern has emerged India`s growing reliance on calculated and limited conventional strikes. This evolving challenge requires a clear and adaptive strategy to effectively counter it.

These operations, which Delhi has designed to stay below the nuclear threshold, have manifested the shrinking space in which our deterrence operates in the highly volatile SouthAsian environment. The time has come to rethink and update our understanding of deterrence one that reflects the realities of today, where conflict no longer arrives with armies massing at borders, but with drones in the sky and missiles that strike and disappear before the world has time to respond.

On May 7, India launched `Operation Sindoor` a coordinated assault involving air strikes, drone swarms, and missile attacks deep inside Pakistani territory. The strikes hit a disturbing range of targets from religious institutions like mosques to strategic military installations.

Pakistani armed forces that follow a `quid pro quo plus`policy with regards to India, responded robustly and swiftly, downing multiple Indian aircraft including Rafale, Mirage 2000, MiG29, and Su-30jetsin a short span of less than an hour employing stand-off weapons and air defence systems to signal its resolve.

But instead of de-escalating,Indiaescalatedfurther.

By the next morning, a wave of drones swarmed Pakistani skies, followed a day later by fresh missile attacks on airbases. It was a moment of real danger. The international community scrambled to contain what was quickly becoming a runaway crisis. Deterrence, while not broken, was undeniably shaken.

India`s willingness to actand expand geographic scope of its strikes, echoing Uri in 2016 and PulwamaBalakot in 2019, points to a gap in Pakistan`s ability to deter reckless Indian behaviour due to emergence of newer technologies. To put it simply, Pakistan`s shield is holding, though it may be fraying at the edges.

Pakistan`s nuclear weapons programme, born from the trauma of 1971, was built on a simple promise: to make any future aggression against the country unthinkable. Between 1998 and 2015, that promise largely held. Even during moments of extreme tension like the Kargil crisis of 1999, monthslong military standoff in 2002 or the aftermath of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, Indiarefrained from crossing the Line of Control and the international border or undertaking major strike in Pakistani heartland. But that calculus began to shift post-2015 especially following the Gurdaspur attack barely weeks after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had met then Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif at Ufa. First came the claimed `surgical strikes`, then the 2019 aerial incursion following Pulwama.

`South Asia has neither crisis stability nor arms race stability. While I do not expect a crisis for some time perhaps several years the region remains unstable and dangerous,` said Christopher Clary, a security affairs expert at the Universityat Albany, the US.

The May 2025 clash an intense 88-hour exchange of air strikes, drones, and missile fire marked a deeper evolution of this trend of a rapid escalation under the nuclear overhang. It laid bare a dangerous new reality: India believes it can operate in a `grey zone` just below the nuclear threshold, using limited, precise force to impose costs without triggering all-out war.

Indian leaders appear beholden to the idea that they can hit Pakistan without provoking an uncontrollable escalation. From Uri to Balakot, and now Pahalgam, the visible trend is that each strike is a calculated test of Pakistani resolve, and each one pushes the boundaries a little further.

Pakistan`s `quid pro quo plus` policy, adopted after 2016, meant to meet Indian aggression with a harder blow, aimed to slam this door of a military conflict below nuclear rung shut. But three incidents in nine years show Pakistani `plus` isn`t scaring India enough.

The policy`s success is bittersweet: it prevents all-out conflict, but India does exploit some space to commit aggression.

Elizabeth Threlkeld, director for South Asia at the Stimson Center, the US, agrees `the limitations of Pakistan`s quid pro quo plus approach are becoming more visible in light of India`s increasing willingness to engage in limited conventional actions.

Misstep towards catastrophe Each Indian operation is designed to normalise limited raids in the eyes of the world. If this continues, and strikes on mainland Pakistan are repeated, it would increase the risk of a misstep towards nuclear catastrophe as each crisis raises the stakes.

Getting an opportunity to dump the payload on a Balakot hill in 2019 gave way to mainland strikes in 2025, setting a higher baseline for the next clash. A more worrying aspect is that if this cycle will persist, each round will compress decision making windows in a world of hypersonic weapons.

India`s playbook is clear: use modern technology drones, standoff missiles to inflict pain while staying below nuclear tripwires. Modi is therefore attempting, at least on his part, to rewrite the rules, projecting strength to domestic audiences and signalling that Pakistan`s nuclear shadow won`t paralyse India. Whispers of pre-emptive counterforce strategies, meanwhile, have in the past few years circulated with growing frequency, though such a gamble remains improbable.

`In March 2022, an Indian BrahMos missile landed in Mian Channu. Delhi called it an error,Pakistani leadership accepted the explanation, but I saw it as a deliberate test of our defences including our response time. BrahMos is central to India`s pre-emptive strike plans, its speed and precision leave little time to respond, making such incidents dangerously destabilising for Pakistan,` Dr Shireen Mazari, who was a federal minister in 2022, said alluding to the debates within the system at that time.

India`s confidence in multidomain warfare, blending crewed and uncrewed platforms, creates a false sense of control, as if escalation can be neatly managed.

The proponents of such an approach forget that wars don`t always proceed as per calculated decisions, rather they often unravel through confusion.

A single misstep, like a missile or an artillery piece gone astray or a misunderstood signal, can unravel restraint and push a tense standoff into full-blown catastrophe.

What makes it scarier in Indian case is that the extremist Hindutva mindset currently dominating New Delhi and electoral pressures push the government to demonstrate strength through limited strikes, confident they can avoid nuclear escalation. This dynamic perpetuates the very crises their leaders must manage.

`The very presence of recurring conventional engagements highlights the precariousness of the situation, where misperceptions of red lines couldleadtoinadvertentescalation between the two nucleararmed adversaries,` Threlkeld maintained.

Deception or internal dysfunction? Following India`s aerial strikes on the morning of May 7 and Pakistan`s forceful retaliation, Indian External Affairs Minister S.

Jaishankar and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval conveyed messages through international intermediaries indicating that New Delhi wanted to de-escalate. But to Islamabad`s surprise, shortly after it received these signals, Pakistan`s airspace was swarmed by hostile drones. Whether this was a deliberate act of deception or a sign of internal dysfunction within theIndian system remains unclear.

However, one plausible explanation is that hardliners within India`s security establishment pressured the military to climb the next rung of the escalation ladder targeting Pakistani military installations with unmanned platforms, despite diplomatic overtures suggesting restraint.

In this scenario, Pakistan faces a stark choice: continue pursuing a doctrine that punishes India after the incident orforge one that stops India cold.

First, there is a need to strengthen our conventional arsenal, which includes acquisition of modern fighter jets, advanced air defences, rapid-response units, and precision munitions, to make limited strikes too costly. Second, ambiguity, using cyber-attacks, economic pressure, or international legal action to raise India`s costs without nuclear risks, should be embraced. The `catalytic posture`, which involves signalling nuclear readiness to draw international mediation has worked well so far in South Asian environment, but its overuse risks diminishing returns.

Dr Adil Sultan, a dean at the Air University and a former SPD official, while explaining his vision of next generation of deterrence, said, `The future conflict is likely to be more intense, complex, and short, thus requiring quick response through `multi-domain integration` (MDI) of all three services, and ground and space-based assets, with PAF being in the lead due to its inherent agility and capacity to act in a shortest possible time with maximum effect.

Pakistan should also re-emphasise red lines through robust crisis channels especially after the targeting of the airbases.

So here we are back, 27 years later, on the same razor`s edge thankstothetechnologicaladvancement. The nuclear bombs remain the ultimate guarantor of Pakistan`s sovereignty and territorial integrity, but every knife-edge attack or missile/drone strike cannot be stopped. The nukes can only promise that if the worst comes, both sides will pay an unthinkable price.