In May 2025, Pakistan shot down seven Indian warplanes, a claim backed by later credible reports. U.S. sources confirmed Chinese-built J-10C fighters shot down Indian Rafales, and Pakistan’s Air Chief Zaheer Ahmed Babar Sidhu publicly tallied the Indian fighters destroyed in combat. Multiple reports also identified wreckage of an Indian Rafale and Mirage-2000 at Pakistani strike sites, reinforcing Pakistan’s account. India provided no evidence to dispute these claims.

India’s response to those losses has been to extensively enlarge its LR-ASM arsenal. In the May war, the Indian Air Force (IAF) used its BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles, French SCALP/Storm Shadow, and Rampage missiles to strike targets from its own territory. Now India openly seeks even longer reach. Reports say India is in talks to procure the Air-LORA long-range missiles from Israel and is also field-testing an 800 kilometer (km) range BrahMos. Almost two years ago, India contractually signed its largest-ever BrahMos procurement (220 missiles, approximately $2 billion) and approved 110 more air-launched BrahMos.

Longer-range missiles enable Indian jets strike “from safe distances,” beyond Pakistan’s air defence zones, including advanced Pakistani air-to-air weapons like PL-15. Each new LR-ASM thus allows India to hit targets deep from its own soil. After the May war, India is changing its tactics: attack Pakistan without risking aircraft losses. Thus, in the next conflict, Pakistan will also retaliate equally, and this might take the crisis up the rungs of the escalation ladder. Every extra kilometer of range brings Pakistan’s “red lines” closer. For Islamabad, even a strike from hundreds of kilometers away could look indistinguishable from a major attack. Analysts note that with 800 km range missiles, all Pakistani cities, from Islamabad to Karachi, lie within reach of Indian jets flying entirely from Indian territory. Some analysts warn there is now almost no conventional buffer: any use of these missiles could be conflated with a strategic attack.

Pakistan’s doctrine of “full-spectrum deterrence” is designed to deter threats “at all rungs” of that ladder. In practice, using LR-ASM will make any deep Indian conventional counterforce strike against Pakistan more feasible, and this will be treated in Pakistan as an existential threat. These novel weapons will also cause an illusion of security in India since they will feel that they can launch attacks with no major reprisal by the Pakistani side, or if there is any, then it will be countered. Due to this expansion, India has made limited strikes a more attractive coercive instrument and bargaining an increasingly risky game of brinkmanship. LR-ASM enables an attacker to impose rapid, precision costs on an adversary (targeting runways, command-nodes, air-defences, logistics) without risking pilots, so political leaders can credibly threaten or carry out deep strikes short of general war. This kind of weapon also compresses the decision-making time windows through which India can compel Pakistan’s actions and shift the onus of responsibility of escalation onto Pakistan.

The consequences for deterrence are also stark: a limited conflict in future may have a much higher probability of escalation. Modernization and high-alert postures already leave “little margin for error” in South Asia. When India can hit sensitive targets from 800 km away, and Pakistan retaliate back via its quid-pro-quo-plus (QPQP) strategy, multiple rungs can be skipped, potentially leading to a full-scale war. In such a scenario, Pakistan’s Army Rocket Force Command and the Pakistan Air Force’s long-range unmanned systems would form part of Islamabad’s broader retaliatory and signalling toolkit. Indian strategists may view a layered mix of BrahMos, Rampage, and Air-LORA as a route to “escalation dominance” by pressuring Pakistan while minimising their own vulnerabilities. Yet the May 2025 losses only deepen this appetite for so-called risk-reducing stand-off capabilities, even though classic Kahn and Schelling deterrence theories warn that such confidence in controllable escalation is often an illusion.

LR-ASM expansion after the May 2025 war will generate an illusion of dominating the escalation ladder in the Indian psyche. This increases the possibility of a conventional strike, which would compel both states to skip multiple rungs of the escalation ladder and risk a more dangerous crisis. The May 2025 war demonstrated exactly how LR-ASM capabilities increased the dangers of escalation. In the absence of force posture transparency, plausible restraint signalling, and a solid mechanism of crisis handling, the deterrence equilibrium will be more fragile in the region with major consequences of potential nuclear involvement.

Abdul Wassay is a Research Assistant at the Centre for Aerospace and Security Studies, Lahore. He can be reached at info@casslhr.com. The views expressed are those of the author.

India’s Push for Long Range Air-to-Surface Missiles was originally published on Global Security Review.

India’s strategy of escalation dominance, aimed at acquiring the ability to control the pace, intensity, and outcome of a conflict at each successive rung of the escalation ladder, as well as termination on its own terms, is underway. There are indications of development of such a strategy. Conventional superiority, strategic signaling, ready-to-use nuclear forces, and crisis management are all examples. Its strategy of escalation dominance, coupled with damage limitation, is supported by multilayered missile and air defense systems and canisterization of its nuclear-capable missile for a ready-to-use force, as well as cyber and space capabilities.

These capabilities are considered key to a state’s escalation dominance strategy. However, India’s escalation dominance in South Asia is not only accelerating the intensity of the security dilemma by increasing its own security but also deepening the threat perception of the adversary—weakening the strategic stability of South Asia.

In 2004, India revealed its Cold Start doctrine, a limited warfighting offensive plan to achieve conventional objectives within a limited time frame. Later, two more doctrines, known as the Joint Doctrine for Indian Armed Forces and the Land Warfare Doctrine, were issued in 2017 and 2018.

Recently, the Indian government announced a joint exercise by the Indian Army, Navy, and Air Force, named Cold Start, in the first week of October 2025. The exercise aimed to test drones and counter-drone systems that officials labelled as the biggest such drill to be conducted since the May India-Pakistan conflict.

On September 25, 2025, the Indian Ministry of Defense announced that India had conducted a successful flight test of a rail-based Agni-Prime intermediate-range ballistic missile (MRBM). This is the first railway-based ballistic missile, which the minister called “under a full operational scenario.” A rail-based launcher is considered a significant development since the missile can move freely across the national rail network. This  increases the flexibility of the system in terms of its operational capability and survivability, as well as its ability to be deployed quickly.

The development is part of India’s ongoing military modernization program by fielding more types of weapon systems. A rail-based launcher, compared to fixed silos and road mobile launchers, has the advantage of quick deployment, maneuverability, and greater chances of survivability. With the test, India has joined a select group of nations with this capability.

India’s counterforce capability, followed by emerging trends in its nuclear posturing and technological developments, play into Pakistan’s fears. Indian ambitions for conventional counterforce capabilities only increases Pakistan’s fears. Reportedly, India is also pursuing a missile capable of carrying a bunker-buster. Its potential to cause massive destruction could cross Pakistan’s threshold for nuclear use, thereby leading to a serious crisis.

These ambitions require expansion of India’s nuclear arsenal in terms of more missiles, more warheads, and more fissile material to fulfill the requirements of its emerging nuclear posture, which is detrimental to regional peace and stability. India’s pursuit of an escalation dominance strategy vis-à-vis Pakistan could be perilous and lead to retaliation and war, as true escalation dominance is rarely attainable in any confrontation.

It is not something that is a feasible policy objective. Ending conflict on favorable terms remains a perilous policy objective. This is the capability of a state to dictate the endgame of a conflict, ensuring that peace is maintained on its own terms, not the opponent’s.

Nevertheless, India’s policy of escalation dominance in South Asia is escalatory, while remaining elusive. The recent four-day conflict is the latest example of India’s objectives to end the conflict on advantageous terms militarily, economically, and diplomatically. For instance, after its strike inside Pakistan, the Indian government immediately started to claim the success of Operation Sindoor, praising its military capabilities and technological strides.

On the diplomatic level, India anticipated the international community`s response to the attacks and support for the Indian stance to strengthen its regional and international standings. However, the failure of the Indian strategy was exposed at the military level when India faced tough retaliation from Pakistan, resulting in the reported loss of its six jets, besides damage to its key military installations, including its costly defense systems. At the diplomatic and economic levels, Trump’s repeated claims of credit for ending the conflict question its long-held stance of strategic autonomy and rejecting third parties’ role in resolving the Kashmir dispute. After the ceasefire, Trump claimed that to end the conflict between India and Pakistan, his threat of extremely high tariffs was instrumental in reaching a ceasefire agreement.

India has been unable to achieve the desired outcomes from the conflicts it has initiated many times over the past two decades. Latest statements from the Indian military leadership also show that India is unsatisfied with the outcomes of its strategy. It is more useful to treat escalation dominance as a philosophical aspiration than as a feasible policy objective, especially against a country that has a qualitative edge over the initiator of the crisis. Therefore, advanced technologies could be decisive in any future conflicts, but it could be that reciprocal development can offer a counter-capability in the same-domain deterrence and thus may challenge escalation dominance. Pakistan’s policy of full-spectrum deterrence is instrumental in countering Indian ambitions at every level of the escalation ladder. India’s pursuit of escalation dominance complicates the regional security dynamics, which already lack institutionalized Confidence Building Measures (CBMs), a nuclear risk-reduction mechanism, and an arms control framework aligned with the emerging technologies.

Sher Ali Kakar is an Associate Director of Research with a focus on Nuclear and Strategic Affairs at Balochistan Think Tank Network (BTTN), at BUITEMS Quetta. Atta Ullah is a Research Fellow with a focus on Nuclear and Strategic Affairs at Balochistan Think Tank Network (BTTN), at BUITEMS Quetta. Views express in this article are the Author’s own.

India’s Strategy of Escalation Dominance was originally published on Global Security Review.