Excellent post. A friend of mine raised the Balochistan independence movement as another serious constraint on Pakistani actions. If the Pakistani military is otherwhere busy getting pummeled, there could be a big uprising and Pakistan couldn’t face a 2 front conflict even with many Chinese material aid. My friend suspects that was a major Pakistani consideration in a ceasefire because the independence movement has been strong for the last ~20 years.
Pakistan's only obvious somewhat significant non-Chinese ally and possible supporter in this conflict is Turkey. However, with Israel in Syria and Syria relying heavily on Turkey to maintain their sovereignty and stability, who knows how helpful they could be. TRTWorld has consistently posted anti-Indian pieces, urging collaboration between Dalits and Muslims, etc. and has recently come out in favor of Pakistan, while still urging restraint.
How big of a difference could Turkey make in favor of Pakistan? Bayraktar is likely to have the same effect as it did in Ukraine, considering the proliferation of air defense in this theatre, though they could also scale their drone production and capabilities in favor of Pakistan but who knows how much Pakistan could pay and how generous Turkey would be, given the developments in the south. It could give them an excuse to amp up their industry to face Israel in the mid-term, but Erdogan has been maximally cautious in escalating tensions with Israel, but Israel is getting more and more brazen and they may be forced to react. But I think Israel won't escalate too much with Turkey as long as Iran remains their main threat, or possibly will escalate slowly as Ukraine did in Russia and press the line further and further until Turkey is forced to respond in some manner. Though if there was to be some sort of major, decisive war in Turkey's future, it should be soon, as the demographics are only getting older and more Kurdish and TFR has dropped very significantly from even a decade ago.
How significant could the second most powerful NATO members' support be in this conflict, Anatoly?
Ultimately there is only so much that a $1T economy that doesn't have a strong stake in the conflict itself can contribute - especially since many Turks, the secular and libnat contingent, will be unhappy about supporting Pakistan in principle. As you correctly note, there's nothing very special about Bayraktar which is mostly made up of foreign components anyway. But the GDP point is critical, you can swing a conflict in favor of a much weaker party without getting directly involved if you exceed the stronger party by an OOM yourself - as with Ukraine-Russia-EU/USA - but not if you're directly comparable to the warring parties in scale.
"Drones also massively privilege the defense" -- why exactly is this the case? Low-range? Inability to occupy/control an area like infantry/tanks? Anything I'm missing?
Frederich has an excellent reply, but IMO the most important thing is that drones make the battlefield transparent. Offensive success depends on successfully concentrating forces (what Germans call Schwerpunkt) to effect local breakthroughs, and then subsequently exploit it to encircle the enemy. These encirclements, when successful, often involve absurd K/D ratios following initially costly breakthroughs, hence why Germany's performance on that metric was so lopsided in the first half of WW2.
This is no longer possible. Artillery previously, and as of H2 2024, overwhelmingly FPV drones themselves, destroy any such concentrations before they can even coalesce. So by default, what we have now is what the Germans informally called a snail's war (Schneckenkrieg) - slow, attritional positional warfare. When FPV drones are mated to advanced AI - this can't be far off now - the open battlefield will become totally unsurvivable for biology, tilting the advantage even further in the defender's favor.
Ah ok so it's not drones as a weapon but drones as a tool of surveillance which destroy the element of surprise and make any salient extremely vulnerable. Thank you!
Fundamentally, any attack requires a concentration of superior force (qualitative or quantitative) than the defender, and drones combined with even basic tube artillery allow any concentration of force preceding an offensive to identify and destroy them rapidly as we have seen in RUS/UKR. Artillery in the queen of battle and drones have acted as a force multiplier in allowing them to spot and hit targets much faster and more effectively.
Next, infantry firepower against aircraft and armour via manpads and atgms, has increased by an order of magnitude which means that even thin, dispersed defenders that are almost immune to anything other than close infantry assault, you have a tactical problem that has yet to be solved.
Any infantry assault is contingent on the supporting arms to succeed, and given that entrenched and dispersed defenders are resistant to artillery and drones, especially when underground, aircraft and armour can be countered by even a small infantry force with access to heavy weapons along with modern air defence systems, as well as drones of course. Furthermore, infantry mobility systems are also vulnerable to the drone-artillery recon fires complex much as tanks are.
The proliferation of thermals and recon drones and satellites pushes the balance in favour of the defender once again: the attacker knows vaguely where the defence is but the defence has to anticipate where the attack will originate from. Knowing where and when an attack will come from reduces this element of surprise.
All of this means that the attacker now has to cross open ground with only poorly supported light infantry, and hence many attempts have been made to come up with new offensive methods prioritising mobility such as motorbikes and light vehicles to reduce the exposure infantry have to enemy firepower.
Excellent post. A friend of mine raised the Balochistan independence movement as another serious constraint on Pakistani actions. If the Pakistani military is otherwhere busy getting pummeled, there could be a big uprising and Pakistan couldn’t face a 2 front conflict even with many Chinese material aid. My friend suspects that was a major Pakistani consideration in a ceasefire because the independence movement has been strong for the last ~20 years.
Pakistan's only obvious somewhat significant non-Chinese ally and possible supporter in this conflict is Turkey. However, with Israel in Syria and Syria relying heavily on Turkey to maintain their sovereignty and stability, who knows how helpful they could be. TRTWorld has consistently posted anti-Indian pieces, urging collaboration between Dalits and Muslims, etc. and has recently come out in favor of Pakistan, while still urging restraint.
How big of a difference could Turkey make in favor of Pakistan? Bayraktar is likely to have the same effect as it did in Ukraine, considering the proliferation of air defense in this theatre, though they could also scale their drone production and capabilities in favor of Pakistan but who knows how much Pakistan could pay and how generous Turkey would be, given the developments in the south. It could give them an excuse to amp up their industry to face Israel in the mid-term, but Erdogan has been maximally cautious in escalating tensions with Israel, but Israel is getting more and more brazen and they may be forced to react. But I think Israel won't escalate too much with Turkey as long as Iran remains their main threat, or possibly will escalate slowly as Ukraine did in Russia and press the line further and further until Turkey is forced to respond in some manner. Though if there was to be some sort of major, decisive war in Turkey's future, it should be soon, as the demographics are only getting older and more Kurdish and TFR has dropped very significantly from even a decade ago.
How significant could the second most powerful NATO members' support be in this conflict, Anatoly?
Ultimately there is only so much that a $1T economy that doesn't have a strong stake in the conflict itself can contribute - especially since many Turks, the secular and libnat contingent, will be unhappy about supporting Pakistan in principle. As you correctly note, there's nothing very special about Bayraktar which is mostly made up of foreign components anyway. But the GDP point is critical, you can swing a conflict in favor of a much weaker party without getting directly involved if you exceed the stronger party by an OOM yourself - as with Ukraine-Russia-EU/USA - but not if you're directly comparable to the warring parties in scale.
Truly excellent write up!
Chinese defense stocks are up on news of the war, especially of the company that made the jets which won the first skirmish in the air.
Like the American defense industry limited wars abroad offer a lot of profit opportunity for Chinese defense companies.
"Drones also massively privilege the defense" -- why exactly is this the case? Low-range? Inability to occupy/control an area like infantry/tanks? Anything I'm missing?
Frederich has an excellent reply, but IMO the most important thing is that drones make the battlefield transparent. Offensive success depends on successfully concentrating forces (what Germans call Schwerpunkt) to effect local breakthroughs, and then subsequently exploit it to encircle the enemy. These encirclements, when successful, often involve absurd K/D ratios following initially costly breakthroughs, hence why Germany's performance on that metric was so lopsided in the first half of WW2.
This is no longer possible. Artillery previously, and as of H2 2024, overwhelmingly FPV drones themselves, destroy any such concentrations before they can even coalesce. So by default, what we have now is what the Germans informally called a snail's war (Schneckenkrieg) - slow, attritional positional warfare. When FPV drones are mated to advanced AI - this can't be far off now - the open battlefield will become totally unsurvivable for biology, tilting the advantage even further in the defender's favor.
Ah ok so it's not drones as a weapon but drones as a tool of surveillance which destroy the element of surprise and make any salient extremely vulnerable. Thank you!
Fundamentally, any attack requires a concentration of superior force (qualitative or quantitative) than the defender, and drones combined with even basic tube artillery allow any concentration of force preceding an offensive to identify and destroy them rapidly as we have seen in RUS/UKR. Artillery in the queen of battle and drones have acted as a force multiplier in allowing them to spot and hit targets much faster and more effectively.
Next, infantry firepower against aircraft and armour via manpads and atgms, has increased by an order of magnitude which means that even thin, dispersed defenders that are almost immune to anything other than close infantry assault, you have a tactical problem that has yet to be solved.
Any infantry assault is contingent on the supporting arms to succeed, and given that entrenched and dispersed defenders are resistant to artillery and drones, especially when underground, aircraft and armour can be countered by even a small infantry force with access to heavy weapons along with modern air defence systems, as well as drones of course. Furthermore, infantry mobility systems are also vulnerable to the drone-artillery recon fires complex much as tanks are.
The proliferation of thermals and recon drones and satellites pushes the balance in favour of the defender once again: the attacker knows vaguely where the defence is but the defence has to anticipate where the attack will originate from. Knowing where and when an attack will come from reduces this element of surprise.
All of this means that the attacker now has to cross open ground with only poorly supported light infantry, and hence many attempts have been made to come up with new offensive methods prioritising mobility such as motorbikes and light vehicles to reduce the exposure infantry have to enemy firepower.
Ypu didnt take into account an important point which is India’s large Muslim minority. Insurgency, terrorism, sabotage etc would mire India’s side.
Pakistan will win because they’re kickass Muslims…the Hindus can’t fight…their only hope is to convince the kickass Sikhs to fight for them.