India Hit Nine Targets in 25 Minutes on 7 May 2025, Then Spent Three Nights Defending Its Airbases Against Pakistani Drones and Missiles

At 1:44 on the morning of Wednesday 7 May 2025, the Press Information Bureau, the Indian government’s press office, put out a short release. The armed forces, it said, had launched Operation Sindoor against “terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir.” Then two flat sentences: “Altogether, nine (9) sites have been targeted.” “No Pakistani military facilities have been targeted.”

The strikes ran from 01:05 to 01:30 Indian time, 25 minutes by the BBC’s count. What came back was three nights of Pakistani drones and missiles aimed at Indian military bases. Indian officers said the air defence network stopped nearly all of it, with limited damage at four air bases. At 3.35 pm on 10 May, Pakistan’s director general of military operations phoned his Indian counterpart. Firing stopped at 5 pm.

A name, two officers and a list of 21 camps

Pahalgam cost 26 lives on 22 April, 25 Indians and one Nepali citizen, according to that first release. Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri told the briefing later on 7 May that it caused the largest number of civilian casualties in a terrorist attack in India since the 26 November 2008 attacks in Mumbai, and that most of the victims were shot at close range in front of their families.

Sindoor is the vermilion powder a married Hindu woman wears in the parting of her hair. In his address to the nation on 12 May the Prime Minister gave the government’s reading of the name. He called the operation “a reflection of the feelings of millions of people of the country” and said: “The terrorists had wiped out the Sindoor of our sisters and India responded by destroying their terrorist headquarters.”

Misri, flanked by Colonel Sofiya Qureshi and Wing Commander Vyomika Singh, kept his account of the decision short. India’s monitoring of Pakistan-based terrorist modules “indicated that further attacks against India were impending,” he said. “There was thus a compulsion both to deter and to pre-empt.” India’s first answer, announced on 23 April, was a set of measures on its engagement with Pakistan. That sequence, and how India’s responses to attacks have changed since 2001, is traced in how India answers a terror attack.

Next came the target list. Pakistan had built terror infrastructure “over the last three decades,” one officer said, and the known camps ran “from Sawai Nala in the north” to Bahawalpur in the south, approximately 21 of them. Nine were chosen. In the Indian Express’s account of the 11 May briefing, the nine came from a shortlist of 21. The transcript records the reasoning: “The selection of these targets for OPERATION SINDOOR was based on credible intelligence inputs and role of these facilities in perpetrating the terror activities.”

Authority for it came from the top. “We gave full freedom to the Indian forces to wipe out the terrorists,” the Prime Minister said on 12 May. Air Chief Marshal A P Singh, speaking in Bengaluru on 9 August, said there were “no, I repeat, no restrictions” on the forces, and that they were free to plan and execute. According to the Express, he added that the services decided the rules of engagement and how to manage the escalation ladder themselves.

Precision on the first night

Two of the camps were at Sialkot, 6 to 18 km from the border, an Indian spokesperson told the BBC. Deepest was a Jaish-e-Mohammed headquarters at Bahawalpur, 100 km inside Pakistan. A Lashkar-e-Taiba camp at Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, lay 30 km from the Line of Control, the de facto border. In 1999, in the fighting told in the war fought above sixteen thousand feet, India kept its ground forces and its air force on its own side of that line. In 2025 the targets lay beyond it.

Officers described the method in plain terms. “The point of impact at each of the target was a specific building or a group of buildings,” one said. The weapons used “careful selection of warheads,” and the locations “were so selected to avoid damage to civilian infrastructures and loss of any civilian lives.” The transcript adds: “No military establishments were targeted.”

Months later the Air Force put images behind the claim. At Bengaluru on 9 August Air Chief Marshal Singh showed before and after pictures of Bahawalpur. “There’s hardly any collateral (damage) here. The adjacent buildings are fairly intact,” he said.

For the terrorists killed, the government’s figure is “over 100.” Defence Minister Rajnath Singh told the Lok Sabha on 28 July that this was “according to an estimate” covering trainers, handlers and associates as well. At the 11 May briefing Lieutenant General Rajiv Ghai, the Director General of Military Operations, named three of the dead: Yusuf Azhar, Abdul Malik Rauf and Mudasir Ahmed. He linked them to the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC-814 and the 2019 Pulwama bombing.

The nights of 7 to 10 May

Pakistan’s response began that night. At the briefing on the evening of 8 May, Wing Commander Singh listed 15 places Pakistan had tried to hit with drones and missiles on the night of 7 to 8 May, from Avantipura and Srinagar to Bhuj. They were “neutralized by the Integrated Counter Unmanned Aerial System and other Air Defense systems,” she said, and debris was being recovered from a number of locations.

India’s reply that morning went to Pakistani radars. “Indian response has been in the same domain, with the same intensity as Pakistan,” Singh said, and “an Air Defence system at Lahore has been neutralised.” Pakistani shelling across the Line of Control had by then killed 16 civilians in Jammu and Kashmir, “including three women and five children.” Misri added: “Our intention has not been to escalate matters.” Singh closed by saying the armed forces’ commitment to non-escalation held “provided it is respected by the Pakistan military.”

On the morning of 10 May the Indian side reported attempted air intrusions at more than 26 locations from Srinagar to Naliya, and “high-speed missile attacks” on air bases in Punjab “after 0140 hours in the night.” Singh was specific about what got through: “limited damage was sustained to equipment and personnel at Indian Air Force stations at Udhampur, Pathankot, Adampur and Bhuj.”

Four layers and one network

Air defence got its fullest account on 12 May. Lieutenant General Ghai described four layers. First came counter-drone systems and shoulder-fired missiles. Point defence and short-range and medium-range surface-to-air missiles made up the second and third. Long-range surface-to-air missiles formed the fourth. A line from the 1970s Ashes series, about two Australian bowlers, carried his point. “Even if you cross all the layers, one of the layers of this grid system will hit you,” he said.

Air Marshal A K Bharti, the Air Force’s operations chief, said the Air Force’s Integrated Air Command and Control System held the layers together. Older weapons took part too. Bharti named the Pechora and OSA-AK missile systems and low-level air defence guns, and spoke of the “stellar performance” of the Akash, a missile developed in India. Indigenous counter-drone systems, which jam or destroy drones, dealt with the waves of drones and loitering munitions, he said. Despite some minor damage, every Indian base and system stayed fully operational.

At sea, the Navy supplied a layer of its own. Vice Admiral A N Pramod said the carrier group’s MiG-29K fighters and airborne early warning helicopters “prevented any suspicious or hostile aircraft close to the Carrier Battle Group within several hundred kilometres.” Pakistani air elements, he said, were “bottled up close to the Makran coast.”

The Defence Ministry’s annual report for 2025 to 2026, released on 13 September 2026, adds that the control system merged military and civil surveillance sensors into one recognised air picture. Trained operators, according to The Hindu’s account of the report, made sure civil aircraft were not engaged.

Russian-made S-400 missiles formed the long-range layer. Air Chief Marshal Singh called the system “a gamechanger.” Its reach, he said, kept Pakistani aircraft beyond the distance from which they could launch long-range glide bombs, which Pakistan could not use because it could not penetrate the system. Then he gave a count. “We have at least five fighters confirmed killed and one large aircraft, which could be an ELINT aircraft or an AEW&C aircraft, which was taken out from a distance of about 300 kilometres,” he said, calling it “the largest-ever recorded surface-to-air kill that we can talk about.” ELINT is electronic intelligence and AEW&C is airborne early warning, a flying radar station. In the annual report the engagement is put at 314 km, by an S-400 unit, against what it calls a Pakistani special-mission aircraft. “Indian radars tracked the threat in silence,” the report says, in The Hindu’s quotation. The Hindu describes it as one of the longest surface-to-air engagements India has claimed.

Rajnath Singh made the widest claim for the system as a whole. “Pakistan was unable to hit any of the Indian targets and none of the important assets were damaged,” he told the Lok Sabha.

The airfields, and a call at 3.35 pm

India’s strikes widened on 10 May. Colonel Qureshi said Pakistani military targets at Rafiki, Murid, Chaklala, Rahim Yar Khan, Sukkur and Juniya “were engaged using air-launched precision weapons from our fighter aircraft,” and that radar sites at Pasroor and Sialkot were hit with precision munitions. Indian forces, she said, “carried out precision attacks only on identified military targets.”

Two days later Air Marshal Bharti showed video of the damage at the Nur Khan and Rahim Yar Khan air bases, one clip showing a huge crater at Rahim Yar Khan. As many as 13 military targets, from Rawalpindi to Karachi, had been struck, according to the Express’s report of that briefing. Citing the annual report, The Hindu adds Sargodha, Jacobabad and Bholari to the list of air force sites struck.

A telephone call ended it. Misri told reporters on 10 May that the Pakistani director general “called up” his Indian counterpart at 3.35 pm. “They agreed that both sides will stop all firing and military action from land, air and sea from 5 pm onwards,” he said. The two men spoke again at 5 pm on 12 May, and the Indian Army said they agreed to “consider immediate measures to ensure troop reduction from the borders and forward areas.”

What the chiefs said afterwards

General Anil Chauhan, then Chief of Defence Staff, gave interviews to Reuters and Bloomberg at Singapore on 31 May. India had changed tactics after early losses in the air, he said. “So we rectified tactics and then went back on the 7th, 8th and 10th in large numbers to hit air bases deep inside Pakistan, penetrated all their air defences with impunity, carried out precision strikes,” he told Reuters. On the 10th, the Air Force “flew all types of aircraft with all types of ordnances.” Of the strikes overall he said: “Most of the strikes were delivered with pinpoint accuracy, some even to a metre.”

Chauhan spoke as well about the risk both countries ran. “I think there’s a lot of space before that nuclear threshold is crossed, a lot of signalling before that, I think nothing like that happened,” he said.

Air Chief Marshal Singh’s August lecture went through Pakistani airfields one by one. At Jacobabad, he said, “there’s an F-16 hangar. One half of the hangar is gone.” Murid and Chaklala accounted for at least two command and control centres, and he counted “at least six radars.” Pakistan “came forward and sent a message to our DGMO that they wanted to talk,” he said. “This was accepted on our side.”

In the ministry’s annual report, India’s response is “calibrated but punitive,” meant as “demonstrative compellence.”

A debate in the Lok Sabha

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh addressed the Lok Sabha on Operation Sindoor on 28 July. Terror nurseries were the aim, he said, with no plan to cross the border or capture territory, and “Our action was completely in self-defence. It was neither provocative nor expansionist.” According to the Press Information Bureau’s record, he told the House the operation had been halted, not ended, and would resume if Pakistan tried another attack. Any idea that India stopped under pressure was “baseless and incorrect,” he said, because the political and military objectives had been met.

Where the accounts differ

On aircraft, Pakistan said on 7 May that it had shot down five Indian fighter jets and a drone. The BBC noted that India had not confirmed this. At the 11 May briefing Air Marshal Bharti said “Definitely, we have downed a few planes” and gave no figure. Reuters reported that he had also said “losses are a part of combat,” and the Express reported that all Indian pilots were back home. On 31 May General Chauhan acknowledged initial losses in the air without giving a number. Asked by Bloomberg whether Pakistan’s claim of six Indian jets was correct, he answered: “Absolutely incorrect.” The Hindu’s editorial says the government has described the details of aircraft losses as operationally sensitive. Reuters reported that Pakistan denied losing any aircraft but acknowledged hits on its air bases. India’s own figure for Pakistani aircraft is the Air Chief’s “at least five fighters” and one large aircraft. On 8 July 2026 President Donald Trump said “11 planes were shot down,” without saying whose, The Hindu reported.

On the ceasefire, Trump wrote on 10 May that the two countries had agreed after “a long night of talks mediated by the United States.” Indian government sources said the stoppage was worked out “directly between the two countries,” with Pakistan’s operations chief initiating the call, and Rajnath Singh called the idea of pressure “baseless and incorrect.” Pakistan’s foreign minister, Ishaq Dar, announced a ceasefire “with immediate effect.” The BBC’s account describes a ceasefire brokered by the US and other international players and says India has downplayed Washington’s role.

On casualties, Pakistan said on 7 May that 26 people had died in Indian strikes and shelling, and it later claimed 40 civilian deaths. The BBC reported at least 16 deaths on the Indian side. Pakistan said only six locations were hit and denied that the sites were terror camps, the BBC noted. Lieutenant General Ghai said on 11 May that the Pakistan Army had reported losing approximately 35 to 40 personnel in artillery and small-arms fire on the Line of Control. The Indian Express’s report of the same briefing records five Indian military fatalities, and the names published in June 2026 are six. The Hindu’s editorial of 30 June 2026 records the Defence Minister’s 28 July remark that no Indian soldiers were harmed, and says the government has since explained that he meant no pilot had been killed.

Six names on a wall

On 26 June 2026 the government published the names of the six armed forces personnel who died. Five were from the Army and one from the Air Force: Subedar Major Pawan Kumar; Rifleman Sunil Kumar, awarded the Vir Chakra; Lance Naik Dinesh Kumar; Mood Muralinaik; Havildar Sunil Kumar Singh; and Sergeant Surendra Kumar of the Air Force. Their names went onto the Roll of Honour on the National War Memorial’s website and onto a wall at the memorial in New Delhi.

The Hindu described the wall on 27 June. On the corner of wall 3D, a brick on the top row bears the inscription “OP SINDOOR.” The brick below it reads “2025,” and the six names follow in a column.