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Review: The Sky Warriors: Operation Sindoor Unveiled by Vishnu Som
An account of the Indian Air Force’s moment of reckoning, The Sky Warriors: Operation Sindoor Unveiled by Vishnu Som provides an hour-to-hour account of a defining conflict in contemporary Indian military affairs where air power in all its dimensions emerged as the sword-arm of Indian statecraft
Apart from being a well-respected military analyst and reporter, Vishnu Som is an unabashed military aviation enthusiast, who has emerged, over the decades, as one of the most informed aviation journalists in India. More importantly, he has tracked the growth of the Indian Air Force closely in the current century and has been able to evaluate its operational capabilities and fault lines accurately. Having flown almost all the frontline aircraft in the IAF’s inventory and several contemporary western platforms, he understands the complexities of military aviation and the pulse of the men and women who operate and sustain these complex machines. With such a background, there could have been no one more qualified to tell the story of Operation Sindoor through the lens of its principal protagonists, the air warriors of the IAF.
The Sky Warriors: Operation Sindoor Unveiled is an hour-to-hour account of a defining conflict in contemporary Indian military affairs where air power in all its dimensions emerged as the sword-arm of Indian statecraft.
The slim paperback, more arranged like a racy novella, is by no means a definitive and all-encompassing analysis of Operation Sindoor through a strategic, operational and tactical lens. It is, by the authors admission, a distinctly IAF-centric perspective of the conflict backed by detailed interviews with the IAF’ leadership and several frontline operators ranging from squadron commanders, flight commanders and fighter pilots, who delivered the killer punches, to Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM) operators, who struck fear into the hearts of the adversary. Adding rigour to the narrative has been Vishnu Som’s own intense reportage for NDTV during the conflict and his continuous analysis of several Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) analyses of the damage inflicted by the IAF on Pakistan’s terror and infrastructure and military capability (principally PAF assets and infrastructure).
The narrative is fast-paced and easy to follow and adopts a chronologically accurate rendition of events as they unfolded. While much has already been written about the politico-strategic overlay of the conflict, what makes this book particularly appealing is its attempt to unravel details of the operational planning process and get into the skin of the pilots who planned and flew all the risky missions, the intrepid Surface-to-Air-Guided-Weapons (SAGW) crew, and the working of the IAF’s home-built situational awareness mechanisms such as the Integrated Air Command and Control System (IACCS) and the Akash Teer.
What do fighter pilots and the Weapon Systems Operators (WSOs) in multi-crew platforms go through in an adrenalin-charged combat environment that involves multiple engagements in the same sortie against equally competent adversaries? How do they evade highly sophisticated air-to-air missiles in a dense electromagnetic environment? How did the IAF’s leadership manage escalation control during its massive strikes on 10 May 2025? How did the IAF’s much-underrated multi-layered air defence network led by the S-400 succeed against a never-before-experienced barrage of Pakistani missiles and drones? How did the IAF and Indian Army effectively integrate their legacy air defense guns such as the Schilka and L-70 as the last layer of defence? These are some of the fascinating questions that Vishnu Som answers as he attempts to reach out to readers who want to know more about how air power and the IAF played a pivotal role during Operation Sindoor without complicating the narrative with too much technical jargon.
Interviews with the Vice Chief of Air Staff (VCAS), Commanding Officer of a S-400 squadron and the flight commander of a Rafale squadron, among several others, add significant credibility and heft to the narrative even if these interviews were conducted in a highly curated and controlled environment. Choosing Air Force Station Adampur as the epicentre of action during the conflict provides good operational context to the importance of the base in the IAF’s calculus and a recognition of the base as a critical centre of gravity that the IAF defended well against determined attacks by the PAF.
On the flip side, the book has been constrained by the IAF’s understandable reluctance to part with more operational details and the author’s focus on concentrating only on the successes of the IAF rather than offering better insights into some of its operational and tactical misses. Greater insights into the tactics and operational philosophy of the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) during the conflict and details of the ‘China factor’ would have added significant value to the narrative.
In conclusion, the book unfolds as a racy real-world narrative about the men and women in blue; the air warriors of the IAF who orchestrated Operation Sindoor and ushered in a new era of war-fighting in the subcontinent led by air power.
Air Vice Marshal (Retd) Arjun Subramaniam is a military historian and an air power analyst.
