Army chief hails Operation Sindoor as ‘one coherent national act’

Operation Sindoor, India's military response to the Pahalgam terror attack, dismantled terror infrastructure and showcased strategic military resolve.

NEW DELHI: Operation Sindoor, India’s response to the April 22 Pahalgam terror strike, delivered military precision, diplomatic signalling and economic resolve as one coherent national act, army chief General Upendra Dwivedi said on Tuesday,

Chief of the Army Staff General Upendra Dwivedi at Manekshaw Centre in New Delhi. (PTI)

“It struck deep, dismantled terror infrastructure, punctured a long-standing strategic assumption (Pakistan’s nuclear blackmail), and then stopped, deliberately and purposefully,” he said at a seminar organised by the think tank Centre for Land Warfare Studies.

Operation Sindoor, which began in the early hours of May 7, 2025, was New Delhi’s muscular response to the Pakistan-backed Pahalgam terror attack that killed 26 people. It triggered four days of strikes and counterstrikes with fighter jets, missiles, drones, long-range weapons and heavy artillery before the two sides reached an understanding on stopping all military action on May 10.

“The deliberate halt after 88 hours was smart power in its most complete expression, knowing exactly which instrument to apply, at what intensity, and precisely when to convert a military moment into a strategic one,” the army chief said.

Dwivedi said that strategic vulnerability today is not military inferiority but dependence on foreign supply chains, critical minerals, and digital infrastructure. “Resilience means systematically eliminating those dependencies not as an economic preference but as a security imperative. It involves strategic partnership with like-minded nations, as also encouraging government strategic partnership with level one industries for sustainable production lines.”

Whoever commands the technology stack in the next decade will tend to command the conflict outcomes, he added. “We must not merely absorb emerging technologies. We must indigenise, operationalise, and lead in them. As they say, the follower pays the price, the leader sets the terms.”

Contemporary conflicts now impose sustained demands not only on armed forces but also on industrial production, research systems, and governance structures, he said. “We must build a defence industrial base that is not merely self-sufficient but strategically competitive, converting national security requirements into industrial capacity and ultimately into export leverage.”