The May 2025 crisis between India and Pakistan thrust air combat into the South Asian spotlight. Global interest has further intensified given the significant airpower dimension of the March 2026 conflict in the Middle East. As analysts and observers parse through reports of aircraft losses, missile strikes, and drone interceptions, much of the public discussion on these conflicts has centered on analyzing those tactical exchanges.
A meaningful assessment of air combat, however, extends past reported losses or interception rates. It requires analyzing the purposes of air control, the architecture and integration of air and missile defense systems, and the operational constraints that influence outcomes.
Drawing on video interviews with subject-matter experts, this explainer examines those broader foundations of air control and air defense. It situates these concepts in the South Asian context while identifying key analytical considerations relevant to defense planners, students, and other observers of contemporary air warfare.
Basic Concepts in Airpower
The fundamental missions for airborne weapons have changed remarkably little since the first wartime use of airplanes in 1911. Military aircraft, missiles, and aerial drones enable countries to strike targets located far behind the frontlines of battle. Airpower can also be used to attack enemy forces directly, or to support military operations by conducting intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and airlift missions.
However, the primary mission of any air force is to establish control of the airspace, making the air domain usable for one’s own operations. Air control provides military forces freedom to maneuver and attack and also prevents the adversary from using the airspace to carry out their missions.
To achieve air control, states conduct offensive and defensive counterair operations. These include attacking enemy airpower with aircraft or missiles or intercepting enemy weapons using air defense systems.
Air control isn’t a fixed state—it describes the balance between two competing air forces. Air control is typically understood as a spectrum, and air forces assess the degree of air control achieved by whether they can successfully operate in the air domain, and whether friendly forces are protected from enemy attack. If the enemy’s air and missile forces can inflict enough damage to prevent missions from succeeding, they are considered capable of prohibitive interference. Terms used to describe different levels of air control are illustrated in the graphic below.
Air Control Strategy
This graphic was generated using Claude AI.
Kelly Grieco, a Senior Fellow with the Stimson Center’s Reimagining US Grand Strategy Program, explains why different strategies of air control are advantageous in specific circumstances.
Developments in electronics, material science, and propulsion since the 1960s have “dramatically increased” the lethality of offensive air operations and the potency of air defenses. This drove advances in technology and tactics for systems that could find enemy targets while avoiding detection from enemy sensors, also termed a hider-finder competition. The hider-finder competition between air forces and air defenses persists to this day.
With the introduction of drones as cheap, precision-strike munitions, and innovations in air defense operations made during the Russia-Ukraine war, Kelly Grieco explains why airpower may not necessarily favor the attacker.
How Air Defense Works
Air and missile defense describe actions taken to defend against air and missile threats. States usually use missiles to intercept adversary threats, especially surface-to-air missiles (SAMs). As the name suggests, SAMs are missiles launched from platforms on the earth’s surface, such as trucks or ships, to hit mid-air targets and destroy or deflect them.
Beyond just a missile used to engage the threat itself, states rely on integrated air and missile defense systems that involve a variety of technologies working together. These integrated systems typically include sensors (such as satellites and radars) to detect and track an incoming threat, command posts to determine how to act against the threat, and everything required to use the weapon intercepting the threat.
Air and Missile Defense System Components
This graphic was generated using Claude AI.
In addition to being a system of integrated technologies, modern air defenses are often layered. Instead of just having one set of sensors or one type of weapon, layered air defenses use sensors in multiple domains (airborne, space-based, and ground-based) and different types of weapons (high-altitude missiles, low-altitude rockets, and anti-aircraft guns) for intercepting different threats more reliably. This layering improves the effectiveness of the system and ensures that even if one component fails, an air defense operation can still succeed.
Dinakar Peri, a fellow in security studies at Carnegie India, explains layered air defense using Indian systems as an example.
Technologies used for air defense have rapidly improved throughout history. States have developed advanced early warning systems, autonomously guided interceptors, and advances in electronic warfare to keep pace with corresponding progress in offensive aerial capabilities.
Kelly Grieco describes two of the most important improvements in air defense technology.
Despite these advances, defending against a range of mid-air targets, each with different flight paths and velocities, remains difficult and often ends in failure. Short decision times, crowded airspaces, and stealth technologies all create challenges for detecting and engaging a specific target.
Aerospace analyst Angad Singh describes some of these challenges and how they apply to different target types.
Air Defense Capabilities in South Asia
India and Pakistan have pursued air and missile defense capabilities for decades. Both have accelerated these efforts in the past ten years by importing various advanced systems while improving their own indigenous capabilities.
India’s air and missile defenses are a layered patchwork of imported and indigenous technologies. These systems include SAMs of varying ranges (including the long-range Russian S-400), radars and early warning systems (including Israeli airborne platforms), and service-specific command centers for airspace monitoring and decision making.
Pakistan primarily relies on Chinese systems for air and missile defense, including its various types of SAMs (notably the long-range HQ-9), though developments of indigenous defensive weapons and integration of sensor networks across services are in progress.
Tanzeela Khalil, research fellow at the Islamabad Policy Research Institute, describes more of the specific air defense systems used in South Asia and drivers for their development.
Much of the action in last year’s India-Pakistan crisis took place in the air domain. The apparent lack of manned aircraft infiltrations during the crisis seems to have demonstrated that both sides took one another’s air defenses seriously, and Pakistan’s downing of Indian fighter jets on May 7 was a potent example of how counter-air capabilities contribute to a robust air defense.
Consequently, the fighting centered on stand-off weapons like missiles and drones fired from across the border. In defending against these attacks, Angad Singh argues that Indian air defense systems, in particular, were successful overall.
Lessons from the May 2025 Crisis
Effective defense planning depends on having clear strategic objectives. A basic conceptual understanding of the different types of air control, along with a technical understanding of what air defense looks like in practice, is necessary for informed analysis of what happened last May and what developments should be prioritized in the future. Conversely, air defense strategies must be based on a realistic assessment of capabilities relative to the adversary.
Amid uncertainties and disagreements, some shared lessons for capabilities in both India and Pakistan have emerged. These include the challenge of cost asymmetries between cheap offensive weapons and expensive defensive systems as well as the importance of effective layering and networking of systems.
Mansoor Ahmed, lecturer at Australian National University, describes these among other key lessons learned from the use of air defenses in more detail.
At the strategic level, the implications of air defense remain unclear. As Tanzeela Khalil described, air defense operations can alter political escalation pressures, and adversaries can misinterpret defensive actions as offensive. In a crisis, defending against airborne threats can be stabilizing by preventing serious damage that provokes further escalation, but in the longer run it can also lead to arms racing driven by offense-defense competition.
Regardless, air defenses have proven their promise and demonstrated that they can deny offensive aerial threats. As military technologies continue to evolve, Kelly Grieco suggests the importance of re-examining assumptions and thinking critically about the future of air warfare.
