Operation Sindoor and Bunyan-un-Marsoos: Can a Documentary Rewrite the Battlefield?
An examination of India’s latest narrative, Pakistan’s response, and what the international evidence actually tells us!
By Major (R) Haroon Rasheed. Defense & Strategic Analyst specializing in South Asian military dynamics, deterrence strategy, and defense modernization; Member, Research and Evaluation Cell for Advancing Basic Amenities and Development, Writer and Defense Contributor — Pakistan First & Pakistan Hamesha Zindabad.
The battle did not end when the guns fell silent.
More than a year after the May 2025 India-Pakistan confrontation, the military battle has increasingly been replaced by another contest — the battle over the narrative.
India has now presented Operation Sindoor through a highly produced documentary-style account portraying the operation as an overwhelming Indian victory.
Pakistan’s military media wing, ISPR, has rejected that portrayal as a dramatic and selective reconstruction of events rather than an objective military history.
The important question is, therefore, not which country’s propaganda is louder.
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The real question is: What can actually be established from independent evidence, official admissions, satellite imagery, international reporting, and the operational record?
That distinction is essential.
The Indian documentary does not erase the battlefield record.
India has every right to present its own interpretation of Operation Sindoor. Nations routinely do this after wars and military confrontations.
But a documentary is not evidence merely because it contains military officers, sophisticated graphics, dramatic music, and reconstructed combat scenes.
ISPR’s August 2026 response specifically challenged what it described as a “highly dramatised” and “factually inaccurate” portrayal.
Pakistan’s military media wing argued that the documentary itself contains admissions about Pakistani missile, drone and air activity, and Indian air-defence activation that are difficult to reconcile with a narrative of effortless Indian dominance.
This is an important point.
A battlefield must ultimately be judged by what happened on the battlefield — not by how convincingly it is reconstructed on television.
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The Aircraft-loss Question
One of the most politically sensitive issues is the number of Indian aircraft lost during the opening phase of the conflict.
Pakistan initially claimed that five Indian fighter aircraft had been shot down.
Independent reporting subsequently established that Indian aircraft had crashed.
The Washington Post, after analysing visual evidence and debris, concluded that Indian fighter aircraft — including a Rafale and a Mirage 2000 — appeared to have crashed during the fighting.
Reuters also reported that the U.S. officials assessed that Pakistan’s J-10 had shot down Indian military aircraft, including at least two Rafale.
More importantly, India’s own Chief of Defense Staff, General Anil Chauhan, later acknowledged that India had suffered aircraft losses.
Fifteen months after Operation Sindoor, India’s new documentary recreates the 88-hour confrontation as a triumph. CREDIT: Pakistan Today.
The Indian narrative that suggested an essentially flawless operation was not supported by the subsequent evidence.
That is precisely where neutral analysis differs from propaganda.
The J-10C Factor
The most consequential military lesson of the conflict may not ultimately be the exact number of aircraft lost.
It may be how they were lost.
Reuters reported that U.S. officials assessed that Pakistani J-10 fighters had successfully engaged Indian aircraft. The Guardian subsequently described the confrontation as the first known combat use of China’s J-10C and associated Chinese weapons in this context, making the engagement an important real-world test of Chinese air-combat technology.
This is strategically significant.
For years, much of the international discussion surrounding the J-10C centered on specifications, marketing material, and theoretical capability.
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The May 2025 Confrontation Changed That
For the first time, the aircraft and its long-range air-to-air weapon system were being assessed against a modern Western-designed fighter fleet under actual combat conditions.
That does not prove that J-10C is universally superior to Rafale.
It does, however, demonstrate that dismissing Chinese combat aviation technology as inferior simply because it is Chinese would be a serious analytical mistake.
The airspace question is even more revealing.
Another important lesson is that neither side appears to have wanted to expose manned aircraft unnecessarily to the other’s integrated air-defence network.
The Australian Air and Space Power Center concluded that no Indian or Pakistani manned aircraft entered the other country’s airspace during the four-day air war. The Stimson Center independently reached the same broad conclusion, noting that there was no evidence of manned aircraft crossing the international boundary.
This matters enormously.
The war was increasingly becoming a contest of:
- long-range air-to-air missiles,
- stand-off weapons,
- electronic warfare,
- drones,
- air-defence suppression,
- radar networks,
- command-and-control,
- satellite intelligence, and
- precision strike
This was not simply a traditional fighter-versus-fighter dogfight.
The side capable of detecting, targeting, and striking from greater distance gained the advantage.
Bunyan-un-Marsoos changed the equation.
Pakistan’s response, Operation Bunyan-un-Marsoos
Bunyan-un-Marsoos was designed to demonstrate that India could not strike Pakistani territory without facing a substantial counter-strike.
Pakistan stated that it targeted 26 Indian military installations and facilities.
Independent military analysis confirms that Pakistan conducted a large drone and missile campaign against numerous Indian military locations.
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The Australian Air and Space Power Center reported that Pakistan launched hundreds of drones against 26 Indian locations, while India simultaneously conducted attacks against air-defence sites.
Pakistan also claimed strikes against BrahMos-related facilities and S-400 air-defence assets.
There was, however, evidence of at least damage to one S-400 air-defence infrastructure during the conflict, and international analysis confirms that both sides actively targeted each other’s air-defence networks.
The “Pakistan asked for a Ceasefire”?
This is another area where Indian sides have attempted to construct mutually contradictory narratives.
India’s official narrative has increasingly portrayed the ceasefire as the consequence of Pakistani pressure and Indian military success. India’s Defense Minister has described Operation Sindoor as an operation in which India compelled Pakistan to seek a ceasefire within four days.
Pakistan presents the opposite interpretation.
The actual sequence is more complicated.
On May 10, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that India and Pakistan had agreed to an immediate ceasefire after intensive diplomatic engagement.
Contemporary records show that senior U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance, were communicating with both sides as the crisis escalated.
Trump later repeatedly claimed credit for helping bring about the ceasefire, although India disputes the characterization that the United States brokered the cessation.
Reuters reported in July 2025 that Trump said he believed five aircraft had been shot down in the hostilities; later he increased the number to eight in other speeches, while India maintained its own competing accounts of losses.
Therefore, presenting the cessation of hostilities simply as “India defeated Pakistan and Pakistan requested a ceasefire” is an interpretation — not an uncontested historical fact.
The more defensible description is that both nuclear-armed states reached a cessation after intense military exchanges and significant external diplomatic pressure.
The three-day air-war myth also needs clarification.
There has been a popular Pakistani claim that after May 7, India stopped flying aircraft for three days, which seems true as we can not see any Indian Air Force activity in Indian airspace. Rather, it was reported that the IAF moved its aircraft beyond the 300 km range.
The conflict also created an unusual secondary battlefield — the global defense market.
Dassault Aviation’s share price experienced significant volatility following Operation Sindoor. Reports recorded a decline of more than 5% in the aftermath of the May 7 operation.
At the same time, Indian and international media reported a sharp rise in the market value of Chengdu Aircraft-related shares following the combat reports involving the J-10.
This should not be exaggerated into proof that one fighter “defeated” another.
Stock markets do not conduct military evaluations.
But investor reaction demonstrated something important.
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The May 2025 confrontation suddenly gave the Chinese J-10 platform and associated weapon systems a level of combat credibility that years of brochures and air shows could never provide.
What the Neutral Record actually Supports
When the competing propaganda is removed, several conclusions become increasingly difficult to dispute.
Pakistan demonstrated that it could impose serious costs on India’s air operations through long-range air-to-air weapons, integrated air defense, electronic warfare, and counter-air operations.
Credible international reporting and subsequent Indian official statements establish that India suffered aircraft losses, although the exact number remains disputed.
Pakistan’s Bunyan-un-Marsoos demonstrated the ability to retaliate against multiple Indian military locations, making clear that escalation would impose costs on India as well.
The conflict was not a clean military victory for either side in the traditional sense. It was a near-peer air and missile confrontation in which both countries demonstrated capabilities — and both exposed vulnerabilities.
The Documentary cannot Change History
This is ultimately the weakness in the latest Indian documentary narrative.
Cinema can recreate a battle.
It can not recreate the aircraft debris.
It can not erase satellite imagery, or make international intelligence assessments disappear.
It can not undo official statements.
And it cannot transform a negotiated cessation of hostilities into an unconditional surrender simply by changing the soundtrack.
The J-10C’s reported combat success, the demonstrated effectiveness of long-range missile warfare, the vulnerability of expensive fighter fleets, and the importance of integrated air defense are already major lessons.
The Real Defeat is the Defeat of Credibility
India’s latest documentary may succeed domestically in strengthening the official narrative of Operation Sindoor.
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But, international military professionals will judge the episode differently.
They will examine radar coverage, missile engagement envelopes, aircraft losses, satellite imagery, weapons debris, electronic warfare, sortie patterns, air-defence performance, and the diplomatic sequence that brought the conflict to an end.
That is where history is ultimately written!
Not in Bollywood.
Not in ISPR alone.
Not in Indian television studios.
And not on social media.
It is written through evidence.
The May 2025 conflict, therefore, deserves to be studied not as an Indian victory film but as one of the most important modern examples of a near-peer air, missile, and drone confrontation between two nuclear-armed states.
And perhaps the greatest lesson is this:
Modern air warfare is no longer determined simply by which country possesses the most expensive fighter aircraft.
It is determined by the entire kill chain — radar, electronic warfare, data links, airborne early warning, long-range missiles, pilot training, command and control, air defence, stand-off weapons and the ability to survive the enemy’s first strike.
Operation Sindoor and Bunyan-un-Marsoos demonstrated that lesson to the entire world.
The documentary may rewrite the story for domestic consumption.
It can not rewrite the battlefield.
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By Major (R) Haroon Rasheed. Defense & Strategic Analyst specializing in South Asian military dynamics, deterrence strategy, and defense modernization; Member, Research and Evaluation Cell for Advancing Basic Amenities and Development, Writer and Defense Contributor — Pakistan First & Pakistan Hamesha Zindabad.
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