1. Develop a scenario based response. Don't look at it as an independent military action based on mechanical systems (force.v.force) leveraging because the military (at least those firmly subjugated to civillian control) does not instigate overt hostilities outside a politically driven venue of reasoned justification.
Generally, you can avoid more /stupid/ wars by engineering the combination of 'stance (dogma) and implication (desired negotiative direction away from the public stance)' inherent to understanding conflict-trigger initiating points than you can win with true force. But having a plan for a range of potential conjoined military and political leveraging options (one supports the other in bluff and counter bluff) is a good thing.
Of course the more you do unilaterally to stabilize your position, the more you are likely to be viewed with tacit trust in any period of increased tension. Reliable rather than 'friendly'.
In particular, IMO, you must give up Kashmir. Both overtly and by abandoning the Sikh sponsored unconventional support. You cannot take it militarily and attempting to ruin it for anyone else's use simply highlights your stubborn adherence to a weak position rather than having none at all.
Such an attitude is not particularly noble in a responsibly mature State.
Once you have re-imaged your position as one of purely a defensive threat (politically/strategically), you can rationalize _any weapons systems_ which could theoretically take the war off your soil purely on the basis of 'don't attack and you won't ever have to face X'.
2. Accept that nukes are a dead end. If you first-use them on anything other than your own soil, you will be excoriated if not excommunicated from the whole of the world community. And in the long run, India's population, land mass and economic power ensures that they will be able to both withstand greater degrees of punishment and utterly obliterate you as not merely a nation but a //people//, should you try. No amount of theater level BMD will protect you. It takes overhead launch alert and midcourse tracking plus RANGE AS TIME (intercontinental defense with an ocean on both sides) to come even close to a leak proof system.
3. Dive into cheating. There is no honor in warfare. A man killing another man in jet to jet combat is not a knight jousting with an equal but an assassin stabbing an assassin. Often snapup from underneath and behind a masking terrain feature.
OTOH, _hunting_ can teach you a lot about combat because it is an act which occurs based on preconditions of here-to-here travel along a 'game trail' of known food/water/rest behaviors (target, radius, basing mode).
Given that no man alive can defeat a large game animal, let alone predator in 'mano a beasto' combat, there is also no embarrassment over ambush and murder.
Specifically:
1. Lasers. The Chinese have the XM-87 and have been selling it abroad for ages. It's not a (platform destructive) weapons system perse but it could be used a lot more effectively in random-flyover attacks on both helos, drones and fastjets than a SAM or AAA piece which have specific SSPH and SSPK variables that can be 'miss distance' played with for either total slant envelope or guidance system reaction time.
Pilots butcher thousands if not tens of thousands in every war. Do not think of them as being 'too good to be blinded'. Because they are not. They are just killers, like any other soldier, and their 'nobility' as single combat warriors must be set against the mass-casualty damage that they can inflict, not only to relevant military forces but the infrastructure of a society as well.
2. TurboSAMs. Most jets, even Flankers doing OCA work _do not_ transit to or even operate within the target area at supersonic speeds. Most helos and fast ground attack platforms are in fact slowed to a crawl relative to their topend speeds.
Because the need to use terrain masking and low level flight to avoid line of sight exposure requires a thread-the-needle approach which is not amenable to high speed flight, even if the fuel use (drag) of lolo work was not excessive.
Furthermore, any defensive weapons system which requires a fast-reaction response is typically limited to a single shot at killing.
Hit or Miss then being a scalar value relative to when (and how long) you first track them, what they do to suppress or avoid the WEZ of your fixed-and-advertised (emissioins) defensive envelope.
And how many single arrows are lofted based on the total allowable within the S2A guidance mode capacity.
Turbo(jet) driven miniature interceptors, using technology available for 40+ years in target drones, change ALL of this.
a. Because they can form their own 'search vs. tracking' network. Within a missile body large enough to incorporate a datalink which shares IR based target search volumes between multiple weapon seeker cones. i.e. a virtual search coverage zone of 10 missiles, spaced 5 miles apart with a 60X60` offers you a 70 mile wide X 10 mile deep sensor arc which _moves forward into contact_ without ever being vulnerable to jamming or destruction of ground based cueing systems. i.e. if the entire ground based defensive ADGE is obliterated, this 'eyes on the hunter' approach will still work in finding it's own targets using nothing more than ground observer 'fly over' relay through telephone, radio or microwave linkage.
b. They are virturally indestructible (and infinitely portable) as a function of individual 'basing mode' preference atop the back of a lorry or similar, medium sized, truck.
No 10,000ft runway as a natural attractor to enemy munitions saturation. You cannot kill what you cannot hit. But once you find it, you can make it 'so dead' as to deny it to any possible (Red Horse) reincarnative use by your enemy.
Thus it is better to have 100 trucks launching 500 missiles than 10 airbases launching 100 fighters. On both a cost of acquisition and defensive commitment basis.
From the opposite side of the equation, you can _recover_ turbo weapons via parachute and airbag. Either using GPS or a local beacon system or even (short term, low power MMW) command link off a basic autopilot/IMU and an 'if no targets by X% fuel remaining then return to Y' ground control capture mode.
Recovered weapons can be used again. And again. And again. Removing the NEED for a large signature, highly vulnerable, manned platform to act as a deliver bus and RTB aid.
c. Turboweapons can go a very long distance or make multiple attacks. The primary problem with the Mach 2-3-4 SAM/AAM class is that they are a hypervelocity fly trying to make contact with a 500 knot swatter.
This both limits their reactive ability to complete the intercept itself.
And utterly depletes any residual energy reserve necessary to 'try, try, again'.
OTOH, a MALI type system, which can fly perhaps 200-230nm, can _formate with_ solve for lead/lag/pure intercept to guarantee a 'hittile' kill on a target, almost everytime.
Whether it attacks a jet that has just overflown the launch box. Or chases to contact one which 'it has been told' (by the overall IADS network) is some 50nm downrange.
Within a package cost of say 300-800,000 dollars, this is /unheard of/ total system performance (SA-15 meets SA-20). Not least because the only element which is ever at direct risk is the forward positioned launch vehicle with almost no co-taggable (associative) emissions trace.
d. They are not worth the effort to kill. Ask any pilot who has 'flown against' a particularly competently remote-flown Firebee drone. Or launched a missile against a Chukar which has suddenly lost signature augmentation.
Now your enemy in his 30-50 million dollar airframe is looking at a weapon which costs roughly the same as the AAM he launches to defend himself.
Except whereas he may have (on a purely AAW dedicated Flanker) 8-10 missiles, the surface threat (having no investment in manned airframes themselves) can probably afford to loft 50 to 100 TurboSAMs.
Now what Mister Indian 30MKI pilot? WHAT DO YOU DO?
You die screaming at the center of a robot-pirannha swarming fireball is what you do.
e. They are flexible. In that a hittile weapon which is fired from 10-100nm 'overhill' can kill a helicopter firing up your truck column from defilade even if the distance between you is 3-4nm (too great for MANPAD/VSHORAD defenses).
Or it can be tasked against an /enemy/ tank column running down a highway towards your capital by virtue of an IR seeker that can pregrommaed to recognize friendly FAC-coded SALH designation zots.
When taken in combination wiith an intelligent fuze able to multievent respond to hard target mass, rotor doppler or canopy glint.
And a directed warhead which can be used in top attack profiles.
The result is a truly multifunction weapons system.
i.e. now you are looking at a missile which is capable of 'swing role' missioning against GROUND targets as well as airborne ones.
If only through a shared delivery bus (propulsion and navigation) backend.
If a FAC can use the same missile to call down 'air support' via an IP lane which he has a designator set up in. As the GCI controller sends up to kill the Jaguar or Mirage 2000s which are being sent against a nuclear facility. As a local commander sends to take digital images of an uncertain battlefield.
Then you truly have BEATEN all three primary factors which currently dictate (unwisely) the manned airpower 'choice': Range, Reuse:Cost Ratio, Role Flex.
4. Invest heavily in deceptive manuever and camouflage technology. Anything which multiplies your force at 1/10th the ton:mile requirement in fuel, munitions and repair logistics is a 'good thang'.
Because it encourages the enemy to mass his own units to engage phantoms. Or to maneuver to avoid them.
Both of which _waste time_ that a smaller, more reactive, force can use to retain the initiative in hitting where they want with maximum effort:yield in massing fires not platforms.
Either one INCREASES the predictability factor of their own definition->exploration->exploitation battlefield shaping strategy. For if an enemy will hit a decoy as if it was a real force with real (high cost) PGMs, you know he is 'serious about nothing'.
Even as your ability to regenerate 'nothing' makes you better able to attrite on a defense-in-depth basis of threat force kills rather than an all-or-nothing commitment to a place or time whose intensity level is not conducive to the smaller force LER attrition victory.
Indeed, this might be ONE area where .5-2KT nuclear devices, 'atomic landmine' planted in advance, could be used to not merely break up but annihilate and dishearten an Indian fighting force commited to attacks on YOUR SOIL.
Even as it highlighted Pakistani resolve to 'fight to the very last option available, but not to escalate beyond our borders!'. In such a way as would make it clear that _OUTSIDE INTERVENTION_ was required. Before escalation rather than before defeat.
Never doubt, if India want's Pakistan 'back' (god knows why), tactically/conventionally, there is absolutetly nothing to be done about it.
But if you throw in the Nuclear Equation it has to be done in a way which is both noble and proactive rather than the act of a cornered animal, gone rabid. There is nothing more "At the beaches, on the landing fields, we shall never surrender!" resolute and at the same time /shocking/ than the willingness to use atomics on your own dirt.
For it is the Russian razed-earth policy taken to it's utmost extreme.
By comparison, waiting for external global superpower referees to throw in your own towel is asking for them to not so much absent mindedly forget as to deliberately wait until their little live weapons demo has gone on long enough as to leave you in a bad position for further negotiation.
In any case, to bring the Indians properly to battle is to force them to commit sufficient acts of force as to be the undoubted aggressor on Pakistani sovereign territory.
Before you wipe the floor with them.
And as everybody loves the underdog hero who defeats the 'deserving Goliath'. By making a sacrifice play.
So too must you have sufficient FALSE targets (C3D decoy and camouflage) as to allow you to keep the battlefield in play long enough for that definitive characterization "Here is where we will make it happen and this is why the Indians will look bad for trying! " to be both a function of Indian overcommitment in pursuit of phantoms.
And a 'short war not sport war' _moral_ victory in the public eye. Without bleeding Pak forces to nothing in the preparatory phases.
Such a victory being the point at which you 'honorably call for UN mediation'.
KP