Ministry of Railways conducts third Vande Bharat rake trial run in Kota-Nagda section

India's Chief of Integrated Defence Staff, Air Marshal Ashutosh Dixit, has issued one of the most consequential strategic assessments since Operation Sindoor, warning that India is no longer dealing with the same Pakistan it managed for the past three decades and laying out, in precise detail, what Pakistan's post-Sindoor behaviour reveals about the military and nuclear dynamics India now faces. The picture Dixit painted is of a Pakistan that blinked during the conflict, then panicked, then restructured. "Pakistan could not use its missiles effectively during Operation Sindoor," he said bluntly, "either because of the threat of Indian retaliation, or because of civilian control constraints." The consequences were swift and revealing. In August 2025, just three months after the conflict, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced the creation of an entirely new Army Rocket Force Command, modelled directly on China's PLA Rocket Force. Then in November 2025, Pakistan's parliament passed its 27th Constitutional Amendment with what Dixit described as "remarkable and troubling haste" abolishing the post of Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff, which had existed since 1976, and replacing it with a single Chief of Defence Forces. The Army Chief automatically holds this post, meaning one man now controls Pakistan's Army, Navy, Air Force and nuclear arsenal. "The haste of this restructuring, the centralisation it represents, are themselves acknowledgements of the deficiencies exposed during the conflict," Dixit said. But Pakistan, in his telling, is only one piece of a larger strategic puzzle being assembled by China. Beijing, he warned, now views India not as a partner but as a potential threat, a structural rivalry backed by the operational commissioning of the Fujian aircraft carrier, deepened Russia ties, and expanding Global South partnerships. Against this backdrop, Dixit offered two notes of cautious optimism: India's support to Sri Lanka during its economic collapse has produced one of New Delhi's closest regional partners, demonstrating the power of the neighbourhood-first approach when executed well. And Operation Sindoor itself, he said, was a strategic inflection point, proof that India has found space for effective conventional military operations below the nuclear threshold, changing the terms of its relationships with its adversaries in ways that will take years to fully unfold.