Indian Strategic Studies: 03/20/26

20 March 2026

The Strategic Use of Drones in Pakistan–India Irregular Warfare

Tahir Mahmood Azad

The rapid spread of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) has changed the dynamics of the India-Pakistan rivalry. Instead of manned airpower and attritional land exchanges, the competition is now based on cheap precision, constant surveillance, deniable force, and escalation ambiguity. Drones of all types are now used constantly along the militarized India-Pakistan border, known as the Line of Control (LOC). These drones range from commercial quadcopters used for spying or improvised attacks to advanced medium-altitude long-endurance/high-altitude long-endurance (MALE/HALE) platforms that conduct long-range precision strikes. During the May 2025 crisis, both states employed drones at unprecedented scale to probe air defenses, strike sensitive installations, and signal resolve. This marked a qualitative escalation: for the first time in the rivalry, unmanned systems were used not only for surveillance and tactical support but also for coercive and strategic signalling, effectively altering the escalation ladder.

In this contested region, drones have lowered the threshold for force, obscured attribution, and compressed decision-making timelines for Indian and Pakistani militaries. As a result, the growing autonomy and lethality intensify risks of miscalculation in a nuclearized environment. South Asia’s drone competition is best understood as part of the broader global transformation in unmanned warfare rather than in isolation.

The Global Drone Revolution

Pakistan’s Military Campaign in Afghanistan Is Here to Stay

Umair Jamal

Pakistan’s ongoing military campaign in Afghanistan, which has now stretched into its fourth week, marks a departure from the sporadic border skirmishes between the two countries that defined Islamabad’s relations with the Afghan Taliban regime since their return to power in August 2021. What apparently began as targeted responses to cross-border attacks that Islamabad alleges emerge from Afghanistan has evolved into a sustained campaign, which appears to be aimed at dismantling the Taliban regime’s capacity to shelter and support anti-Pakistan militant networks.

Islamabad has named the ongoing operation “Ghazab Lil Haq,” which means “Rage for the Righteous Cause.” The operation’s scope, intensity, and stated objectives suggest this is no fleeting retaliation but a new doctrinal baseline for dealing with Kabul as part of Islamabad’s new approach to deal with threats posed by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

Fact-Checking the Commander-in-Chief on NATO in Afghanistan: The Choice Between History and Opportunity

Tom Ordeman, Jr.

“I’ve always said, ‘Will they be there, if we ever needed them?’ And that’s really the ultimate test. And I’m not sure of that. I know that we would have been there, or we would be there, but will they be there? We’ve never needed them. We have never really asked anything of them. You know, they’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan, or this or that. And they did – they stayed a little back, a little off the front lines.”

Trump’s statement is factually wrong, but his bombast reintroduces an uncomfortable truth: NATO contributed directly to the Afghan War’s failure. This is as good an occasion as any to unpack this controversy.

How America’s War on Iran Backfired

Nate Swanson

Seventeen years ago, while serving as an Iran desk officer in the U.S. State Department, I asked a more veteran colleague about the latest inflammatory statement by Mahmood Ahmadinejad, then the Iranian president. My colleague responded: “Stop paying attention to Ahmadinejad. Only focus on Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. He makes the important decisions.” He added: “But don’t worry. Change is coming. Khamenei”—who was then 69 and widely believed to have cancer—“could die at any moment.”

Khamenei did not die. Not until two weeks ago, when U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did what nature had not and ended the supreme leader’s 36-year stewardship of the Islamic Republic. Khamenei left a damning legacy. Since his ascension in 1989, the Iranian rial has lost almost all of its value against the dollar. Although rich in natural resources, Iran consistently experiences electricity and water shortages. Over the past year, food prices surged more than 70 percent.

Toward a Theory of Victory for the War in Iran

Can Kasapoğlu

Entering its third week, Operation Epic Fury has degraded the Islamic Republic’s strategic strike systems and suppressed, though not eliminated, its ballistic-missile launch capacity. Yet the campaign has not neutralized Iran’s true center of gravity: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Despite leadership losses, the IRGC’s doctrinal order of battle and kill chains remain operationally coherent. The Revolutionary Guards also retain powerful economic warfare escalation levers that are effective on a global scale, particularly Iran’s ability to threaten the Strait of Hormuz and the region’s water desalination infrastructure.

Below, Hudson Institute Senior Fellow Can Kasapoğlu offers a theory of victory for the ongoing war. He identifies the threats Iran still poses and the strategic gaps that the American campaign has yet to address, and outlines how to shape the conflict in a way that brings the United States and its allies closer to winning the fight—militarily and strategically.

Why Are the Houthis Sitting Out the Iran War?

Nadav Samin

The Houthis stand to gain very little from joining the fight on Iran’s side despite Tehran’s past support for their cause. The United States and Israel are at war with Iran, and the conflict is spreading across the Middle East. Tehran is for the first time imposing a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, choking off global oil and gas shipping and hoping to raise the costs of attacking the Islamic Republic.

Iran learned to weaponize trade routes by watching its Houthi partners apply those tactics in and around the Red Sea. Since Hamas’ October 7 attacks in Israel, Houthi military pressure on critical shipping lanes has caused economic damage of upwards of $15–$20 billion dollars, as well as significant increases in cargo rates and insurance premiums. Yet to this point, the Houthis have stayed out of Iran’s war. Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi has made three statements on the conflict, but none have signaled the group’s military intentions or suggested that they are on the verge of striking out at Iran’s widening list of adversaries. What might be holding the Houthis back?

Next Flashpoint In Iran War? The Bab Al-Mandab Strait Off Yemen’s Coast

Frud Bezhan

Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz in response to a massive US-Israel bombing campaign has wreaked havoc on world energy markets and sent oil prices soaring. Things could get even worse, experts say, if passage through the Bab al-Mandab Strait — another crucial shipping route in the Middle East — is also disrupted.

A choke point off Iran’s coast, the Strait of Hormuz connects the Persian Gulf to the open ocean and global markets via the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. Likewise, Bab al-Mandab is a narrow passage for ships entering or exiting the Red Sea, whose Yemeni coastline is largely controlled by the Huthi rebels, an armed group backed by Iran.

The Gulf states’ offensive options against Iran

Dr Hasan Alhasan

Despite previously pledging neutrality and trying to avoid war, the Gulf states are bearing the brunt of Iran’s retaliation against American and Israeli aggression. Iran has fired at least 1,946 missiles and uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAVs) against the United Arab Emirates alone, far surpassing the number of projectiles fired against Israel. In addition to targeting American military bases and facilities in the region, Iran is striking a wide range of civilian targets in the Gulf states, including hotels, airports, ports, and oil and gas facilities, imposing a growing human and economic toll on its neighbours.

Emirati diplomatic adviser Dr Anwar Gargash has stated that the Arab Gulf states can ‘no longer sit idle and absorb [Iranian] attacks against their facilities’, while Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Dr Majed al-Ansari has said that Iran’s attacks ‘cannot go unanswered’ and a ‘price must be paid’. The United States has been coaxing and sometimes pressuring the Gulf states to join the war, largely to signal broader regional support for the US–Israeli campaign. US President Donald Trump has claimed, without evidence, that the Gulf states are ‘aggressively fighting’ and ‘insist on being involved’, although they have repeatedly denied this. Trump ally US Senator Lindsey Graham has warned that ‘consequences will follow’ if the states fail to ‘get more involved’ in the war.

Middle East war: military, strategic and diplomatic angles

Douglas Barrie

Tehran’s stock of close, short, medium and intermediate-range ballistic missiles was a central pillar of its deterrence strategy. However, this strategy was found wanting when faced with the aerial onslaught by Israel and the United States.

Iran expended a significant element of its medium- and intermediate-range ballistic-missile inventory during the Twelve-Day War in June 2025. The extent to which it was able to replace these missiles in the interim would have depended on its ability to repair damaged manufacturing facilities and secure the raw materials for propellant manufacture.

Despite this, however, Iran may have so far launched over 700+ ballistic missiles, with Israel and the United Arab Emirates the recipients of most attention. Ground-based air defence was used in both countries to intercept nearly all the missiles. In the UAE, the Ministry of Defence said on 1 March 2026 that since the beginning of the Israeli and US attacks, it had engaged 165 ballistic missiles. Two days later, this figure had grown only to 186, of which 172 were engaged, 13 fell in the sea and one impacted the UAE. By 4 March, the total was 189, and by 9 March it had reached 253, of which only two had struck UAE territory.

Rising Lion’s Air Offensive

Guy Plopsky

Following the 12-day war in late June 2025, the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) immediately began a project to understand how the region has changed and what the military action could mean for future combat. The project and its contributors believed that war would resume and that the pause in combat in June 2025 could be a prelude to a major, wider, and longer-lasting conflict. That day has now come. This chapter is the first of two parts that examine the Israeli Air Force’s operations in June 2025 and the immediate lessons learned. The second part is forthcoming. As expected, FPRI will also begin its own assessment of Operation Epic Fury and the implications for US and allied air power operations.

Operation Rising Lion, initiated in response to the potentially existential threat posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran’s ballistic missile and nuclear programs, constitutes the most complex and ambitious air offensive ever undertaken by the state of Israel. Executed to great effect by the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF’s) Air and Space Arm (popularly known as simply the Israeli Air Force or IAF), Aman (the IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate), and Mossad (the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations), the meticulously planned offensive highlighted Israel’s continued qualitative edge in manpower and technology over its enemies.

How the Iran War Ignited a Geoeconomic Firestorm

Edward Fishman

The economic consequences of the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran are coming into sharper focus as the conflict enters its third week. As the fallout expands beyond the Middle East and ripples through the global economy, markets and supply chains are being increasingly reshaped by the drones and missiles buzzing over the Gulf—and the United States has few options to de-escalate the conflict.

The Strait of Hormuz, which is critical to the oil and gas industry, is at the center of this disruption. But it’s not just energy markets that depend on the strait. Fertilizer and high-tech supply chains are also negatively affected, widening the crisis further. If the war develops into a protracted conflict, these issues could become lasting structural shocks to the world economy.

Why Russia Is Watching Iran Burn

Alexander Gabuev, Nicole Grajewski, and Sergey Vakulenko

Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty, committing their countries to oppose interference by third parties in each other’s internal and external affairs. Moscow and Tehran celebrated the treaty as the culmination of growing ties between the two regimes.

Yet when the United States and Israel launched an attack on Iran in late February—the second in just eight months, following last summer’s 12-day war—Russia mostly stood idly by. Putin called the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei a “cynical violation of all norms of

Trump’s Cyber Strategy Falls Short on China, Iran, and the Threats That Matter Most

Matthew Ferren

Matthew Ferren is an international affairs fellow in national security, sponsored by Janine and J. Tomilson Hill, at the Council on Foreign Relations. His research examines China’s evolving cyber threat, U.S. defense policy, and international cyber cooperation.

The White House’s recently released cyber strategy is strikingly short, with just four pages of substance—roughly one-seventh the length of the Biden administration’s 2023 strategy. National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross has described it as a high-level statement of intent, with action items to come. But the brevity also reflects a fraying cyber apparatus that is, at best, still finding its footing and, at worst, suffering from institutional neglect.

Cheap drones are reshaping modern warfare — and catching the U.S. off guard

Scott Neuman

Wladimir van Wilgenburg stands in a residential neighborhood in Erbil, in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, and points out incoming drones high in the sky. "The U.S. defense systems, as you can see, are taking down the drones," he says in a video recorded during the first days of the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran and sent to NPR.

First one, then another, is obliterated in a puff of smoke, sending explosions reverberating through the apartment block several seconds later. Van Wilgenburg, a journalist based in Erbil, says drones — sent by Iran to attack U.S. facilities in the region — have become a daily occurrence over the city in recent weeks. So, too, have the interceptions.

The Reckoning Coming for America’s Middle East Strategy

Irina Tsukerman

The U.S.–Israeli campaign against Iran has reshaped the regional balance of power in ways that extend far beyond the battlefield. Military degradation of Iranian nuclear infrastructure and leadership networks alters deterrence equations, yet history shows that partial regime decapitation rarely produces clean political outcomes. Iraq after 1991, Libya after 2011, and Syria after the collapse of centralized authority — both after the civil war and in the aftermath of the fall of the Al Assad — all demonstrate the same trajectory. When coercive institutions sustain damage with no replacement, fragmentation is much more likely than liberalization. Iran is entering that historical pattern. The most plausible outcomes range from a Venezuela-style survival model driven by security-sector cohesion to a hybrid system where remnants of the Islamic Republic coexist with semi-autonomous military and economic power centers. Both scenarios extend instability rather than resolve it, creating an environment in which political fragmentation and narrative warfare matter just as much as military capability.

Lessons from the Post-Cold War Transition in Eastern Europe

Iran’s resistance to clean transition rests on the fusion of ideology and structure that defines the Islamic Republic. The regime is not a conventional authoritarian state that accumulated power gradually. It emerged from a revolutionary project that still shapes how its core institutions think and operate. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) exists not only as a military force designed for a specific mission in the Iran-Iraq war, but as the armed guardian of the revolution, embedded across politics, the economy, intelligence networks, and foreign policy. Loyalty inside that system flows from belief as much as patronage, raising the threshold for elite defection and making fragmentation slower and more uneven. Where many regimes fracture along transactional lines, Iran’s fractures are more likely to follow competing interpretations of revolutionary legitimacy.

Fire damage, clogged toilets, and sinking morale: USS Gerald R Ford to set sail for repairs in Crete

Mark Saunokonoko

A fire onboard the USS Gerald R Ford, injuring sailors and destroying 100 beds, is the latest mishap to plague the world’s largest aircraft carrier on a marathon deployment some argue has sapped crew morale.At sea for almost nine months, and currently stationed in the Red Sea to support the war on Iran, the carrier will reportedly set sail for Crete for repairs.

The length of the deployment has raised questions about morale of the sailors on board and the readiness of the warship. Officials, who spoke to Reuters on the condition of anonymity, did not say how long the $13bn vessel was expected to remain in Crete. One of the officials said nearly 200 sailors were treated for smoke-related injuries when the fire broke out in the ship’s main laundry area. The fire took hours to bring under control and had an impact on roughly 100 sleeping berths.

Iran’s War Strategy: Don’t Calibrate—Escalate

Mona Yacoubian

Iran’s aggressive retaliation against U.S. and Israeli strikes highlights Tehran’s war strategy: eschewing calibrated retaliation for unbridled escalation. Iran aims to restore deterrence and ensure the Islamic Republic’s place in the region’s emerging order. Iran signaled its intent to widen and deepen the conflict from day one, and its unprecedented approach could spark multiple escalation scenarios with significant regional and global impacts.

By going big early, Iran appears to have absorbed the lessons from previous conflicts. Iran and Israel first crossed the Rubicon of open state-on-state conflict in 2024, with direct clashes in April and October. Then, the United States joined Israel in the June 2025 Twelve-Day War. These conflicts were marked by limited, tit-for-tat escalation, short durations, and a telegraphed and choreographed end. This time is different. Even before the outbreak of conflict, Tehran signaled that it would not repeat the Twelve-Day War. Threatened by regime change and determined to deter future attacks, Iran appears to have opted for unrestrained escalation.

US Navy to use wall-climbing robots to inspect ships

PATRICK TUCKER

The U.S. Navy and GSA will pay Gecko Robotics $71 million to use its drones and AI to inspect ships, jets, and other gear, part of the service’s effort to reach 80 percent fleet readiness next year and stem its shortage of ships. The company says it can identify repairs up to 50 times faster and more accurately than human inspectors—and do so even before a ship reaches its dock, which will help the Navy get the right people and parts in place.

This work is slated to be carried out across destroyers, amphibious warships, and littoral combat ships. The deal means “any DOD branch can use the AI and robotics,” the company said in a statement.

Justin Fanelli, the Navy’s chief technology officer, said during a February Govini event. "When these American companies, pure-play defense and dual-use companies like Gecko Robotics choose to do hard things and move the needle on our outcome metrics—not by percentage points, but by orders of magnitude—it results in faster, better portfolio management…We're now seeing solutions that make innovation adoption easier and in doing so save time, money and risk.”

Shuffling the deck: realising ACE in the Indo-Pacific

Rupert Schulenburg

The United States may have air supremacy in its attack on Iran, but it is not an assumption that underpins the Department of War’s approach to the Indo-Pacific theatre, as the recently concluded exercise Bamboo Eagle 2026 makes readily apparent. Held at the end of February and designed around the US Air Force’s (USAF) Agile Combat Employment (ACE) concept, the exercise tested the service’s ability to operate in a contested environment from the outset of hostilities, with operations and units dispersed over considerable distances. Command and control was stressed through testing, and units could not assume returning to the operating base they departed from.

Threats and constraints

The ACE concept, which began to be developed in the late 2010s, has primarily been driven by China’s growing ability to hold US air bases in the region at risk through its long-range strike and targeting capabilities. These include large inventories of intermediate and medium-range ballistic missiles able to target bases across the first and second island chains. China has also built up its intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) architecture to support such operations. In late 2025, the US Space Force assessed that the People’s Liberation Army was supported by over 500 ISR-capable satellites, with China having grown its total on-orbit inventory by over 1,100 satellites over the preceding decade.

The Iran-Israel-US War Is Reconfiguring US Force Posture in the Indo-Pacific

Mina Pollmann

Even before the outbreak of war in the Middle East, South Korea was wary of U.S. calls for “strategic flexibility” or the potential use of U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) to counter China. Now that the United States is reallocating air defense assets from the Korean Peninsula to the Middle East, those concerns have taken on a new urgency. While South Korean President Lee Jae-myung opposed the U.S. decision, he also stated that he could not “impose [South Korea’s] position” on the United States.

U.S. defense officials have downplayed Asian allies’ concerns about a decreasing stockpile of munitions – including missiles – and the concentration of U.S. military assets in the Middle East. While some administration officials – such as Elbridge Colby – might say that the United States is “laser-focused on the First Island Chain” of Japan, the Philippines, and Taiwan, and focused on “very close alignment with [U.S.] allies and partners in the region,” words are cheap. Moving multiple Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system launchers out of bases in South Korea and one-third of the U.S. naval surface fleet to the Middle East sends a very different message.

Europe Cannot Be a Military Power

Hugo Bromley

Since the end of World War II, the countries of western Europe have relied on the United States for their security. Thus safeguarded, these countries were left free to pursue economic integration while maintaining their democratic systems of government. Responsibility was bifurcated, with Washington handling the continent’s security, and Brussels taking on an ever-greater economic role. This division of responsibility is now uncertain. U.S. President Donald Trump has demanded the purchase of Greenland, attacked European leaders, and interfered in European countries’ domestic politics. More recently, he has warned that, if NATO allies do not assist in the opening

The US has several options to counter Iranian mines. These are some key assets.

Riley Ceder

The U.S. military possesses several capabilities that it could wield to combat naval mine warfare in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy views the maritime weapon as a key pillar of its military strategy, according to a 2017 Office of Naval Intelligence report, and reportedly began laying mines in the sea passage last week.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a Pentagon briefing Friday, however, that there was “no clear evidence” of mines in the strait. Adm. Brad Cooper, head of U.S. Central Command, said Monday that U.S. forces destroyed storage bunkers for naval mines during a U.S. strike on military targets on Iran’s oil export hub, Kharg Island, on Friday. U.S. forces also destroyed 16 Iranian minelayers last week, according to CENTCOM.

Beyond the Menu of Options: A Taxonomy for Information Security Strategies

Nazar Syvak

Information threats are often perceived as among the most significant to democratic states and their social stability. Revisionist states, including Russia and China, and non-state actors like ISIS, have extensively used methods of information warfare to influence target audiences and achieve political results. This escalating challenge, amplified by the growing popularity of social media, has prompted scholars and practitioners to develop numerous frameworks and toolkits to counter foreign influence operations and disinformation in the information environment. There is, however, a noticeable lack of conceptualization and taxonomy of information security methods and strategies, with most available resources outlining a variety of counter-disinformation tactics rather than developing a comprehensive framework for systematizing such tactics and approaches.

This paper proposes a three-category taxonomy of information security approaches, dividing them into reactive defensive measures, proactive defensive measures, and offensive measures. A coherent systematization of tactics would enable scholars and practitioners to better understand the risks and benefits associated with each category of approaches, establish causal links between countermeasures and their effectiveness, design robust evaluation metrics, and develop more efficient information security strategies.

You Can’t Stockpile AI: Military Advantage in the Age of Algorithmic Diffusion

Kyle Dotterrer

Artificial intelligence will reshape how wars are fought, and the United States enters this era with genuine advantages. American companies build the most capable models in the world. US-based chip designers dominate the advanced semiconductor supply chain. Private investment in AI flows into American firms at a rate that dwarfs every other nation. These are real strengths, and they underpin a reasonable belief that the United States leads the global AI competition. The confidence borne of this belief, however, rests on an assumption that deserves scrutiny: that breakthroughs made in American labs translate into durable, exclusive military advantage. In previous technology competitions, the path from discovery to adversary replication was measured in years or decades. In AI, that timeline is compressed to months or even weeks, and this reality undermines this assumption.

The underlying reason for this compression is idea fluidity: The core algorithmic innovations that power AI capabilities diffuse rapidly and freely across borders through open publications, open-source model releases, and the global movement of AI researchers. When ideas cannot be hoarded, the factors that determine who holds advantage in AI shift from who discovers the breakthrough to who commands the resources to build on breakthroughs and field them fastest. Those factors—compute infrastructure, talent, and the organizational capacity to adopt AI at speed and scale—tell a more competitive story than the headline narrative of American dominance suggests. They also illuminate a path toward durable AI superiority for military applications.

Tesla’s Cybertruck may be wrong for some. Could it be right for the battlefield?

Alex Lee

Surveillance by small, cheap quadcopter drones has made substantial battlefield advances nearly impossible amid Russia’s ongoing war on Ukraine. Armored vehicles are quickly spotted and destroyed with either drones or artillery. Soldiers on foot seldom fare any better. Negating the other side’s drone capabilities would be a tremendous advantage, but conventional air defense isn’t good enough.

Fortunately, the U.S. has developed a solution: 30mm chain guns — traditionally mounted on Apache attack helicopters — bolted to civilian pickup trucks and connected to a portable sensor called Mobile–Acquisition, Cueing and Effector, or M-ACE. After detecting drones, the Northrop Grumman-made system calibrates programmable shells to detonate mid-air, meaning the system, which is cost-friendly compared to other solutions, can destroy quadcopters and dismantle swarms without hitting them directly.