Indian Strategic Studies: 04/19/26

19 April 2026

Why Can’t India Talk to Lockheed Martin About the F-35 Anymore?

Peter Suciu

It is highly unlikely that India will ever adopt the F-35 Lightning II, a fifth-generation multirole jet fighter—but that will not be for want of trying on America’s part. Last year, in a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Washington, DC, President Donald Trump pitched US military hardware to the South Asian nation—now the world’s largest by population.

“We’ll be increasing military sales to India by many billions of dollars. We’re also paving the way to ultimately provide India with the F-35 stealth fighters,” Trump said during a joint news conference with Modi. Even then, the barriers seemed nearly impossible to overcome. New Delhi maintains close ties with Moscow and remains the largest buyer of Russian military hardware. This includes the S-400 Triumf air defense system—the same anti-aircraft platform that led to Turkey’s expulsion from the program during Trump’s first term.

Why Pakistan’s Once Little-Known Baloch Insurgency Now Matters in Washington

Kiyya Baloch

In December 2025, Acting US Ambassador to Pakistan Natalie Baker announced in a video message that Washington had approved $1.25 billion in financing from the US Export–Import Bank for Pakistan’s Reko Diq copper-gold project in the country’s restive southwestern province of Balochistan. Pakistani and US officials welcomed the decision, hoping the financing would unlock up to $2 billion in US mining equipment exports and create an estimated 6,000 jobs in the US and 7,500 in Balochistan, Pakistan’s poorest province, but rich in minerals.

The announcement was a rare moment of optimism in US–Pakistan relations after years of mistrust, particularly following President Donald Trump’s accusations during his first term that Pakistan had given Washington “nothing but lies and deceit.” Relations between Islamabad and Washington have been strained since a US military raid on an al-Qa’ida compound in Abbottabad, 30 miles northeast of Islamabad, killed Osama bin Laden, America’s most wanted terrorist.

Pakistan’s War in Afghanistan Is Tied to Its Nuclear Strategy

Natiq Malikzada

Pakistan’s bombing of Afghanistan over the past few weeks has again exposed something the world would prefer not to confront: it is fundamentally a rogue state that acts without regard for international law. From February 26 until March 18, according to the United Nations, Pakistan’s bombing of Afghanistan has killed at least 289 people, including women and children, and displaced around 115,000. This notoriously included the bombing of a drug rehabilitation center in Kabul on March 16, killing 143 civilians and wounding hundreds more.

Pakistan has sold these attacks in international fora as “counterterrorism” missions. Islamabad has claimed that it is targeting Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a Pakistani terrorist group with bases in Afghanistan—vaguely and euphemistically claiming that its targets have been “terrorist camps,” “hideouts,” and TTP’s “Afghanistan-based leadership and handlers.” However, in public reporting around the weeks of bombardment, there has been no clearly identified target whose killing would explain the scale of civilian harm—making the claim of “surgical” attacks collapse under the weight of dead and wounded civilians, damaged homes, and displaced families.

China’s Hormuz Problem Energy security without control

Tim Daiss

China is in a tightening bind. A fragile two-week ceasefire has kept the Strait of Hormuz partially open, but flows remain constrained and increasingly shaped by political tolerance rather than market forces. For Beijing, which continues to rely on Iranian oil, this exposes a strategic vulnerability it can no longer ignore: its energy security rests on sea lanes it doesn’t control, a dilemma exacerbated by US President Donald Trump’s precipitate complete shutdown of the Hormuz Strait.

The global oil market is a creature of high volatility and supply anxiety with traders weighing geopolitical risk against potential peace talks. In fact, the Strait is no longer functioning as a purely commercial artery. It has become a politically managed corridor, where access depends as much on geopolitical alignment as on market demand and it is a mystery when that will change. That distinction matters.

China has so far weathered the historic oil crisis. But as Xi prepares to meet Trump, costs are starting to grow

Simone McCarthy

China, the world’s largest importer of energy, has so far weathered the global energy shock brought on by war in the Gulf well compared with some of its Asian neighbors. But as global fuel markets remain volatile amid an uneasy US-Iran ceasefire and a new American military blockade that threatens Iranian exports, the stakes of the conflict are only rising for Beijing.

One reason? As the main importer of Iranian oil, China is the country that stands to be the most impacted by US moves impacting its flow – both last month when the White House removed certain US sanctions on Iranian barrels, and now, as the US military launches a blockade of Iranian ports. These moves may not lead to immediate shortages in China, which has been well prepared for an energy shock.

From Rejection to Acceptance: Why Iran Agreed to a Ceasefire

Arsalan Bilal

After more than a month of an intense regional war, a ceasefire between Iran and the U.S. has de-escalated the conflict, at least for some time, as international efforts toward a broader agreement continue. Recent commentary talks about the diplomacy that resulted in the ceasefire, but a critical question remains: why did Iran agree to a ceasefire it initially opposed?

For close to six weeks, Iran suffered significant leadership and material losses amid the U.S and Israel striking key targets, yet it developed meaningful leverage. To this end, it demonstrated its ability to disrupt energy supplies flowing through the region, thereby imposing significant costs on its adversaries that depend on the stability of the global economy. The strategy was the linchpin of Iran’s asymmetric warfare through which it could compensate for its military disadvantage and operational degradation.

Coercing Iran: Why Trump’s Hormuz Blockade Has a Short Fuse

Max Boot

President Donald Trump announced on Sunday that negotiations with Iran had failed. This was no surprise. The only successful U.S. accord ever negotiated with the Islamic Republic—the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—took roughly eighteen months to conclude, and that was focused solely on the nuclear issue. There was scant hope that Trump’s inexperienced negotiators, led by Vice President JD Vance, could bridge all of the differences with the Iranian side on issues like Iran’s nuclear program and support of regional militant proxies during one marathon negotiating session in Islamabad, Pakistan.

What was surprising was what Trump did next: He announced a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Beginning at 10 a.m. Eastern Time on Monday, the U.S. Navy would be interdicting all ships that had entered or departed Iranian ports. Ships that called at non-Iranian ports would be free to go their own way—assuming that Iran let them pass.

Medical scans and chips: the hidden fallout of the Iran war for China

John Liu

Four months ago, a dozen academics and researchers from China’s top oil and gas producers issued a warning buried in an academic journal: the nation’s quest for self-sufficiency had a critical weak spot.

The threat they identified was helium, a colorless, odorless gas with a wide range of uses, from regulating temperatures during semiconductor manufacturing to cooling medical scanning devices, testing for leaks in pipelines, and pressurizing space rocket fuel tanks. The problem was that over 83 percent of the country’s supply came from outside China.

Iran Blockade Sets Up a Test of Which Side Can Endure More Pain

David E. Sanger

President Trump’s decision to blockade all Iranian shipments out of or into the Strait of Hormuz starting Monday morning sets up the next great test in the Iran war: Which side can endure more economic pain, Tehran’s new leadership or Mr. Trump himself?

Almost everything about how this new turn in the war plays out is likely to look very different than what has unfolded so far. Instead of directing missiles and bombs at military sites, missile emplacements and Iran’s defense industry, Mr. Trump will try to choke off the country’s lifeblood, the oil that accounts for more than 50 percent of its exports and just about all of the government’s revenue.

Transforming in Contact: The Army Needs an Unmanned Systems Command Now

James Peterson

The Russo-Ukraine war has demonstrated that unmanned systems are integral to modern tactics and an asset that commanders must plan for and plan against. Ukrainian forces have used commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) drones since 2014 – primarily the $2,000 USD DJI Mavic – for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) as well as tactical-level targeting. In September 2024, President Volodymyr Zelensky signed legislation establishing the USF as a separate branch of the Ukrainian armed forces.

The USF emerged through a bottom-up approach, ultimately driven by end users actively engaged in combat on the frontlines. Before the USF’s establishment, operators communicated directly to develop the best tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) for employing these systems in combat. This system did not allow for a shared understanding across the force, which degraded the common operating and intelligence pictures of the battlespace. This lack of shared understanding and situational awareness costs the lives of many soldiers across the battlefield.

War by other means: the Tatmadaw’s transition test

Morgan Michaels

Myanmar’s military, known as the Tatmadaw, has once again initiated a transition away from direct junta rule to a hybrid system in which it attempts to exercise power via a quasi-civilian proxy government. As history shows, however, elections and parliamentary politics are likely to produce dynamics and outcomes that the Tatmadaw cannot fully control. Rather than offering a secure path towards regime consolidation, the transition and Min Aung Hlaing’s recent ascension to the presidency have exposed the Tatmadaw to considerable risk.

The ongoing transition began with tightly controlled elections held in phases between December 2025 and January 2026, in which the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), led by retired officers, won by a landslide. This same outcome marked the beginning of the 2010 transition, when limited elections also led to the USDP’s sweeping victory. The Tatmadaw’s pivot back towards limited political transition is motivated by two objectives.

Iran: A Longer View

Victor Davis Hanson

The prognosis of the Iran War is now so couched in politics and so warped by the American Left that the public has grown tired and wants it all to go away. But in truth, the situation is so fluid that any accurate prediction is impossible. Yet there is good reason to believe in an eventual outcome quite favorable to the U.S. and one far better than the status quo ante bellum.

The Strait of Hormuz

Prior to President Trump’s most recent announcement that the United States would first blockade and then reopen and control traffic through the Strait, only a few ships were going through, mostly those aligned with Iran, opposed to the United States, or neutral. Thus, the Strait was disrupted to a far greater degree than during Iran’s earlier efforts at closure during the “Tanker War” phase of the Iran–Iraq War, as well as its chronic harassment of shipping in 2018–19. And now?

A Test of Wills in Iran Trump Is Still Underestimating Tehran’s Resolve

Nate Swanson

Over the weekend, the United States and Iran failed to come to an agreement in Pakistan to end their war. At first glance, the two sides are miles apart. The United States wants Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz, accept significant restrictions on its nuclear program, limit its missile arsenal, and curtail its support for proxies such as the Lebanese militia Hezbollah. Iran, for its part, wants the ability to monetize its control of the strait, full sanctions relief (including the release of frozen assets), a cease-fire in Lebanon, and, most important, lasting assurances that the United States and Israel will not resume their war against Iran.

The talks took on an extraordinary sense of urgency, in part, because Iran has discovered a new trump card: its ability to effectively close the Strait of Hormuz. In fact, doing so has worked so well in creating leverage that on April 13, Trump began his own blockade, vowing to prevent any ships engaging with Iranian ports from entering or leaving the strait. The success of Trump’s counterblockade will be determined by whether Iran can endure more short-term economic pain than the United States.

Europe’s Tank Race Is Back—And NATO’s Eastern Flank Is Getting Much Harder for Russia

VLAD LITNAROVYCH

Europe’s armored landscape in 2026 is moving away from Cold War-style mass and toward smaller but more combat-ready forces built around newer platforms, digital integration, and deployability, according to Army Recognition on April 12.

By total fleet size, Türkiye remains first with 2,381 tanks, followed by Greece with 1,385, while Poland currently fields about 897. But Army Recognition’s core point is that the real balance is changing beneath those numbers. That matters because not all tank fleets carry the same military value. Türkiye’s large inventory still relies heavily on older M48 and M60 variants, while Greece continues to field a sizable number of Leopard 1 tanks alongside more advanced Leopard 2 models.

How Pakistan became an unlikely bridge between the United States and Iran

Rhea Mogul, Sophia Saifi

The streets of Islamabad have been emptied by a sudden two-day public holiday, declared to enforce a strict security lockdown in the Pakistani capital. Behind the barricades, diplomatic activity is operating at a fever pitch as the world holds its breath for this weekend’s make-or-break ceasefire talks between the United States and Iran.

Pakistan, a nation more frequently making international headlines for its heightened militancy and shaky economy, is hosting the first direct talks between Washington and Tehran, working to end a weeks-long war that has left thousands dead and sent shockwaves across the globe.

U.S. and NATO Need To Learn From Ukraine

Joshua Segal

In the manner of the ancient Greek myth recounting the demise of Icarus due to his hubris—when his wings failed as he flew too close to the sun—the United States and its NATO allies must acknowledge the shortcomings in their strategy, technology, and planning following the initial month of Operation Epic Fury, and open their arms to Ukrainian willingness to assist.

The subpar performance of Western precision weapons in Ukraine’s challenging electronic warfare environment, the absence of immediate options to counter adversary attempts to deplete costly weapons with significantly cheaper attack drones, and repeated failures of NATO troops to perform against Ukrainian red teams in exercises underscore the fact that the United States and its NATO partners are not trained or equipped for the modern battlefield. Consequently, they would likely encounter substantial setbacks in a direct confrontation with China, Russia, and even North Korea, which are rapidly assimilating lessons gleaned from the Ukrainian battlefield. To highlight the development, numerous reports suggest that Iran successfully utilized drones in the Gulf that were deemed too ineffective against Ukrainian defenses.

America's Biggest Battlefield Vulnerability Isn't a Weapon. It's Fuel.

Lauren Flanagan

Recent conflicts in Iran have put a spotlight on the vulnerabilities of fossil fuels. Over the last few weeks, we’ve watched the Strait of Hormuz close, cutting off 20% of the world’s oil supply and resulting in a 55% jump in oil prices. Every industry is feeling the impact of this. But no sector is more exposed than defense. The U.S. military is the largest single institutional consumer of oil on the planet, and right now, that's not just an energy problem. It's a strategic one.

Estimates report that the United States armed forces consume approximately 4.6 billion gallons of fuel per year. If the Pentagon were a country, it would rank among the top 60 oil-consuming nations on earth, ahead of Portugal, Peru, and most of the world's mid-sized economies. That demand doesn't pause during a geopolitical crisis. If anything, it surges. What the Hormuz disruption exposed is a fundamental issue: the machines that project force are the same machines most vulnerable to fuel supply disruption.

India’s Oil Security Strategy: Structural Vulnerabilities and Strategic Choices

Vrinda Sahai

The U.S.-Israel strikes in Iran that began on February 28, 2026, triggered rapid Iranian retaliation, including drone strikes on U.S. facilities and missile launches across Gulf states. This broader violent disruption in West Asia has raised concerns over global oil supply chains, particularly the Strait of Hormuz, which transits around 34 percent of the world’s crude oil.

India is a highly oil-dependent state, making it vulnerable to global price shocks. Recent developments, including U.S. sanctions on Russian oil companies Rosneft and Lukoil, U.S. tariffs on countries trading with Iran, and the escalation of the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz, have revealed critical gaps in India’s oil security strategy.

The US blockade of Iran is a gamble. Will it work?

Paul Adams

There's no doubt the US military has the capability to mount a blockade of vessels moving in and out of the Gulf. The question is: to what end? "I do think it's doable," retired US Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery told the BBC this morning. "And it's certainly less risky than the alternative, which would have been to forcibly push back the Iranians and create the conditions for a convoy."

Some of the options floated by President Trump in recent weeks – the seizure of Kharg Island or militarily escorting convoys through the Strait of Hormuz – would have proved hazardous and potentially costly. US forces involved would have exposed themselves to attack from Iranian missiles, drones and fast boats. The possible presence of mines in the water would have added another layer of danger.

Winning the cognitive domain — A methodology built for democratic constraints

Chris Stangle, Peraton

The information environment moves fast. State-sponsored adversaries can push coordinated narratives within hours of a triggering event, seeding confusion, shaping perception, and filling the space before a deliberate response can be organized. The challenge for Western democratic institutions is not a lack of capability — it is a structural one. Every action requires approval chains, legal review, interagency coordination, and documented authority. Narratives must be factually coherent and internally consistent. A single exposed influence operation can generate years of diplomatic friction. These are not weaknesses to be eliminated. They are features of the system we are sworn to defend.

The opportunity lies in building operational methodology that works within those constraints at a tempo the environment demands. That is precisely what the Cognitive Target Nomination Packet (CTNP) framework is designed to do. The CTNP is not an academic concept — it is a practitioner’s answer to a problem observed across multiple commands: the joint force runs lethal targeting on a disciplined 72-hour cycle with a standardized packet vetted through existing command processes; non-lethal cognitive operations have never had an equivalent common packet, and that asymmetry costs information professionals clarity, speed, and credibility at the targeting board.

‘Common ignorance’: how China took the lead in global efforts to govern AI’s future

Vincent Chow

Governments, industry and the public are in “common ignorance” about the present and future of artificial intelligence, making both international collaboration and coordination between industry and policymakers necessary, experts have said.

In a panel discussion at the inaugural Hong Kong Global AI Governance Conference at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) on Saturday, Alibaba Group Holding policy lead Fu Hongyu said that China was now at the front lines of global efforts to introduce guardrails surrounding the fast-changing technology. “We are in a dilemma that can be called common ignorance,” he said. “We do not know what is going on and where the technology is going.”

Operational Exposure in the Age of Attribution: GRU Lessons for Digital Force Protection

Christopher Moede

When Dutch security services detained four Russian intelligence officers in The Hague in 2018, they uncovered a rental car filled with burner phones and close-access hacking equipment. Two human intelligence specialists and two cyber operators had been conducting reconnaissance against the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Dutch authorities had identified them as officers of Russia’s military intelligence agency (GRU) upon arrival in Amsterdam and documented their movements for days. Arrested, publicly exposed, and expelled, the officers of GRU Unit 26165 appeared almost amateur. But the operation did not fail because they lacked technical skill – it failed because they were observable.

The GRU’s 2018 setback demonstrates that in an era of ubiquitous technical surveillance (UTS), operational success depends less on capability than on signature management. Dutch counterintelligence was competent, but the decisive outcome was due not to Dutch brilliance but rather Russian omission. In the age of attribution, failure begins before the operation starts: in the poor cyber hygiene, the unmanaged travel pattern, and the digital footprints left behind. Tradecraft that might once have sufficed proved inadequate in an environment where aggregation begets attribution.

Ubiquitous Technical Surveillance and the Renewal of Irregular Warfare

Christopher Moede

This article examines ubiquitous technical surveillance (UTS) as the operationalized manifestation of unrestricted warfare in contemporary strategic competition, arguing that it collapses normative assumptions of access, attribution, and initiative. It contends that the renewal of irregular warfare lies in signature reduction as a counteroffensive gray zone doctrine that preserves freedom of maneuver by centering human operational judgment under pervasive surveillance conditions.

“[Unrestricted warfare] means that all means will be in readiness, that information will be omnipresent, and the battlefield will be everywhere. It means that all weapons and technology can be superimposed at will… the boundaries lying between the two worlds of war and non-war, of military and non-military, will be totally destroyed…”

— Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, Unrestricted Warfare

Robots captured Russian army positions for first time in history, Zelenskyy says

Veronika Melkozerova

KYIV — President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Ukrainian army captured a Russian position using only ground robotic systems and unmanned aerial vehicles. “For the first time in the history of this war, an enemy position was taken exclusively by unmanned platforms — ground systems and drones,” Zelenskyy said on Monday.

“The occupiers surrendered, and the operation was carried out without infantry and without losses on our side,” Zelenskyy added. The Ukrainian army has been scaling up the use of ground robotic systems, currently piloted by humans from a safe distance, to perform different assault operations and pull out wounded troops from the kill zone, where human evacuation teams could be destroyed by drones.

Driving Forward, Not Looking Back: Reorienting the Industrial Base with AI

Kevin Consedine

Artificial intelligence is often framed as a tool for efficiency - faster processes, lower costs, improved output. But in an organic industrial base under pressure, its true value lies elsewhere. AI is not just about doing things better. It is about changing how leaders see, decide, and act.

Today, much of the defense industrial base remains optimized to explain the past rather than anticipate the future. Leaders are inundated with reports that describe what has already happened - last month’s output, last quarter’s delays, last year’s performance - but offer limited insight into what will happen next. It is possible to drive a car by looking through the rearview mirror, but it is not recommended. Yet that is effectively how many organizations are forced to operate.