Quick notes: What's in the Report-to-Congress?

US panel’s report claims Pakistan’s "success" over India in May 7-10 clash. PDF link

Pakistan’s military "success" over India in its four-day clash showcased Chinese weaponry. While characterization of this conflict as a “proxy war” may overstate China’s role as an instigator, Beijing opportunistically leveraged the conflict to test and advertise the sophistication of its weapons, useful in the contexts of its ongoing border tensions with India and its expanding defense industry goals.

As Pakistan’s largest defense supplier, China provided approximately 82 percent of the country’s arms imports from 2019 to 2023.204 This clash was the first time China’s modern weapons systems, including the HQ-9 air defense system, PL-15 air-to-air missiles, and J-10 fighter aircraft were used in active combat, serving as a real-world field experiment.205 China reportedly offered to sell 40 J-35 fifth-generation fighter jets, KJ-500 aircraft, and ballistic missile defense systems to Pakistan in June 2025.206 That same month, Pakistan announced a 20 percent increase in its 2025–2026 defense budget, raising planned expenditures to $9 billion despite an overall budget decrease.

In the weeks after the conflict, Chinese embassies hailed the successes of its systems in the India-Pakistan clash, seeking to bolster weapons sales. Pakistan’s use of Chinese weapons to down French Rafale fighter jets used by India also became a particular selling point for Chinese Embassy defense sales efforts despite the fact that only three jets flown by India’s military were reportedly downed and all may not have been Rafales.

According to French intelligence, China initiated a disinformation campaign to hinder sales of French Rafales in favor of its own J-35s, and it used fake social media accounts to propagate AI and video game images of supposed “debris” from the planes China’s weaponry destroyed. Chinese Embassy officials convinced Indonesia to halt a purchase of Rafale jets already in process, furthering China’s inroads into other regional actors’ military procurements.

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China Opportunistically Used Pakistan’s Military Crisis to Test and Promote Its Own Defense Capabilities

The Indian Army claimed China helped Pakistan with “live inputs” on Indian military positions throughout the crisis and effectively used the conflict as a testing ground for its own military capabilities.

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The Jeruselam post: How Pakistan shot down India's cutting-edge fighter using Chinese gear

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Prof Bharat Karnad: In retrospect, Modi made the gravest strategic error by calling the White House after the Indian missiles had been fired at the terrorist facilities in Muridke and Bahawalpur on May 7 to inform the US President that the Indian strikes were limited retaliation for the Pahalgam massacre.

Modi was telling him nothing he did not already know. But the act of Modi telling him is what marked India out in the pecking order as a subsidiary power trying to preempt Trump from lashing out. It did not work.

Not sure why Modi feels it imperative to please the US President, when Trump insults and humiliates in return. Because going strictly by his transactionalist tilt, it is Trump’s America that will be hard put strategically to replace India in the Indo-Pacific, to economically find a market as vast as India’s to sell to.

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