The Line of Control has become a testing ground for a new layer of competition between India and Pakistan. What began as periodic reconnaissance and limited tactical use of small unmanned systems has, during 2025, evolved into coordinated cross-border drone operations and large scale counter-drone responses that materially change escalation dynamics.
In early May 2025 New Delhi described a major operation, codenamed Operation Sindoor, that involved strikes on a series of sites inside Pakistani territory. Within a day Pakistan launched a wide airborne effort that Indian authorities and press briefings characterised as a coordinated swarm and reconnaissance campaign, with initial forensic assessments pointing to Turkish-made Asisguard Songar systems among the platforms recovered.
Indian accounts of the incursions emphasised scale. Officials said hundreds of small unmanned aerial vehicles were employed across dozens of locations from northern Kashmir to western Rajasthan, a pattern consistent with an intent to probe air defences, gather intelligence and, in some reported cases, attempt kinetic strikes. Indian forces responded with a layered counter-UAS and air defence posture that sources say neutralised very large numbers of inbound drones.
Reciprocity has been part of the pattern. Pakistani statements and reporting in Pakistan documented instances where Pakistani forces shot down Indian quadcopters and other unmanned platforms along the LoC and in Azad Jammu and Kashmir during the spring of 2025. These tit-for-tat strikes underline that drone activity is not a one-sided phenomenon and that both militaries are experimenting with low-cost aerial tools for surveillance and harassment.
Technically the incidents illustrate several trends. First, tactical armed and reconnaissance drones such as the Asisguard Songar are compact, transportable and capable of being deployed from proximate forward positions, extending the reach of non-kinetic and kinetic operations without committing manned aircraft. Second, massed small-UAV actions are designed to overwhelm or map detection and engagement procedures, forcing defenders to reveal sensors, command links and response routines. Third, the growing use of off-the-shelf or commercially adapted systems accelerates diffusion of capability across state and non-state actors alike.
On the defensive side both capitals have accelerated counter-UAS deployments and layered air defence integration. Newer indigenous systems and legacy kinetic weapons have been used alongside electronic warfare measures to create multi-tiered interception umbrellas. The practical result is that low-cost drones can still be operationally effective for intelligence, nuisance attacks and shaping effects, but their utility for strategic escalation against a well-prepared neighbour is constrained by increasingly dense detection and engagement networks.
These tactical and technical realities translate into three longer term security implications. First, drones lower the threshold for cross-border probing because they limit risk to personnel. That makes incidents more frequent and increases the chance of miscalculation when a downed drone or collateral damage prompts a sharp reply. Second, proliferation of relatively sophisticated tactical drones changes deterrence calculations. States can achieve tangible effects at substantially lower cost than with manned aviation or missile strikes, which complicates signalling and crisis management. Third, suppliers and third-party logistics will matter more; export choices by manufacturers and intermediaries can rapidly alter regional balances and vulnerability profiles.
What is required now is a set of pragmatic, confidence-building responses that reduce the risk of inadvertent escalation but do not naively ignore the technologies in play. Practical steps include hotlines for immediate incident clarification, agreed protocols to manage drone recoveries and forensic exchanges, transparency around counter-UAS deployments in forward sectors, and multilateral discussions on norms for the cross-border use of small armed drones. Parallel export controls and stricter end-use verification for tactical UAV systems would address the supply side of proliferation. These measures will not remove the drones from the LoC but they can reduce the chance that a modest unmanned intrusion becomes a broader conflagration.
The LoC today is therefore a microcosm of a broader technological shift. Unmanned systems compress distance and blur thresholds. Absent careful management, they create repetitive friction and new forms of risk between nuclear-armed neighbours. The policy challenge for New Delhi and Islamabad is to channel competition into stabilising practices rather than letting the drone era institutionalise a more dangerous cycle of probing, retaliation and rapid escalation.