New Delhi: India’s lightning-quick Operation Sindoor, executed on the night of May 9, 2025, was proclaimed a limited counter-terror operation. Two months later, newly released Google Earth imagery analysed by open-source sleuth Damien Symon places an unmistakable missile scar on Pakistan’s nuclear-linked Kirana Hills and exposes freshly patched runways at nearby Mushaf (Sargodha) airbase. The pixels contradict official Indian and Pakistani denials, spotlighting a clandestine episode that has already reshaped regional deterrence calculus.
The immediate catalyst for Operation Sindoor was the April 22, 2025 massacre of twenty-six tourists in Pahalgam, claimed by The Resistance Front (TRF), a Lashkar-e-Taiba proxy. Domestic outrage galvanised New Delhi to authorise a tri-service response framed as “equal intensity in the same domain,” emphasising terror infrastructure rather than Pakistani state assets.
Yet the geography of the strikes quickly told a different story. Within 23 minutes, at least fifteen BRAHMOS cruise missiles and multiple SCALP/HAMMER precision munitions detonated across Punjab and Sindh, damaging eleven of thirteen major Pakistani airbases, including Nur Khan, Rahim Yar Khan, Sukkur, and Mushaf.
