Pakistan Cancelled All Flights to PoK
Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Apr 30: Apparently fearing military action by India in the wake of the Pahalgam terror attack killing 26 tourists, Pakistan on Wednesday cancelled its own flights to the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir days after it closed its airspace to all flights owned and operated by Indian carriers in retaliation of India suspending the Indus Water Treaty.
Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) has cancelled all flights to and from Gilgit and Skardu in PoK. News reports in Pakistan revealed the flight schedules of PIA on Wednesday, which showed that the four flights to Skardu – one each from Karachi and Lahore, and two from Islamabad – have been cancelled.
Four other flights from Islamabad to Gilgit have also been cancelled, media reports said. “Pakistan has stepped up its vigil, especially in monitoring its airspace amid tensions with India. For security reasons, all commercial flights scheduled to operate to and from Gilgit and Skardu have been cancelled,” it stated.
Pakistani officials have told the newspaper that the measures were “precautionary” and aimed at ensuring “its airspace” is secured. It is not clear however, if this is a temporary measure or a long-term one. Besides the regions that fall in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, Islamabad has also heightened its security and surveillance across the nation.
Meanwhile, in the event of an armed conflict between the two neighbours, ‘Global Firepower Index’ (GFP), the annual global defence review, has put the Pakistani military power at three times lower than that of India though it had not found much difference in the two country’s air power.
The comparison of India and Pakistan’s military strengths showed India has a better score with 0.1184 in the GFP’s ‘PowerIndex score’ (PwrIndx). A score of 0.00 is considered optimal, according to the GFP. Under this index, India ranks 4th out of 145 countries in the PwrIndx military strength ranking. The GFP gave a PwrIndx of 0.2513 to Pakistan, and placed it on the 12th out of 145 spots in global military strength rankings. The GFP data shows Pakistan is at a rank that is three times lower than India.
India has 14.75 lakh active military personnel, and 16.16 lakh paramilitary police personnel, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). India has 1,437 fixed-wing aircraft, 995 helicopters, 7,074 armoured fighting vehicles (AFVs), and 11,225 pieces of artillery. The defence budget is $81 billion for 2025. For nuclear deterrence, India uses a primarily land-based launch platform. However, India can also deliver nuclear bombs from the air, and is developing its submarine force. It has intermediate-range ballistic missiles, and is testing an intercontinental-range version.
Pakistan has a much smaller defence budget of $10 billion for 2025. It has 6.6 lakh active military personnel, less than half of what India has. Pakistan maintains a paramilitary police strength of 2.91 lakh. Pakistan has 812 fixed-wing aircraft, 322 helicopters, 6,137 AFVs, and 4,619 artillery pieces. The gap between India and Pakistan’s AFV strength is not very wide, according to SIPRI data. Islamabad has both land-based and air-delivered nuclear weapons, with medium-, short- and close-range ballistic missiles. Pakistan has sought submarine-launched nuclear-armed cruise missiles.
The last biggest escalation between the two neighbours was in February 2019 when India bombed a terror camp deep inside Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (PoK), in retaliation against the suicide bombing attack on a convoy of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama.
Since 2019, both sides have boosted their military capabilities. India is also the world’s largest arms importer, according to SIPRI. The bulk of India’s supplies come from Russia. New Delhi has also expanded military suppliers to include the US, France and Israel, as well as developing its domestic production, including aircraft carriers, submarines and helicopters.
