The true balance of power between two adversaries is decided long before hostilities commence on the battlefield—in the quiet interplay of capability, intent, and the means to sustain both.
The question, therefore, is can Pakistan sustain a credible claim to conventional parity with India despite a headline defence-spending ratio that heavily favours New Delhi? This demands an evidence-based answer that treats money as necessary, but not sufficient, for military power.
After the tit-for-tat nuclear tests between India and Pakistan in May, 1998, the strategic balance of power in South Asia has been frozen in perpetuity. The region’s other nuclear power, China, had carried out tests earlier, in October 1964.
Pakistan's ability to claim conventional deterrence parity with India, despite a defence budget several times smaller, rests on a composite of force-design choices, external assistance and technology transfers, selective modernisation, and a deterrence architecture calibrated to offset numerical disadvantage.
The claim is not that Pakistan equals India in absolute numbers or in the full spectrum of capability; rather, it is that Islamabad seeks ‘effective parity’, not ‘numerical parity’: the ability to negate India's advantages at decisive points that matter to the political outcome of war.
The resource reality at the core argues against any such parity. Pakistan's 2025-26 defence allocation is about $9 billion, while India's is around $78-81 billion. Simple-headline ratios, however, conceal two essential accounting adjustments.
Firstly, India's published defence figure is typically inclusive of pensions and other miscellaneous expenses, which account for around one-third of the headline budget. Excluding pensions, the Indian defence discretionary envelope falls to $54-55 billion in 2025-26, around six times Pakistan’s, not nine times. This arithmetic narrows the order-of-magnitude difference.
The second adjustment concerns the composition and off-budget contributions to Pakistan's security posture. Pakistan mitigates the budget gap through an external-aid pattern that underwrites readiness at critical points. Pakistan's historical relationship with the US and its contemporary partnership with China have both supplied materiel, training, sustainment, technology transfers and co-production arrangements.
The Congressional Research Service catalogues decades of US foreign assistance, coalition reimbursements and security-related transfers to Pakistan that together amount to billions of dollars. The US defence department’s Coalition Support Funds (CSF), while not technically foreign assistance, reimbursed Pakistan for logistics and operations in support of US campaigns—which Pakistan would otherwise have had to finance directly. Thus, CSF subsidised portions of Pakistan's operating budget during critical years freeing Pakistani rupees for recapitalisation and training.
Given these two accounting adjustments, the functional gap between the two states tightens. But arithmetic alone does not explain claims of parity. Pakistan's counter-claim rests on a multi-layered strategy that combines selective conventional deterrence, reciprocal asymmetry, nuclear-escalation control, force design optimised for the India-Pakistan operational environment, and deep external support and technology transfer that multiplies Pakistan's effectiveness beyond raw spending.
Pakistan's claim to ‘parity’ is best understood as a calibrated argument composed of several linked elements: one, nuclear doctrine and force structure, that is, Pakistan's continued expansion intended to raise the escalation threshold; two, targeted conventional capabilities designed for the Indo-Pak theatre; three, external force multipliers; four, asymmetric operational doctrine or short-duration counter-force concepts, dissimilar air-combat training, precision fires, stand-off capabilities, and sea denial threats; and five, information, political, and intelligence measures.
Nuclear posture is the single-most important variable. Pakistan's N-arsenal, estimated at roughly 160-170 warheads, serves as an explicit deterrent and operational hedge. The logic is simple: if Pakistan's leadership can credibly threaten rapid escalation to a nuclear threshold in response to conventional penetrations, India must factor potential strategic damage into operational planning; that calculation compresses India's operational options and increases uncertainty.
Second, Pakistan's targeted-conventional modernisation emphasises platforms that deliver asymmetric effects. Arms deliveries from China involve co-production, licensed manufacture, technology transfer, and lifecycle support for the JF-17 fleet, Al-Khalid/ M-series main battle tanks, Chinese frigate classes and submarine hulls, and multiple classes of missile systems. Technology transfer and co-production convert foreign assistance into indigenous sustainment and resilience. The JF-17 programme, for instance, with avionics upgrades and locally assembled variants, reduces dependence on spare-parts imports.
Third, external security assistance from the US, besides China, is a crucial multiplier. Pakistan received about $4.07 billion in foreign military financing over 2002-17, and sustained international military education and training. Congressional reporting lists the rehabilitation of F-16s, delivery of advanced medium range air-to-air missiles and Sidewinder missiles, Harpoon anti-ship missiles, P-3C upgrades and sophisticated night-vision and targeting systems—a suite that gave Pakistan credible air-superiority counters, sea-denial tools and surveillance and reconnaissance reach. Even as security assistance contracted after 2016, the US approved a $450-million sustainment package for Pakistan's F-16 fleet in September 2022.
Moreover, the China-Pakistan axis transcends hardware. Exercise regimes amplify the technical effect of hardware transfers. The ‘Shaheen’ air exercises include dissimilar air-combat training; the ‘Warrior’ drills incorporate three-dimensional manoeuvre and air-ground integration; and the ‘Sea Guardian’ exercises have progressively introduced anti-submarine warfare, air defence, and maritime interception drills.
Fourth, the operational logic behind Pakistan’s claim is not to assert parity in every domain, but to claim theatre-level contestability to impose costs on India in the geographic slices and time horizons. Pakistan's force design reflects that logic, concentrating on affordable, survivable combat platforms with modern sensors and stand-off weapons.
Fifth, information operations, intelligence expenditure and denial/obfuscation capabilities amplify Pakistan's political coercion. A non-trivial portion of Pakistan's security spending, nearly 20 percent, is allocated toward shaping narratives, cyber operations, and influence campaigns that impose strategic political costs on India.
Nevertheless, structural weaknesses impose hard ceilings. Pakistan's tax-to-GDP ratio is among the world’s lowest, inflation spikes have eroded procurement power, and foreign exchange constraints routinely delay payments. These realities argue against a prolonged conflict in which India's deeper pockets and larger industrial base would always outnumber Pakistan’s inventories.
For India, the counter-argument emphasises cumulative modernisation. But Indian modernisation faces its own headwinds—procurement lag, jointness frictions, and the need to split attention across two fronts with China.
Pakistan exploits precisely those windows where India's coordination costs are highest. Pakistan does not need to win everywhere; it needs to prevent India from achieving rapid, politically decisive gains anywhere.
Pakistan's claim to ‘conventional parity’ with India is best interpreted as a claim about theatre-level, time-limited and domain-specific contestability rather than absolute equivalence.
If parity is read as comprehensive equivalence across duration, domain and strategic reach, then the claim fails. India, too, needs to up its game. Either increase defence spending from an average of 2.43 percent of GDP during 1960-2022 to at least 4 percent over the next decade, or significantly reduce the multi-theatre military challenges it confronts.
Manish Tewari | Member of parliament, lawyer, and former Union I&B minister
(Views are personal)
(manishtewari01@gmail.com)
