Pakistan raises defense spending amid regional conflicts
The sharp defense spending hike highlights lessons Pakistan has learned from recent conflicts with India and a growing focus on new warfare technologies, regardless of
The sharp defense spending hike highlights lessons Pakistan has learned from recent conflicts with India and a growing focus on new warfare technologies, regardless of economic constraints imposed by the IMF. The Pakistani government last week presented a draft budget to lawmakers that hikes defense spending by 18% to 3 trillion rupees ($10.8 billion). Pakistan's finance minister, Muhammad Aurangzeb, said the increase was intended to make the country "invincible due to the uncertainty in the region." Analysts say key considerations are evolving military technologies and emerging threats. "Future conflicts will no longer be confined to two adversaries," said Islamabad-based defense analyst Maria Sultan. "They will be shaped by weapons and technology flowing from multiple countries, fought across land, air, cyber and electronic domains simultaneously." A changing security environment Sultan told DW that wars in Ukraine and the Middle East as well as last year's India-Pakistan conflict — which brought the nuclear-armed neighbors to the brink of all-out war — have reshaped how military planners think. In May 2025, New Delhi launched "Operation Sindoor" in retaliation for a deadly mass shooting at Pahalgam, a popular resort town in India-administered Kashmir, in which at least 26 mostly Indian Hindu tourists were killed. India said the Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Taiba, considered a terrorist organization by the UN, had carried out the attack.
New Delhi also accused Islamabad of backing the group, with the Pakistani government denying the allegation. India and Pakistan both claim Kashmir in its entirety, but each country only controls a section of territory, making the Muslim-majority region a flashpoint in the larger India-Pakistan geopolitical rivalry. The clashes following the Pahalgam attack raised concerns about strategic stability in South Asia and sparked debate about the limits of nuclear deterrence between rival nuclear powers. "The conflict demonstrated that atomic weapons do not necessarily prevent conventional conflict below the nuclear threshold," said Qamar Cheema, executive director of the Sanober Institute, an Islamabad-based think tank. War risks on multiple fronts Pakistan's military planners are grappling with a security environment shaped by India's continuing military modernization and the growing role of drones, cyber capabilities and precision-guided weapons in modern warfare, according to Cheema. India, Pakistan could be ready to talk 1 year after standoff To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video The challenge is not limited to Pakistan's eastern border with India. Islamabad is also embroiled in a conflict with neighboring Afghanistan, particularly in its western provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. In February, Islamabad declared it was in "open war" with Kabul, following a rise in militant attacks on civilians and security forces inside Pakistan.
The BriefWire