Operations
Every named operation
20 operations between 1948 and 2025 — offensives, peacekeeping deployments, disaster relief and evacuations. Each has a full account of what it set out to do, what it achieved and what it cost, and names the catalogued equipment it was conducted with — so a platform can be read forward into what it did, and an operation backward into what it was fought with.
How the ranking works. Half of it is measured — English Wikipedia pageviews over a fixed 24-month window, on a log scale. The other half is our own 1–5 rating of consequence, which is a judgement and not a measurement. Sort by date instead if you would rather not take our word for the second half.
Accounts follow the cited sources. Casualty and loss figures are contested for most entries here, frequently along national lines; where they appear they are given as disputed rather than settled, and where they could not be stated fairly they are left out.
9 of 20 operations
May – July 1999
Operation Vijay (1999)
विजय
Retaking ridgelines above 16,000 feet, in the highest-altitude war ever fought.
- Theatre
- Kargil, Ladakh
- Equipment
- 8 catalogued
18–19 December 1961
Operation Vijay (1961)
विजय
Thirty-six hours that ended four and a half centuries of Portuguese rule in India.
- Theatre
- Goa, Daman and Diu
- Equipment
- —
7–10 May 2025
Operation Sindoor
सिंदूर
Precision strikes on nine sites, and the first combat use of India's own air-defence network.
- Theatre
- Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir
- Equipment
- 10 catalogued
4–5 December 1971
Operation Trident
Missile boats struck Karachi and lit a fuel-tank fire that burned for seven days.
- Theatre
- Karachi harbour
- Equipment
- —
8–9 December 1971
Operation Python
The follow-up strike, four days after Trident.
- Theatre
- Karachi harbour
- Equipment
- —
3–4 November 1988
Operation Cactus
A coup stopped overnight, 1,200 miles away, by paratroopers who landed in the dark.
- Theatre
- Malé, Maldives
- Equipment
- 2 catalogued
RepresentativeDecember 2001 – October 2002
Operation Parakram
पराक्रम
The largest mobilisation since 1971 — and a war that never came.
- Theatre
- The western border
- Equipment
- 5 catalogued
June 2019 — present
Operation Sankalp
संकल्प
Escorting Indian-flagged shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, continuously since 2019.
- Theatre
- Gulf of Oman and Persian Gulf
- Equipment
- 4 catalogued
RepresentativeMay – July 1999
Operation Talwar
तलवार
A fleet held off Karachi, and a war shortened by the threat of a blockade.
- Theatre
- Northern Arabian Sea
- Equipment
- 1 catalogued