The decades-long conflict between the two nuclear-armed neighbours nearly escalated into a new war in February when India carried out an air raid on an alleged terror camp in Pakistan in retaliation for a deadly attack on Indian military personnel earlier that month.
Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency has been mulling a response to India to answer a potential future airstrike similar to that carried out by the IAF in Balakot while attacking a suspected terror camp, Zee Media reported.
The Indian media outlet claims it had seen intelligence reports suggesting that Pakistan has since adopted a multi-pronged strategy to prevent any retaliatory strike by New Delhi in the future.
Islamabad has allegedly accelerated the long-delayed purchase of up-to-date warfare systems and advanced radars, which it purportedly seeks to deploy along the de facto border for better surveillance.
The decision is said to have been prompted by Pakistan’s failure to detect the presence of the Indian warplanes because their surveillance system had allegedly been jammed by the Indian Air Force during the Balakot strikes in late February.
Zee Media then cited unnamed sources as claiming that Islamabad has now decided to boost the number of drones in Pakistan-administered Kashmir so that they can better monitor the situation on the international border, including the so-called Line of Control (LoC), which serves as a de facto border between India and Pakistan.