Operation Sindoor and Aftermath

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What were the stances of Vietnam, Mongolia, Philippines, Taiwan, plus many African countries i.e Kenya, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Namibia, Tanzania. And the Latin American countries Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela. Indian Oceania Mauritius, Seychelles..
 
one view is of this belief that the whole game is sponsored by murican to test the effective ness of the chinese component and how to deal....

they didn't had the iota that porkies will be so idiots and Indians will so articulate...

that they came rushing it...and now they are doing damage control via money lending

In all this chinese became joke of the town.
 
Operation Sindoor: Story, success, takeaways

The Pakistani site went on to say, “The concept has recently gained currency with the Indian strategic community.”

India’s stunning military project, Operation Sindoor, to punish the terrorist Pakistan was planned and executed with admirable precision and confidence by the defence forces in just two weeks. But the capability to accomplish this grand project in weeks was developed over years, painstakingly, against all odds and opposition by internal and external designs.

The transformation of the defence infrastructure to the non-contact war model undertaken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was the foundation for the spectacular Op Sindoor, as compared to the earlier Uri surgical strike and the Balakot aerial attack based on the traditional war model.

Modi realised that the old model would not work in future. That it would not enable deep strikes into Pakistan, without which India would not be able to destroy terror outfits at their source, impelled Modi to transform the war model to non-contact warfare, the outcome of which was Op Sindoor and its breathtaking success.

Despite all the military infra and preparations, Op Sindoor could not have been undertaken with the eventual ease without a cluster of supportive factors that dramatically transformed the geopolitical, economic and strategic ecosystem in India’s favour under Modi’s 10-year rule. It was also aided by the relative decline of Pakistan in the same period.

What is non-contact warfare and how Modi put India on its ladder? This is what the Pakistan Defence website had to say [8.7.2020] about how India was climbing on to non-contact warfare. It described the induction of long range missiles, high precision smart weapons, unmanned systems, robots and satellites primarily driven by technology and aimed at achieving a quick, decisive victory by remote delivery of destructive kinetic energy as “Non-Contact Warfare”. The Pakistani site went on to say, “The concept has recently gained currency with the Indian strategic community.” It added,

“The Balakot strikes and earlier fake surgical strike claims (by India) point to its strong desire for gaining psychological ascendancy without suffering casualties, simultaneously avoiding escalation of violence. As recently as January 2015, the Indian Army Chief reiterated that Non-Contact Warfare is “important” and is a “major consideration” in the planned restructuring of the Indian Army.” In its post in 2020, the Pakistan website cited to the Indian Army chief’s reference to non-contact warfare in 2015 as “recently”!

The pillars of the Op Sindoor were five advanced supertech non-contact war equipment that avoided ground forces or traditional airstrikes. One, Rafale aircraft, two, SCALP missiles, three, HAMMER missiles, four, Kamikaze loitering drones developed with Israeli aid, and five, the deadly BrahMos missiles. All of them are non-contact and autonomous; once fired, they home in on to the target on their own.

The Indian Air Force deployed Rafale fighter jets to execute Op Sindoor. India got cutting-edge weapons systems, both SCALP and HAMMER, mounted on its Rafales. These missile combinations enabled deep strikes and precision targeting. SCALP can move stealthily and hit distant, fortified targets like bunkers and command centres 500 km away. The HAMMER is an air-to-ground weapon. It is ideal for hitting even mobile targets.

In Op Sindoor, HAMMER missiles supported the SCALP. The Kamikaze drones are ‘do or die’ drones that are operated by remote human control. And finally the deadly BrahMos missile, fitted with indigenous seeker instrument that guides it to its target, which smashed the terror mansions in Op Sindoor. The most critical air defence equipment which smashed the Pakistani drone and missile attacks from May 7 to 9 night after the deep Indian strike on the intervening night of May 6-7, was the Russian S-400 anti-missile defence system.

Modi acquired Rafale and HAMMER missiles from France, SCALP missile from England, Heron Mk2 UAVs and technology for HAROP drones from Israel, S-400 missile interceptors from Russia, AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, and AGM-114 Hellfire missiles from the US. The Modi government also secretly purchased various other technologies and equipment.

The two items that Modi purchased against all odds and opposition were the Rafale fighters and the Russian S-400 missile defence system. Without the Rafale fighter jets, non-contact war under Op Sindoor would have been unthinkable. Without the Russian S-400s, India could not have thwarted the waves after waves of Pakistani drones and missiles that targeted the Indian defence and air installations on May 7, 8 and 9 particularly. The Pakistani missiles were shot down like birds in the sky.

Modi faced heavy opposition for buying the two major defence assets — Rafale and S-400 — which only made Op Sindoor and its aftermath a spectacular success. In what appeared to be a conspiracy against the nation, the Congress vigorously opposed the purchase of the Rafale jets and, alleging corruption, tried to stop it. Fortunately the Supreme Court intervened, allowing the Rafale deal. As the 2019 polls were approaching, Modi took the highest political risk to buy the Rafales, which today saved India. Without Rafales, our defence forces would not have been able to fire autonomous drones and missiles to target and destroy terrorist camps 250 km away, without crossing the border, which is the very essence of non-contact warfare.

If Rahul was bent upon stopping the Rafale, the US was hell-bent on stopping India from buying the S-400 from Russia. It had threatened to impose technological sanctions on India if it went ahead with the S-400 deal with Russia. But Modi did not buckle under the threat of his friend Trump and went ahead to buy the S-400s in 2018. It is the S-400s that stopped and destroyed the hundreds of Pakistani missiles and drones fired into our territory after the tri-force attacked nine terror camps. Had Modi buckled under Congress pressure before elections and not gone ahead with buying Rafale fighter jets, and had he succumbed to Trump’s threat and cancelled the order to buy S-400 anti-missile systems, India could never have thought of Op Sindoor.

The story is not complete without complimenting Modi for his efforts to indigenise defence manufacturing under his ambitious Atmanirbharta agenda. Modi did not stop at importing the best equipment. He also encouraged the development of technologies within the country. Our country, which produced 32% of our needs in 2014, now produces 88% of them. A word about the Kamikaze drones.

The Israeli tech was indigenised as swadeshi Kamikaze drones and inducted into the defence forces in April last year ahead of India’s 78th Independence day. The National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL) manufactured the indigenous Kamikaze drone, which was a significant milestone in India’s defence tech. These “do-and-die” unmanned aerial vehicles, designed with home-built engines, can fly up to 1,000 km and loiter over target areas for up to nine hours. The swadeshi Kamikaze drones made their debut in Op Sindoor.

Mere military preparation would not have enabled India to cross the borders and hit Pakistan. When Modi took over as prime minister, he had to overcome negative perceptions about him spread with venom by his detractors in India with the active support of their liberal woke associates outside. He vowed to take on the liberal world that virtually hated him.

Anyone facing such adverse opinion would have sought a global PR agency at high cost to soften the rigour of the adversity. But he decided to correct the wrong impressions about him by his own efforts and did it in the most unconventional way. He undertook the most extensive travel by any leader anywhere. He stormed 73 countries in 10 years. He went to Israel, India’s outcaste for seven decades, never visited by any Indian prime minister. Today it is India’s closest ally.

He was the first PM to visit Australia after Indira Gandhi. It is now a great ally of India to deal with the West. As of May 2025, he has visited 41 countries once. 14 countries twice. The UK, Saudi Arabia included, eight countries thrice. Sri Lanka four times. Three countries, including China, five times. Germany six times. Japan, Russia, UAE seven times. France eight times and the US 10 times. These were not diplomatic picnics. He built powerful and personal relations with all nations.

His strenuous and personal outreach made him familiar with most nations, and friendly to the most influential leaders and most distant nations. Tall world leaders became his fans. A few examples. Former Israeli prime minister Bennett said Modi was the most popular person in Israel. US President Trump said Modi is a fantastic person, magnificent and a total killer. Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden said that he “felt like taking Modi’s autograph”. Russian President Putin said, “Modi is a wise man.

He cannot be intimidated to make decisions. I am even surprised at his tough position to defend India’s national interest.” Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni said, “Modi is the most loved leader in the world.” Australian Prime Minister Albanese called him “boss”. The then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson wrote in his book, Unleashed, that Modi is a change-maker, recalling how he sensed a curious astral energy during their first meeting.

Modi was conferred the highest civilian awards by 21 countries, including Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait (all Muslim nations), USA, France, Russia and Greece. No other world leader was honoured by such a large number of countries. From 2019, he became the most admired leader of the world quarter after quarter in the US Morning Consult survey with an approval rating of over 70%.

As Modi was straining every nerve to build India’s image by his extensive foreign travels, the Congress party began deriding him as a non-resident prime minister. In contrast, Rahul Gandhi secretly travelled abroad 247 times in four years. Even his party did not know where he was and whether he was in India.

Modi’s rise and India’s rise were complementary to one another. His visits and the fame he earned fetched India technology, trade investment and military equipment not easily available without his unprecedented outreach.

His geopolitical rise as a global leader is a factor that enabled India to tower over Pakistan, which was dwarfed by Modi and India’s rise. When the stealthy Balakot aerial attack was launched under Modi’s watch as PM, there was muted support to open opposition. This time around, he openly declared Op Sindoor and brutally attacked Pakistan after crossing the border.

But no Muslim country except Turkey supported Pakistan. Qatar, which had aligned with Pakistan so far, supported India this time.

India could not have undertaken Op Sindoor without global support.

India’s rise during Modi’s rule dwarfing Pakistan to insignificance has also shifted the global ecosystem in its favour. When Modi assumed office, India was listed among the Fragile 5 economies of the world. Today, it is among the top four economies of the world with the highest growth rate. India’s GDP was $3.88 trillion in 2024.

Pakistan lags behind at $0.37 trillion — 10 steps below India. India doubled its GDP during Modi’s rule. Pakistan, in prolonged macroeconomic crisis, is nowhere near. In 2024, India recorded 8.2% growth — thrice as much as Pakistan’s 2.4%. Over the last decade, India’s per capita GDP surged by 74%, while Pakistan’s remained muted. India’s forex reserve is $676 billion; Pakistan’s is just $9 billion. India is the fastest growing economy.

In contrast, Pakistan has been at the IMF doorsteps over 20 times since 1980 for rescue. The recent $7 billion IMF bailout of Pakistan is one of the largest in its history. These bailouts, meant for economic stability, have often been used to fund its military that is aligned with terror.

These comparative numbers did also matter in the positive attitude of different nations to India in Op Sindoor.

Op Sindoor is a dramatic turn which transformed India into a rule-setter in the Indo-Pakistan interface. There are several key takeaways. One, India has avenged the Pahalgam carnage by massive missile strikes on nine terror camps, which Pakistan could not block and had to admit unlike in the past when it was always in denial. Two, Pakistan, which started the war after India’s attack on terror, could not penetrate the country’s air defence system with its missiles.

Three, Indian forces destroyed Pakistan’s air defence systems besides attacking and damaging its air bases with impunity. Four, when the thoroughly beaten Pakistan’s nuke threat was laughed away by India, it had to beg through its Director General of Military Operations for a ceasefire. Five, India openly declared that in the event of a future terror strike, it will regard it as a declaration of war and pursue the terror outfits inside Pakistan.

Six, by its military commanders attending the funeral of the globally wanted terrorists and paying homage to them, Pakistan has provided vital evidence of the link between its army and terror. Seven, the prime minister in his address to the nation told Pakistan and the world that ‘terror and talk’, ‘trade and talk’ cannot go together. Eight, the PM told them that any talk with Pakistan will be only about PoK.

Nine, he also declared that blood and water cannot flow together, clearly saying that Indus water flow is linked to Pakistan giving up terror. Ten, Modi warned Pakistan that unless it gave up terror it would be destroyed by terror. And lastly, Modi said that India will not tolerate nuclear blackmail, indicating that its no first use option may be reviewed.

To conclude, Op Sindoor resets the India-Pakistan engagement — in war or in peace.
 
The way Pakistanis are celebrating their "victory" suggests they are unaware of their impending downfall. They will be shocked by the events that await them, and no deception will shield them from the consequences. This will unfold before December, during the winter.
We must have crippled PAF permanently, the brain dead people of pakistan should have been left flying paper fighters. We lost such a golden opportunity
 
Hellfire seems to have gotten into the game of skills business , inaugurating a start up , playing the numbers game .

In Mumbai it's called Matka or Jackpot.
Is he pedicting that when Trump leaves the middle east, we could expect some misadventure from paki side or we will preempt the attack by taking on remaining terror camps
 
Lessons for the next India-Pakistan war

After several days of strikes and counterstrikes, the fragile ceasefire between India and Pakistan, brokered by the United States, appears for the moment to be holding. Already, both sides are telling self-justifying, bravado-laden stories—of varying credibility—about what they gained. They are also beginning to assert with retrospective confidence that they were carefully managing the risks of a wider war to avoid unexpected escalation.

We should take such claims with considerable skepticism. Much of what unfolded over the last few days appears to have been improvisational and opportunistic, and produced a battlefield environment that was at times frighteningly opaque, particularly for a conflict involving two nuclear powers. While many basic facts about this conflict remain obfuscated by the fog of war, it is becoming clear that this was the most dangerous India-Pakistan crisis in a quarter century.

It is too early to comprehensively assess what this means for India, Pakistan, and the region. But I think there are at least four dynamics coming into view that will shape the nature of future crises. First, the global debate on “attribution” has tilted decisively in India’s favor, but in ways that may exacerbate political pressures to react hastily following future terrorist attacks. Second, the two militaries have set troubling new precedents about target selection that will influence military planning and could raise the stakes for a future war. Third, information operations appear to be moving from the periphery to the center of wartime planning, particularly within the Pakistani defense establishment. And fourth, the widespread use of drones and loitering munitions has complicated how both militaries interpret the escalation ladder. Each of these developments could make the next crisis more unpredictable than the one we just experienced.

Beyond attribution​

This conflict began as most India-Pakistan crises have for three decades: a terrorist attack in India. On April 22, gunmen brutally massacred twenty-five Hindu tourists and a Muslim tour guide in Pahalgam. India quickly and credibly claimed that the attacks were carried out by a front group affiliated with the terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), while Pakistani sources asserted, implausibly, that it was a false flag operation.

It is striking that, in the wake of this horrific event, there has been remarkably little focus on exactly who carried out these attacks, or the precise nature of the assailants’ links to the Pakistani state. The reason for this is simple: the United States and India’s other key partners have, over the last decade, largely adopted New Delhi’s approach of imputing culpability for terrorist attacks to Pakistan, based on a long-standing pattern of Pakistani support to anti-India militancy rather than on publicly disclosed evidence.

This evolution is in part the fruit of a successful Indian effort to move its partners beyond the need to deeply interrogate questions of attribution—and to label calls for investigation as mere dilatory attempts. The United States’ prolonged exposure to Pakistan-based terrorist groups, and India’s growing appeal as a strategic and trade partner to countries around the world, no doubt also contributed to this evolving dynamic.

That India is now granted this presumption by its partners is extremely valuable, as it gives New Delhi space to act more rapidly and decisively against Pakistan in response to any future terrorist attack on its soil. But it also conditions domestic opinion-makers to believe that attribution should happen with a kind of pro forma automaticity. The Indian leadership may have successfully predisposed its friends to Pakistan’s inherent guilt, but it now has to more actively manage the expectations of its own people, who assume that the first order reaction to terrorism is not attribution but retaliation.

Indian leaders appear willing to accept these pressures as the price of avoiding public litigation about the exact nature of terrorists’ links to the Pakistani state. One cannot blame them. The Pakistani military has allowed a welter of militant and terrorist groups to operate largely unimpeded on its soil. As I describe in my new book, “Vigilante Islamists,” these groups have complex links with both Pakistani political parties and state institutions, and operate on the same ideological wavelength as the army’s own leadership. The patterns of state cooperation with these groups are strikingly visible, but the details of any single operational partnership are often difficult to trace.

By working to neutralize the attribution question, Indian leaders have limited Pakistan’s ability to delay, deny, or internationalize the next crisis. But they may, in the process, have made it more difficult to dampen jingoistic media calls for swift and decisive retaliation.

Targeting concerns​

Both sides also have reason to worry about what the targeting precedents from this conflict might mean for escalation risks in the next one. India’s opening salvos hit Muridke—LeT’s well-known headquarters—and a major Jaish-e-Mohammed complex in Bahawalpur. Those strikes told a clear story of proportionality: terrorist bases for terrorist violence. But they also exhausted two of the most symbolic, politically sellable sites that had long been on India’s short-list.

Should another attack occur, New Delhi may feel compelled to reach deeper into its playbook, and deeper into Pakistan, to find sites with comparable political and operational value. Instead of terrorist infrastructure, they might feel pressure to target second-tier Pakistani intelligence or military facilities, or might combine counterterrorist strikes with special operations or naval activities to demonstrate seriousness. Each of these options, and others like it, is fraught with new risks.

Pakistan likely comes away from this conflict with a different but symmetric concern. Indian weapons not only crossed the international border but also demonstrated accuracy against defended sites. The Indian Air Force was able to strike Nur Khan air base in Rawalpindi—not far from Pakistan’s army headquarters—and other key airfields. Although damage appears limited, the choice of targets signaled India’s willingness to challenge Pakistan’s air defenses and to threaten assets close to the heart of the state.

Militaries grow anxious when their air defense systems are targeted, as this raises the specter of losing control of critical command nodes, or of misreading a limited strike as preparation for something larger. These anxieties may well shape Pakistani doctrine going forward, nudging it toward earlier mobilization and, paradoxically, faster escalation in a future conflict.

Information operations​

One of the professional hazards of being a defense scholar is having to read shelves’ worth of foreign military journals and sifting the legitimate doctrinal developments from voluminous amounts of triumphalism. Over the last decade, I have found Pakistani defense journals to be replete with articles about information warfare. I had largely dismissed this writing as trendy groupthink, or perhaps as an attempt to mimic the more subtle Chinese writings about “informationized warfare.” But I may have been wrong.

It seems the Pakistani military made significant efforts to shape the information environment. Several of these were relatively sophisticated, such as Pakistan’s denials of striking India on the night of May 8-9 which, in the midst of the growing crisis, introduced real puzzles about the direction and proportionality of the subsequent Indian retaliation. Other attempts, however, were absurdist, such as official Pakistani claims that Indian ballistic missiles were aimed at Sikh population centers in Punjab, an evident attempt to exploit communal sensitivities.

Indian official accounts also sought to shape the information environment, but were considerably more ponderous and reactive, with press briefings often lagging events by hours. Into that vacuum poured a hyper-competitive Indian media ecosystem, which blithely reported wild rumors that Karachi’s port had been destroyed, and that Pakistan’s army chief was under house arrest. Such exaggerations seem comical in retrospect, but in the moment, they risked adding pressure on decisionmakers to act more assertively or sending confusing messages to Pakistani planners.

We should not exaggerate the impact of this cacophony of misinformation on the actual conduct of military operations. War is inherently confusing. But it would be unwise to see this merely as an incremental shift. Pakistan’s increasingly aggressive information efforts, combined with India’s frenetic and unusually irresponsible media environment, create new and significant risks for miscalculation in future crises.

The drone wars​

Perhaps the most consequential military development of this crisis was the widespread use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and loitering munitions. Defense officials from both governments claim that hundreds of drones—ranging from small quadcopters to longer-endurance combat platforms—were launched over four nights, many on one-way missions. For the first time, India and Pakistan fought what looked like a mutual drone war, with probing missions, strikes, interceptions, and spoofing attacks occurring almost continuously.

The widespread use of UAVs in this conflict should not have come as a surprise, given the close attention both militaries have paid to the lessons of the Ukraine war. But the development is troubling for two reasons. First, many of these UAVs were deliberately “attritable,” sent to probe enemy air defenses and prompt the costly use of air defense munitions. This is a sensible use of small or expendable platforms, but as noted earlier, targeting air defense radars and batteries can be read as a provocative action that might presage preparations for a deeper assault on an adversary’s territory.

Second, we saw in this conflict what seems to be an emerging hierarchical “grammar” of escalation. Artillery, which is quite commonly exchanged in retaliatory volleys across the contested Line of Control, is not particularly escalatory. Ballistic missiles and—perhaps just a half-step below, cruise missiles—are at the other end of the spectrum due to their speed and destructive power and for the ways that they might foreshadow nuclear mobilization. UAVs and loitering munitions occupy a murky middle ground.

The extensive nighttime use of UAVs and loitering munitions was not received by either military with extreme alarm, which suggests that these systems might have broad and relatively non-escalatory utility in future conflicts. However, each country spoke rather indiscriminately and at times imprecisely about “missiles” and “drones,” opening up considerable space for confusion. A future drone strike that disables a critical radar or air defense system could trigger disproportionate retaliation, particularly in a chaotic environment of misinformation.

Lessons learned​

Both sides will seek to quickly learn and incorporate lessons from this conflict for future procurements and operational plans. Pakistan will likely double down on its deep integration with the Chinese industrial base, along with its partnerships with Turkey for UAVs. At first blush, the Pakistan Air Force seems to have performed relatively well in air-to-air combat, though some of its successes may be attributable to ground-based air defense systems postured along the border that targeted Indian fighters in their own airspace. The battle damage assessments may raise questions, however, about the scale and reliability of Pakistan’s deeper air defense systems, as well as the utility of launching a high volume of drones that appear to have produced only modest damage within India.

India faces a more complicated set of choices. Its air defense networks seem to have performed quite well, and its military showed that it could reach into Pakistan with a combination of air- and ground-launched strikes. But this crisis should raise concerns in New Delhi about the need for considerably deeper reserves of missiles and munitions for a sustained conflict, and also the need to coordinate what could evolve into a multi-front confrontation.

As it now stands, Indian forces juggle what I have called a “motley force” of Israeli drones, Russian and Indian air-defense systems, French fighters, American surveillance aircraft, indigenously built UAVs, and a host of other platforms. Integrating this force into a single, networked battlespace across two continental fronts and a vast maritime theater is fast becoming India’s central modernization challenge. This should raise the pressure on the Indian establishment to focus its sprawling defense indigenization efforts on a few more carefully targeted investments.

It will also provide fodder for Indian debates about high-profile procurements. Would adding new (battle-tested) Russian air defense or (untested) Russian fifth-generation fighter platforms to the mix be compatible with building out an extensive and resilient networked warfare environment that includes high-end Western equipment? Or would adopting advanced U.S. platforms such as the F-35 fighter grant unacceptable leverage over India’s security to the United States, particularly in light of President Donald Trump’s comments linking bilateral trade to a ceasefire?

Finally, we should anticipate that both countries’ armies and navies will spend considerable time figuring out how they avoid standing on the sidelines of the next conflict. This time, thankfully, these forces were kept on alert but largely in reserve. But it is not too early to worry that the combination of new norms on attribution, the precedents set by provocative targeting, the chaotic information warfare environment, and new drone technologies could make for a crisis that escalates even more quickly and opaquely than this one, with a wider configuration of fronts and greater destructive capabilities.
 
. decision/action timeline has to be reduced
. It's a given pakis will act as they have since long 1947 - 1998
. Kargil was a infowar victory for india it seems
. There should be a set reaction to any pak activity, it shouldn't take more than 24 hrs
. We have always given the leeway civilian/ political/military /bad paki/ good paki/ radicalised/modern paki were none exist
. Kargil war was what pakis lost and disowned NLI troops
.to assume that a new normal is set would be wrong
. China factor in pak provocations should be highlighted but we are going for low hanging fruit turkey

This is EXACTLY what I've been thinking for a while (regarding reaction times). Israel is a good example; for even smaller terror attacks, at any given time, they always have a list of already designated targets (individuals and sites) ready to attack as soon as they get hit - which their jets or SF/Intel guys go and hit as an almost reflex reaction. This would also cut down on escape/evacuation time from terror camps and HQ's/offices, and obviously reduces enemy army preparation time too for defense/counterattack.

Proper, more serious retaliation can be planned and executed at a later time and place of choosing as India is doing - but there should at least be a certain default reflexive response that happens the moment anything happens in India. A sort of guarantee or "baseline" action (which can also be ratcheted up with time). And it's ok even if some particular attack ISN'T Pakistan's fault - be completely unreasonable and aggressive - and make it clear that purely based on past behavior if nothing else, they'll get hit and be held responsible if anything happens in India (barring some very obvious stuff done by China in the far Northeast or something).
 
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