India, April 18 -- Apart from being a well-respected military analyst and reporter, Vishnu Som is an unabashed military aviation enthusiast, who has emerged as one of the most informed aviation journalists in India. He has tracked the growth of the Indian Air Force (IAF) closely and has been able to evaluate its operational capabilities and fault lines accurately. Having flown almost all the frontline aircraft in IAF's inventory and several contemporary western platforms, he understands the complexities of military aviation and the pulse of the men and women who operate and sustain these complex machines. Against such a background, he tells the story of Operation Sindoor through the lens of its principal protagonists, the air warriors of IAF. The Sky Warriors: Operation Sindoor Unveiled is an hour-to-hour account of a defining conflict in contemporary Indian military affairs, where air power in all its dimensions emerged as the sword-arm of Indian statecraft. The slim paperback, arranged somewhat like a racy novella, is by no means a definitive and all-encompassing analysis of Operation Sindoor through a strategic, operational and tactical lens. It is, by the author's admission, a distinctly IAF-centric perspective of the conflict backed by detailed interviews with IAF' leadership and several frontline operators, ranging from squadron commanders, flight commanders and fighter pilots to surface-to-air missile operators, who struck fear into the hearts of the adversary. Adding rigour to the narrative is Som's reportage for NDTV during the conflict, and his continuous analysis of several open-source intelligence (OSINT) analyses of the damage inflicted by IAF on Pakistan's terror infrastructure and military capability. The narrative is fast-paced and easy to follow and adopts a chronologically accurate rendition of events as they unfolded. While much has already been written about the politico-strategic overlay of the conflict, what makes this book appealing is its attempt to unravel details of the operational planning process, and get into the skin of the pilots who planned and flew the risky missions, the intrepid surface-to-air-guided-weapons crew, and the working of IAF's home-built situational awareness mechanisms such as the Integrated Air Command and Control System and the Akash Teer. What do fighter pilots and the weapon systems operators in multi-crew platforms go through in a combat environment that involves multiple engagements in the same sortie against competent adversaries? How do they evade highly sophisticated air-to-air missiles in a dense electromagnetic environment? How did IAF's leadership manage escalation control during its massive strikes on May 10, 2025? How did IAF's underrated multi-layered air defence network led by the S-400 succeed against a never-before-experienced barrage of Pakistani missiles and drones? How did IAF and the Indian Army effectively integrate their legacy air-defence guns such as the Schilka and L-70 as the last layer of defence? These are some of the questions Som answers as he attempts to reach out to readers who want to know more about how air power and IAF played a pivotal role during Operation Sindoor. He does this without complicating the narrative with too much technical jargon. Interviews with the Vice Chief of Air Staff, the commanding officer of a S-400 squadron, and the flight commander of a Rafale squadron, among several others, add significant credibility and heft to the narrative, even if these interviews were conducted in a highly curated and controlled environment. Choosing Air Force Station Adampur as the epicentre of action during the conflict provides good operational context to the importance of the base in IAF's calculus and recognition of the base as a critical centre of gravity that IAF defended well against determined attacks by the Pakistan Air Force (PAF). On the flip side, the book is constrained by IAF's understandable reluctance to part with more operational detail, and by the author's focus on the successes of IAF rather than on offering better insight into some of its operational and tactical misses. Greater insight into the tactics and operational philosophy of PAF during the conflict, and more details on the "China factor", would have added significant value to the narrative too. In conclusion, the book unfolds as a racy real-world narrative about the men and women in blue; the air warriors of IAF who orchestrated Operation Sindoor and ushered in a new era of warfare in the subcontinent, led by air power....