Nature of warfare has changed..... It might be productive to stop chasing unicorns...
Unicorns are useful. On both sides. They provide a reason for continued funding scales that would otherwise be called into question.
In my view The Cold Start was an Idea among pragmatic elements in the IA staff... perhaps not even called cold start as the whole history on that is very murky...or rather two ideas..also.. it has little to do with 2008 other than people finding out about it then. It most likely had to do with Op Parakaram.
1. Improve mobilization times..which was pretty administrative rather than anything else.
2. Find ways to initiate conflict with Pakistan to inflict "psychological defeat" of the PA mostly and force the Pakistani establishment to stop terror attacks in return for them saving face in front of the nation.
3. Do not let the conflict go nuclear.
However, number 1 is not a process that is undertaken in months.. it takes 5 years or more and is still in progress in some form but I sense is facing difficulties.
Number 2 was even more difficult. Not because it could not be achieved, but because its actual success lied in a slice of Pakistani mentality where they would be left harangued but not enough to have them use the nuclear option. Air Strikes were much better suited but in their limited nature were quite likely to fail in achieving anything meaningful with the PAF around(
regardless of its technological and numerical inferiority.. the PAF would still be fighting over its turf where it can leverage more assets in a shorter time against a limited air attack).This option was immedietly put on the table and activated in the wake of the 2008 bombings... and I stand by my statement(besides the press reports) that there was an Indian Incursion with the intent to both send a message and probe defenses in 2008.
A major air attack would likely lead to all out war... and the all out war.. in which meeting objective 2 while meeting 3 was as difficult for the Indian Military as is asking a one armed man with poor eyesight to thread a needle without his glasses. In other words, the probabilities and possibilities did not add up. Plainly because the Indian Military knew about the Nasr way before the Pakistani public ever did and the doctrine(
or rather the lack of it as such) regarding Tac Nuclear weapons in Pakistan.
Which is not long around 2010.. number 2 was rehearsed and then put into the cabinet for ideas barring Pakistan losing its nuclear weapons or Indian efforts on the diplomatic fronts to pressurize Pakistan not working out. In that case its not cold start ..just all out war leading to a hot end. What the idea did achieve, was taking the air-land asset synergy worked out in the Sunderji Doctrine and updating it to the 21st Century. That is all that cold start was about in the end.
Taking the Indian military machine out of the late 80s and 90's mentality.. and bringing it into the 21st Century. Be it a conflict with Pakistan.. or China.
. The best way to gauge Pakistan's response against Indian aggression is to see how Pakistan simulates and fights its enemies in war games. 
