Traditionally, militaries worldwide were considered to be the guardians of the frontiers only, and in the developed world, this is still the case. However, in the developing world, militaries make significant contributions to developing and modernising states. There is still doubt that developing states find it extremely difficult to raise, maintain, and sustain their militaries; however, it may be essentially required to do that due to the regional security environment. Some developing states facing protracted conflicts with their neighbours or beyond must maintain their militaries at the cost of other public sector development, such as road infrastructure, transport systems, education and health facilities, and perhaps most importantly, human resource development. Pakistan is not an exception. It is engaged in a protracted conflict with a five times larger adversary, India, which has been illegally occupying the disputed territories of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) since the British left the seeds of discord in 1947. India not only occupied J&K forcefully but also continues to commit gross human rights violations against the people who are demanding their rights of self-determination according to numerous UN Resolutions passed over the past seven decades. India and Pakistan have had all types of wars: all-out wars in 1965 and 1971, limited military engagements in 1948, 1964, 1983, 1999, and 2019, low-intensity conflicts throughout the 1990s, and hybrid warfare by India since 2005 till date. While Pakistan’s military braved all its full-scale wars and military engagements against its five-times larger adversary, it lost East Pakistan, and India helped create Bangladesh in 1971. A careful analysis reveals multiple reasons for that one outright defeat of Pakistan’s military. Moreover, on its Western borders, Pakistan has been faced with an unending war-like situation since the erstwhile Soviet Union first invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Pakistan constantly became a frontline state against a superpower of the time. However, it was provided with the necessary wherewithal by the global community to support Afghan Freedom fighters and defend itself from a possible intrusion by the Soviet forces. Ironically, Pakistan continues to face enormous difficulties on the Afghan front due to the unstable and unrecognised Taliban Administration, which is protecting and providing safe havens to Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is involved in numerous terrorist attacks on Pakistan’s KP and Balochistan provinces. Likewise, in the southwest, concerns about the borders with Iran, an otherwise brotherly country. Still, India makes use of its territory at times to cause acts of terror in Baluchistan, which shares a long and rugged border with Pakistan. One can recall the arrest of Kulbhushan Jadhav, an Indian Navy officer involved in espionage and acts of terror in Karachi and Balochistan, who was caught near the Iranian border. With this brief overview of the regional security environment, one can understand that Pakistan’s military is overstretched to its limits in its primary duties, which are security both within and without. For the past seven decades, Pakistan’s army has been engaged in active conflicts with India over J&K, Sir Creek, Siachen, and water resources. On the Afghan front, it is involved in hybrid warfare, facing Non-State Actors (NSAs), again from within and without. Therefore, due to the geographical layout, one can understand the Pakistan military’s requirement of arms and equipment for all its services. Hence, Pakistan’s security architecture had to be elaborate and updated with technological developments. To ward off a perpetual threat of conventional warfare, Pakistan had to go nuclear after India did in 1974 and then again in 1998. Pakistan’s nuclear capability has given its military a sense of security as it considers an all-important capability for war avoidance, as pronounced by Bernard Brodie in the early years of the Cold War. Pakistan has, and rightly so, invested adequately in its nuclear and missile programmes to move from credible minimum deterrence to full spectrum deterrence, concurrently avoiding a mad-arms race with India, which continues the modernisation of its armed forces to offset the strategic stability in South Asia. This was a brief overview of the ongoing operational commitments that Pakistan’s military has been engaged with for a long time. I think any other military would have felt fatigued with so many operational commitments on such diverse platforms, from all-out wars to fighting terrorism within and without. In the next part, I will delve into the Pakistan military’s significant contributions to non-operational domains. Some of these are undoubtedly avoidable to ensure that the fatigue factor does not erode the sharpness it has achieved over the years to meet the operational requirements. To ward off a perpetual threat of conventional warfare, Pakistan had to go nuclear after India did in 1974 and then again in 1998. The writer of this article has authored three international books: “Nuclear Deterrence and Conflict Management Between India and Pakistan” “South Asia Needs Hybrid Peace” and “Understanding Sun Tzu and the Art of Hybrid War.”