The New Year's terrorist siege of a major Indian air base was the equivalent of the 2008 Mumbai terror strikes. In both cases, the Pakistani gunmen were professionally trained, heavily armed and dispatched by their masters for a specific suicide mission. In Mumbai the terrorist proxies struck civilian sites while in the latest case their assigned target was a large military facility.
According to former White House official Bruce Riedel, who served as a senior adviser to the last four American presidents, the "Pakistani intelligence service is behind the attack" on the Pathankot air base in an effort to thwart a rapprochement between India and Pakistan following Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's surprise Christmas Day visit to Lahore.
After the widespread anger and indignation triggered by the recent Paris and San Bernardino attacks, a Mumbai-style strike on civilian targets was not a credible option for the Pakistani military's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, especially because such an attack would risk Indian retaliation. So, the ISI chose a military target, orchestrating the attack through a terror group it founded in 2000 — Jaish-e-Muhammad.