Singapore/New Delhi: Chief of Defence Staff Gen Anil Chauhan on Saturday acknowledged losses of aircraft in India’s recent military hostilities with Pakistan but dismissed as “absolutely incorrect” Islamabad’s claim of downing six Indian fighter jets.
Gen Chauhan, in an interview to Bloomberg TV, asserted it is more important to find out why the aircraft were lost and that the Indian military hit back after rectifying the issues.
The Chief of Defence Staff declined to specify the losses in terms of numbers but clearly pointed out to the fact that the Indian military carried out high-precision strikes deep inside Pakistani territory.
The comments by the top military officer are the Indian military’s first clear acknowledgement of losses in the four-day military clashes with the neighbouring country.
“I think what is important is not the jet being downed but why they were being downed,” Gen Chauhan, currently on a visit to Singapore, said.
Gen Chauhan was asked whether India lost combat jets during the four-day military clashes with Pakistan earlier this month.
“So the good part is that we were able to understand the tactical mistakes which we made, remedy it, rectify it and then implement it again after two days and flew all our jets again targeting at long range,” he said.
“Absolutely incorrect,” he said when asked about Pakistan’s claim of shooting down six Indian jets during Operation Sindoor.
“I think what is important is not the jets being downed but why they were being downed,” added Gen Chauhan who played a key role in mounting India’s massive offensive against Pakistan.
Indian Air Force’s Director General of Air Operations, Air Marshal AK Bharti, had acknowledged that “losses are a part of combat” and said all IAF pilots returned “home safely”. He made the remarks at a media briefing on May 11 in responding to a question on Pakistan’s claim of downing Indian jets.
India launched Operation Sindoor on May 7, targeting terrorist infrastructure in territories controlled by Pakistan using long-range weapons such as the Brahmos cruise missile in response to the Pahalgam terror attack.
The strikes triggered four days of intense clashes that ended with an understanding on stopping the military actions on May 10.
India launched a massive counter-attack on early May 10 that hit many of the key Pakistani military installations after the neighbouring country attempted to target Indian bases the previous night.
New Delhi has been maintaining that India’s fierce attacks on May 10 forced Pakistan to plead for ending the hostilities.
Hours after Gen Chauhan’s comments, Congress asked the government in New Delhi to truthfully tell the country what losses were suffered during the four-day conflict with Pakistan.
The country wanted to know whether any aircraft were downed during the conflict, especially in the wake of the CDS’ “admission”, Congress leader Uttam Kumar Reddy said.
Demanding clarity from the government, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh recalled that the Vajpayee government in July 1999 set up the Kargil Review Committee under the chairmanship of “India’s strategic affairs guru K Subrahmanyam, whose son is now our external affairs minister”.
This was just three days after the Kargil war ended, he said. “The committee submitted its detailed report five months later. The report titled ‘From Surprise to Reckoning’ was then laid on the Table of both Houses of Parliament on February 23, 2000, after the necessary redactions.
“Will the Modi government now take a similar step in light of what the Chief of Defence Staff has just revealed in Singapore?” Ramesh posed in a post on X.
As Gen Chauhan’s comments triggered sharp political reactions in India, Shashank Joshi, a defence editor at The Economist and a visiting fellow at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, said India may have lost the aircraft on the first night of the hostilities as because of lack of “appropriate armament”.
Joshi made the comments based on what he said were assessments by Western officials.
Agree with Chauhan that adaptation is as important as initial losses, he said in a post on ‘X’.
