Operation Sindoor: Three weeks later, CDS sheds new light on operations during hostilities

Asked by Bloomberg if the Pakistani claim of downing six Indian jets was correct, the CDS said: “Absolutely incorrect.”

The remarks came exactly three weeks after India and Pakistan agreed on cessation of military strikes against each other. To be clear, at no point, during and after the hostilities, did the IAF ever deny losing any aircraft.

On May 11, a day after the two militaries reached a truce, Air Marshal A K Bharti, Director of Air Operations, responding to a question at a media briefing, said he would not like to comment on whether India lost any aircraft and cited the prevailing combat situation. He said losses were part of any combat, and the Indian military had achieved all its selected objectives and all IAF pilots were back home.

Air Marshal Bharti said the Pakistan Air Force lost “a few” aircraft, apart from suffering massive damage to assets and air bases during retaliatory high-precision strikes by Indian Armed Forces during the operation.

General Chauhan, while acknowledging Indian losses in the air, underlined that what was more important was why these losses (of aircraft) occurred, and what India did after that.

He spoke of how “we rectified tactics and then went back… in large numbers” to “hit air bases deep inside Pakistan, penetrated all their air defences with impunity, carried out precision strikes”.

He told Reuters that the IAF “flew all types of aircraft with all types of ordnances on the 10th” of May, the day India struck air bases deep inside Pakistan, including the Nur Khan air base in Rawalpindi.

He spoke on similar lines to Bloomberg: “What is important is not the jet being down, but why they were being (downed),” General Chauhan said.

“The good part is that we were able to understand the tactical mistake which we made, remedy it, rectify it and then implement it again after two days… flew all our jets again, targeting at long range,” he said.

Significantly, the CDS also told Reuters that although Pakistan is closely allied with China, there was no sign of any actual help from Beijing during the conflict.

“While this was unfolding from (April) 22nd onwards, we didn’t find any unusual activity in the operational or tactical depth of our northern borders, and things were generally all right,” he said.