India's top general admits jet losses in clash with Pakistan

India's top military commander has publicly acknowledged for the first time that the country did lose some fighter jets during a brief but intense skirmish with Pakistan in May, Bloomberg TV reported, though he declined to confirm the number and dismissed suggestions the conflict escalated toward a nuclear standoff.

In an interview with Bloomberg TV on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan emphasised the significance of the circumstances surrounding the loss of aircraft rather than the number itself.

"What matters isn't how many jets were downed, but the reasons behind it," Chauhan said. The highest-ranking Indian general called Pakistan's claim of downing six Indian jets as "completely false", but refused to disclose India's actual losses.

Chauhan said the priority for the Indian military was to learn from the incident.

"We identified the tactical error, corrected it swiftly, and within two days, resumed operations with long-range precision strikes," he said, adding that the Indian Air Force "flew all types of aircraft with all types of ordinances on the 10th".

India has previously said its missiles and drones struck at least eight Pakistani air bases across the country that day, including one near the capital Islamabad.

The Pakistan military says that India did not fly its fighter jets again in the conflict after suffering losses on May 7.

Chauan's remarks mark the most candid acknowledgement to date from an Indian official regarding the air losses during the May 7 confrontation, which had previously gone without formal confirmation from New Delhi.

Earlier this month, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif asserted that six Indian warplanes were shot down—a statement that remains unverified by independent sources and had not been addressed directly by Indian authorities until now.

No nuclear worry

Some of the attacks were on bases near Pakistan's nuclear facilities, but they themselves were not targeted, media reports have said.

Chauhan and Pakistan's chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Sahir Shamshad Mirza, have both said there was no danger at any time during the conflict that nuclear weapons were considered.

"I think there's a lot of space before that nuclear threshold is crossed, a lot of signalling before that, I think nothing like that happened," Chauhan told in a separate interview to Reuters.

"It's my personal view that the most rational people are people in uniform when conflict takes place.

"During this operation, I found both sides displaying a lot of rationality in their thoughts as well as actions. So why should we assume that in the nuclear domain there will be irrationality on someone else's part?"

Chauhan also said that although Pakistan is closely allied with China, which borders India in the north and east, 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.

The heaviest fighting in decades between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan was sparked by an April 22 attack in India-administered Kashmir that killed 26 people, most of them tourists.

New Delhi blamed the incident on "terrorists" backed by Pakistan, a charge denied by Islamabad, calling for an independent investigation.

The ceasefire was announced on May 10 after bitter fighting in which both sides used fighter jets, missiles, drones and artillery.

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Source: TRT