An Indian high-ranking military official confirmed India lost unspecified numbers of its jets against Pakistan in a recent military escalation in May.
The official, however, confirmed that the four-day military escalation did not reach full-out nuclear war.
“What is important is not the jet being down, but why they were being down,” Anil Chauhan, chief of defense staff of the Indian Armed Forces, said in an interview with Bloomberg TV on Saturday, while attending the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore.
He called Pakistan’s claim of downing 6 Indian jets as incorrect however, he refrained from giving the exact numbers of Indian jets that were downed by Pakistan. He said that it’s the mistakes that matters that matter and not the numbers.
“Why they were down, what mistakes were made — that are important,” Chauhan said when asked about the fighter jets. “Numbers are not important,” he added.
“The good part is that we can understand the tactical mistake which we made, remedy it, rectify it, and then implement it again after two days and fly all our jets again, targeting at long range,” Chauhan said.
These are the first official comments by any Indian high-ranking official regarding Pakistan’s claim of Downing India’s Jets.
India had been mum regarding Pakistan’s claim despite the pressure from the domestic as well as the international community regarding the claims of Pakistan.
Chauhan refrained from commenting on President Trump’s claim of mediating the conflict between India and Pakistan. President Trump has repeatedly claimed to mediate a ceasefire between the two Nations, India and Pakistan. It was also claimed that it was India that approached first for the ceasefire and not Pakistan; however, India has repeatedly denied these claims that it approached Washington for the ceasefire with Pakistan.
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“I personally feel that there is a lot of space between conduct of conventional operations and the nuclear threshold,” Chauhan said. Channels of communication with Pakistan “were always open” to control the situation, he added, noting that on the escalation ladder, there were “more sub-ladders which can be exploited for settling out our issues” without needing to resort to nuclear weapons.
“We were able to do precision strikes on heavily air-defended airfields of Pakistan deep 300 kilometers inside, with the precision of a meter,” the Indian military chief said.