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Yahoo
15 minutes ago
- General
- Yahoo
India general admits jet losses in clash with Pakistan: Here's what he said
General Anil Chauhan, India's chief of defence staff, has admitted that an unspecified number of fighter jets were shot down during its conflict with Pakistan last month. The acknowledgement of aerial losses by the country's highest ranking general comes weeks after the two South Asian neighbours were engaged in their heaviest fighting in decades, which involved fighter jets and cruise missiles. Indian officials had previously refused to confirm or deny Pakistani claims of downing Indian jets. The conflict was triggered after gunmen killed 26 tourists in India-administered Kashmir's Pahalgam town on April 22. India's first official admission of a loss of fighter jets came during Chauhan's interviews on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue security forum in Singapore. India carried out strikes on what it called 'terror infrastructure' in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir on May 7 in retaliation for the Pahalgam attack. India blamed armed groups backed by Pakistan for the April 22 attack. An armed group called The Resistance Front (TRF) claimed responsibility for the Pahalgam killings. India accused the TRF of being an offshoot of the Pakistan-based armed group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). Pakistan denied involvement, condemning the Pahalgam attack and calling for a neutral investigation. India claimed to have targeted at least six cities in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir on the first day of the conflict. Pakistan initially asserted that it had downed six Indian fighter jets in retaliation. But a senior Pakistan official told Al Jazeera five Indian aircraft were lost in the aerial battle. India did not confirm or deny the Pakistani claims. 'Losses are a part of combat,' Air Marshal AK Bharti, India's director general of air operations, said at a news conference on May 11. The Indian embassy in China called reports of the downing of jets 'disinformation'. After that, tit-for-tat cross-border attacks across the Line of Control (LoC), the de facto border between India- and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, rattled the region, renewing fears of a nuclear war. On May 10, United States President Donald Trump announced that the two countries had reached a ceasefire, potentially averting a 'nuclear disaster'. India and Pakistan have given competing claims on casualties in the fighting, but more than 70 people were killed on both sides. Both India and Pakistan claim Kashmir in full but administer only parts of the Muslim-majority Himalayan territory. Here is what Chauhan said in recent interviews with the Reuters news agency and Bloomberg TV: Chauhan admitted that India suffered air losses on the first day of fighting without giving details. In an interview with Reuters, he said: 'What was important is why did these losses occur and what we'll do after that.' The Indian general said that after the losses, the Indian army 'rectified tactics' and then went back on May 7, 8 and 10 'in large numbers to hit airbases deep inside Pakistan, penetrated all their air defences with impunity, carried out precision strikes'. He added that the Indian air force 'flew all types of aircraft with all types of ordnances' on May 10. Islamabad acknowledged that its airbases suffered some minimal losses but denied that it lost any planes. When a Bloomberg reporter asked Chauhan about Pakistan's claims that six Indian jets were downed, Chauhan responded that this information was incorrect. He went on to say: 'What is important is … not the jets being downed but why they were downed.' Some media outlets inferred that his statement appeared to imply that a number of jets were lost in the aerial battle. The general did not provide details about the number of jets downed or specifics about what these rectified tactics were. The Pakistani military said India did not fly its fighter jets in the conflict again after suffering the air losses. Media reports suggested that some attacks were near Pakistan's nuclear sites but the nuclear infrastructure itself was not a target. 'Most of the strikes were delivered with pinpoint accuracy, some even to a metre [3.3ft] to whatever was our selected mean point of impact,' Chauhan said in the interview with Reuters. Chauhan had previously provided assurances that India was not considering using nuclear weapons during the conflict. The chairman of Pakistan's joint chiefs of staff, General Sahir Shamshad Mirza, has done the same for his country. '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. There's a lot of space for conventional operations which has been created, and this will be the new norm,' Chauhan said. The Indian general added that on both sides, the most 'rational people are in uniform' during conflict because they understand the consequences of 'this kind of conflict'. '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?' The Indian chief of defence staff said that while Pakistan enjoys a close alliance with China, there was no sign that Beijing helped Islamabad during the conflict. China sits on India's northern and eastern borders and controls a barely inhabited northeastern zone in Kashmir called Aksai Chin. 'We didn't find any unusual activity in the operational or tactical depth of our northern borders, and things were generally all right,' Chauhan said. When Chauhan was asked whether China provided Pakistan with intelligence information such as satellite imagery, the Indian general responded by saying that such information is commercially available and Pakistan could have obtained it from China or other sources. However, Chauhan said 'almost 80 percent of the equipment' in Pakistan has been procured from China in the past few years. From 2020 to 2025, China supplied 81 percent of Pakistan's arms imports, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Chinese jets got a boost after media reports said Pakistan used Chinese-manufactured J-10C fighter jets in the air battle. The Chinese government did not officially confirm that the J-10C jets were used to down Indian jets, but China Central Television, a state broadcaster, posted on social media on May 17 that the jets achieved actual combat results for the first time. Chauhan said that while hostilities have ceased, India would 'respond precisely and decisively should there be any further terror attacks emanating from Pakistan'. He added that this will be a new normal for India. 'So that has its own dynamics as far [as] the armed forces are concerned. It will require us to be prepared 24/7.' The president of the main opposition Indian National Congress party said Chauhan's admission warrants a review of India's defence preparedness. 'There are some very important questions which need to be asked. These can only be asked if a Special Session of the Parliament is immediately convened,' Mallikarjun Kharge wrote in an X post on Saturday. Referring to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he added: 'The Modi Govt has misled the nation. The fog of war is now clearing.' 'We salute [the Indian military's] resolute courage and bravery,' Kharge said. 'However, a comprehensive strategic review is the need of the hour.' The Congress party has called the Pahalgam attack a 'security and intelligence failure' and sought accountability, given that India-administered Kashmir is directly governed from New Delhi.
Al Jazeera
an hour ago
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
India general admits jet losses in clash with Pakistan: Here's what he said
General Anil Chauhan, India's chief of defence staff, has admitted that an unspecified number of fighter jets were shot down during its conflict with Pakistan last month. The acknowledgement of aerial losses by the country's highest ranking general comes weeks after the two South Asian neighbours were engaged in their heaviest fighting in decades, which involved fighter jets and cruise missiles. Indian officials had previously refused to confirm or deny Pakistani claims of downing Indian jets. The conflict was triggered after gunmen killed 26 tourists in India-administered Kashmir's Pahalgam town on April 22. India's first official admission of a loss of fighter jets came during Chauhan's interviews on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue security forum in Singapore. India carried out strikes on what it called 'terror infrastructure' in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir on May 7 in retaliation for the Pahalgam attack. India blamed armed groups backed by Pakistan for the April 22 attack. An armed group called The Resistance Front (TRF) claimed responsibility for the Pahalgam killings. India accused the TRF of being an offshoot of the Pakistan-based armed group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). Pakistan denied involvement, condemning the Pahalgam attack and calling for a neutral investigation. India claimed to have targeted at least six cities in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir on the first day of the conflict. Pakistan initially asserted that it had downed six Indian fighter jets in retaliation. But a senior Pakistan official told Al Jazeera five Indian aircraft were lost in the aerial battle. India did not confirm or deny the Pakistani claims. 'Losses are a part of combat,' Air Marshal AK Bharti, India's director general of air operations, said at a news conference on May 11. The Indian embassy in China called reports of the downing of jets 'disinformation'. After that, tit-for-tat cross-border attacks across the Line of Control (LoC), the de facto border between India- and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, rattled the region, renewing fears of a nuclear war. On May 10, United States President Donald Trump announced that the two countries had reached a ceasefire, potentially averting a 'nuclear disaster'. India and Pakistan have given competing claims on casualties in the fighting, but more than 70 people were killed on both sides. Both India and Pakistan claim Kashmir in full but administer only parts of the Muslim-majority Himalayan territory. Here is what Chauhan said in recent interviews with the Reuters news agency and Bloomberg TV: Chauhan admitted that India suffered air losses on the first day of fighting without giving details. In an interview with Reuters, he said: 'What was important is why did these losses occur and what we'll do after that.' The Indian general said that after the losses, the Indian army 'rectified tactics' and then went back on May 7, 8 and 10 'in large numbers to hit airbases deep inside Pakistan, penetrated all their air defences with impunity, carried out precision strikes'. He added that the Indian air force 'flew all types of aircraft with all types of ordnances' on May 10. Islamabad acknowledged that its airbases suffered some minimal losses but denied that it lost any planes. When a Bloomberg reporter asked Chauhan about Pakistan's claims that six Indian jets were downed, Chauhan responded that this information was incorrect. He went on to say: 'What is important is … not the jets being downed but why they were downed.' Some media outlets inferred that his statement appeared to imply that a number of jets were lost in the aerial battle. The general did not provide details about the number of jets downed or specifics about what these rectified tactics were. The Pakistani military said India did not fly its fighter jets in the conflict again after suffering the air losses. Media reports suggested that some attacks were near Pakistan's nuclear sites but the nuclear infrastructure itself was not a target. 'Most of the strikes were delivered with pinpoint accuracy, some even to a metre [3.3ft] to whatever was our selected mean point of impact,' Chauhan said in the interview with Reuters. Chauhan had previously provided assurances that India was not considering using nuclear weapons during the conflict. The chairman of Pakistan's joint chiefs of staff, General Sahir Shamshad Mirza, has done the same for his country. '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. There's a lot of space for conventional operations which has been created, and this will be the new norm,' Chauhan said. The Indian general added that on both sides, the most 'rational people are in uniform' during conflict because they understand the consequences of 'this kind of conflict'. '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?' The Indian chief of defence staff said that while Pakistan enjoys a close alliance with China, there was no sign that Beijing helped Islamabad during the conflict. China sits on India's northern and eastern borders and controls a barely inhabited northeastern zone in Kashmir called Aksai Chin. 'We didn't find any unusual activity in the operational or tactical depth of our northern borders, and things were generally all right,' Chauhan said. When Chauhan was asked whether China provided Pakistan with intelligence information such as satellite imagery, the Indian general responded by saying that such information is commercially available and Pakistan could have obtained it from China or other sources. However, Chauhan said 'almost 80 percent of the equipment' in Pakistan has been procured from China in the past few years. From 2020 to 2025, China supplied 81 percent of Pakistan's arms imports, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Chinese jets got a boost after media reports said Pakistan used Chinese-manufactured J-10C fighter jets in the air battle. The Chinese government did not officially confirm that the J-10C jets were used to down Indian jets, but China Central Television, a state broadcaster, posted on social media on May 17 that the jets achieved actual combat results for the first time. Chauhan said that while hostilities have ceased, India would 'respond precisely and decisively should there be any further terror attacks emanating from Pakistan'. He added that this will be a new normal for India. 'So that has its own dynamics as far [as] the armed forces are concerned. It will require us to be prepared 24/7.' The president of the main opposition Indian National Congress party said Chauhan's admission warrants a review of India's defence preparedness. 'There are some very important questions which need to be asked. These can only be asked if a Special Session of the Parliament is immediately convened,' Mallikarjun Kharge wrote in an X post on Saturday. Referring to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he added: 'The Modi Govt has misled the nation. The fog of war is now clearing.' 'We salute [the Indian military's] resolute courage and bravery,' Kharge said. 'However, a comprehensive strategic review is the need of the hour.' The Congress party has called the Pahalgam attack a 'security and intelligence failure' and sought accountability, given that India-administered Kashmir is directly governed from New Delhi.
Mint
2 hours ago
- Politics
- Mint
India went 300 kms inside Pakistan, and penetrated with ‘pinpoint accuracy' says CDS Anil Chauhan
Indian Armed Forces Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) Anil Chauhan said that India went 300kms inside Pakistan during Operation Sindoor and penetrated with 'pinpoint accuracy.' Adding to new details about Operation Sindoor, CDS Chauhan further added that the coveted operation has drawn a 'new red line' of intolerance against terror. CDS Anil Chauhan made the comments during an interview with Bloomberg TV on Saturday, while attending the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. 'We were able to penetrate air defence as long as 300 km with pinpoint accuracy and targets, airfields and infrastructure, deep inside Pakistan," said General Anil Chauhan. In this image posted by @HQ_IDS_India via X on May 31, 2025, Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Anil Chauhan during a meeting with Commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Samuel J Paparo, on the sidelines of the 22nd Shangri La Dialogue, in Singapore From Pakistan's Muzaffarabad to Bahawalpur, India struck key terror hubs long believed to harbour Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad operatives on May 7 – the DGMOs had said during earlier briefings on Operation Sindoor. Chauhan also downplayed Pakistan's claims about the effectiveness of weaponry deployed from China and other countries, saying they 'didn't work." He added that Operation Sindoor had drawn a 'new red line' of intolerance against terror. Multiple reports had already been doing the rounds about Indian fighter jets downed during the conflict with Pakistan. Without going into specifications, CDS Chauhan said India swiftly rectified its 'tactical mistakes.' CDS Chauhan added that India learnt from the incident and resumed high-precision strikes deep in Pakistani territory. 'The good part is that we are able to understand the tactical mistake 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,' Chauhan said. Apart from elaborating on the mistakes made, and the lessons learnt by India, CDS Anil Chauhan flagged Pakistan's claims that it shot down six Indian warplanes as 'absolutely incorrect." Without getting into further details about Indian fighter planes being downed, Chauhan added: 'What is important is that, not the jet being down, but why they were being down. '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. India launched Operation Sindoor on May 7, targeting at least nine terror camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. This was a retaliation to the Pahalgam terror attack, which claimed the lives of 26 people. The cross-border strikes sparked four days of heavy clashes between India and Pakistan, which eventually came to a halt following a mutual understanding to cease military actions on May 10.
Hindustan Times
2 hours ago
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
Projecting the right message
Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Anil Chauhan's comments on tactical mistakes that led to the loss of an undisclosed number of fighter jets during Operation Sindoor — India's strikes on terror and military installations in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) following the terror strikes at Pahalgam — are significant. That's because of the communication strategy, or the lack of one, that is evident in the comments. It is not clear why the first explicit admission of fighter jet losses had to come in an interview given overseas to two foreign news agencies. From the first briefing, the messaging from India has been that all the pilots were safe, which suggested that reports of jet losses were not untrue. That jets would be lost is understandable in a conflict of this nature — one where the Indian Air Force (IAF) took on the challenge of taking out targets deep inside Pakistan. It was assumed that once the heat and the dust of the battle was over, IAF would share details of how many jets were lost, and how. Instead, in response to a question that he and his handlers must have known would be coming, the CDS spoke not just of jet losses, but also tactical mistakes that were corrected in subsequent strikes. Again, it is not clear why this admission had to be made now, and to foreign news agencies. Everyone, including international experts who have pored over detailed satellite imagery, admit that India was the clear winner in the battle, and inflicted significant damage on key Pakistani military installations. That is the only message that needs amplification. New Delhi has also sought to take the high moral ground after — sending outreach teams to various corners of the world to share its position on how Pakistan-sponsored terrorism necessitated Operation Sindoor, and how it is difficult for India to discuss anything else with that country, including water sharing, as long as it continues to foster, encourage, support and sponsor terror groups targeting India. To admit to tactical mistakes — even if only to make the point that they were corrected and India went on to inflict more damage on Pakistani military installations — at this stage seems to be not just a case of bad timing, but also poor communication. 'History', says a quote attributed to several people, most notably Winston Churchill, 'is written by the victors'. But in this day and age, they are not going to be able to do that without getting their communication strategy right. Get 360° coverage—from daily headlines to 100 year archives.
India Gazette
4 hours ago
- Politics
- India Gazette
"CDS's statement differs from Modi ministers, govt misleading nation on Op Sindoor": Congress Pramod Tiwari
Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh) [India], June 1 (ANI): Congress MP Pramod Tiwari hit out at the Modi government on Sunday after CDS Gen Anil Chauhan's interview in Singapore on Operation Sindoor. He said the CDS gave a soldier's message, which does not match what government ministers are saying. Tiwari accused the government of misleading the country, stating that Congress stands with the Indian Army and salutes its bravery. Speaking to ANI, Tiwari said, 'Yesterday, on foreign soil, CDS had a big interview in which he also said many things related to 'Operation Sindoor.' The way he said it, when war happens, planes also fall. This is not important, but what is important is what we learn from it. This is a soldier's message, and his statement does not match with the statements made by Modi government's ministers...' He added, 'The government is constantly misleading the country in this matter. We are standing with the Indian army and salute their bravery. ' Earlier in the day, Congress MP Jairam Ramesh also expressed disappointment that the Defence Minister did not share crucial information with opposition leaders in two all-party meetings, following recent comments made by Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) Gen Anil Chauhan in Singapore. On May 11, Director General Air Operations Air Marshal Bharti, when commenting on Aircraft losses, had said, 'I can't comment about loss of aircraft as we are in a combat scenario and losses are part of combat.' Speaking to Reuters, General Chauhan had dismissed Pakistan's claims that India ceased aerial operations after May 7, stating that India's response became more sustained and powerful. Indian fighter jets, drones, and missiles struck 11 Pakistani air bases on May 10, including one near the Pakistani capital Islamabad, the Nur Khan airbase, when the residents surrounding were able to witness a sort of 'new dawn' in the middle of the night, as PM Narendra Modi put forth during his speech following the cessation of hostilities at Adampur airbase. Satellite imagery, both from Indian sources and global platforms, later confirmed the precision of these strikes as well as how devastating they have been. After India carried out strikes on terror bases in Pakistan, the Pakistani side responded by attempting to target defence and civilian installations in India. India then carried out another series of precision attacks, which saw the destruction of several Pakistani air bases. An understanding on the cessation of hostilities was then reached between the two sides on May 10. (ANI)
