India admits losing fighter jet during Pakistan clash

Online desk: For the first time, Indian military acknowledged losing its fighter jets during a conflict with Pakistani armed forces last month.

However, they did not provide specific information on how many fighter jets India lost in the conflict.

Indian Armed Forces Chief Anil Chauhan confirmed this information in an interview with US media outlet Bloomberg on Saturday. He stated, “The downing of the fighter jet is not the important issue. Rather, why they were shot down is important.”

Anil Chauhan gave the interview to Bloomberg on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue, an inter-governmental security conference organised by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore. In the interview, Anil Chauhan called Pakistan’s claim of shooting down six Indian fighter jets “absolutely false.”

He said, “Why these fighter jets were shot down, what kind of mistakes were made—that is important. The number is not important.” The Indian military official added, “The good thing is that we understood our strategic mistakes, corrected them, and two days later, we again used all our fighter jets to strike long-range targets.”

Bloomberg stated that this is the first time the Indian military has admitted to an Indian fighter jet being shot down during a conflict with Pakistan. After India’s “Operation Sindoor,” Islamabad claimed to have shot down multiple Indian fighter jets, including a French Rafale.

Pakistan’s claim was historically unprecedented because, since its induction into the French Navy in 2004 and the French Air Force in 2006, there had been no publicly acknowledged incident of a Rafale being shot down in combat.

In the context of the ongoing situation between the two neighboring countries, a senior French intelligence official also confirmed Pakistan’s claim of shooting down a Rafale fighter jet to US media outlet CNN. The statement from the top French intelligence official, from the country that manufactures the Rafale, was highly significant.

That French official told CNN that French authorities were investigating whether Pakistan had shot down multiple Rafales overnight.