E-Paper
India lost fighter jets during Op Sindoor due to restrictions on hitting military targets: Navy officer
India’s defence attache to Indonesia made the comments at a June 10 event in response to claims that IAF had lost 5 fighter jets during Operation Sindoor
NEW DELHI: India lost some fighter jets on the opening day of the recent military confrontation with Pakistan due to initial restrictions imposed by the government on striking Pakistani military establishments and the orders were to hit only terror infrastructure in that country, India’s defence attache to Indonesia said at a seminar in Jakarta.
His hitherto unreported comments at the June 10 event were in response to claims made by an Indonesian aerospace expert that the Indian Air Force (IAF) lost five fighter jets --- including three Rafales, one MiG-29 and a Sukhoi-30 --- a tactical drone and Pakistan degraded two S-400 launchers during Operation Sindoor, India’s direct military response to the April 22 Pahalgam terror strike.
“I may not agree with him that India lost so many aircraft. But I do agree that we did lose some aircraft and that happened only because of the constraint given by the political leadership to not attack the military establishments and their air defences,” Captain Shiv Kumar, a navy officer, said. A navy captain is equivalent to a colonel in the army.
He described how India changed tack after the initial air losses to completely dominate Pakistan.
“After the loss, we changed our tactics and went for their military installations. We first achieved suppression of enemy air defences and destruction of enemy air defences (known as SEAD and DEAD in military parlance) and that’s why all our attacks could easily go through using surface-to-air missiles and surface-to-surface missiles…On May 8, 9 and 10, there was complete air superiority by India,” he said.
A defence ministry spokesperson declined to comment on Kumar’s remarks. However, the Indian embassy in Jakarta said in a statement that he was quoted “out of context”.
“..The media reports are a mis-representation of the intention and thrust of the presentation made by the speaker. The presentation conveyed that the Indian Armed Forces serve under civilian political leadership unlike some other countries in our neighbourhood. It was also explained that the objective of Operation Sindoor was to target terrorist infrastructure and the Indian response was non-escalatory,” it said.
Kumar’s comments came a month after chief of defence staff General Anil Chauhan said in Singapore on May 31 that India lost fighter planes on May 7 due to tactical mistakes that were swiftly rectified before the IAF returned in big numbers and carried out precision strikes deep inside the neighbouring country by punching through its air defences.
To be sure, the government has not yet officially responded to statements by senior defence officials on loss of aircraft during the conflict.
In his 35-minute presentation, Kumar said the only constraint the government gave to the armed forces was “not to target anything but terrorist camps”.
“No military installations, no civil installations…Nothing which was not connected to terrorists was to be targeted,” he said at the seminar on Analysis of the Pakistan-India Air Battle and Indonesia’s Anticipatory Strategies from the Perspective of Air Power.
India launched Operation Sindoor in the early hours of May 7 and struck terror and military installations in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) following the Pahalgam terror strike in which 26 people were shot dead.
It triggered a four-day military confrontation with Pakistan involving fighter jets, missiles, drones, long-range weapons and heavy artillery before the two sides reached an understanding on stopping all military action on May 10.
India lost three Rafale fighter jets because of “vulnerabilities exposed due to AWACS (airborne warning and control systems) disconnection,” claimed Tommy Tamtomo, vice-chairman, Indonesia Center for Air Power Studies.
“India lost a lot, but Pakistan also lost a lot. Maybe more than India,” he said at the seminar.
Pakistani air losses included six fighter jets, two AWACS aircraft and a military transport plane, Tamtomo said.
The Congress party on Sunday questioned why has the government not convened a special session of Parliament on Operation Sindoor.
“First the Chief of Defence Staff makes important revelations in Singapore. Then a senior defence official follows up from Indonesia. But why is the PM refusing to preside over an all-party meeting and take the Opposition into confidence? Why has the demand for a special session of Parliament been rejected,” questioned Congress MP Jairam Ramesh, who is also the party’s general secretary in-charge of communications.
HT reached out to the BJP for a response but did not get one immediately.
The IAF shot down a few high-tech fighter jets of the Pakistan Air Force during Operation Sindoor and it is poring over the technical details to establish the hits, Air Marshal AK Bharti, director general air operations, said at a media briefing on May 11, a day after the two sides reached an understanding on stopping all military action. He had then indicated there were combat losses on the Indian side too but the fighter pilots were back home.
“We are in a combat scenario; losses are a part of combat. The question you must ask is if we have achieved our objective of decimating the terrorist camps. The answer is a thumping yes,” Bharti said at the time.
Pakistan’s Operation Bunyan-um-Marsoos, which was mounted in response to India’s Operation Sindoor, “folded in eight hours” on May 10 belying Islamabad’s ambitious target of bringing India to its knees in 48 hours, Chauhan said on June 3, adding that losses suffered in a military conflict are not as important as the targeted outcome of an operation.
