NEW DELHI: IAF lost some fighter jets when it carried out strikes on 9 terror hubs in Pakistan and PoK on May 7 as a result of India’s political management had directed that no army institutions or air defences throughout the border had been to be attacked on that day, India’s defence attache to Indonesia, Captain Shiv Kumar, stated at a seminar earlier this month.The remarks by Captain Kumar, who’s a colonel-rank officer from the Navy, adopted an acknowledgment of IAF’s preliminary losses by Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan on May 31 in Singapore however he didn’t specify the precise quantity of fighters shot down.Modi govt is but to formally quantify IAF’s losses throughout Operation Sindoor. Pakistan has claimed to have shot down six Indian fighters, together with three French-origin Rafales, on May 7 itself – an assertion that CDS Chauhan dubbed as “absolutely incorrect”.Captain Kumar’s feedback led Congress to resume its assault on govt over its dealing with of Operation Sindoor. Speaking at a seminar on ‘Analysis of the Pakistan-India Air Battle and Indonesia’s Anticipatory Strategies from the Perspective of Air Power’ on June 10, Capt Kumar stated he “may not agree (with an earlier Indonesian speaker’s claim) that we lost so many aircraft, but I do agree we did lose some aircraft and that happened only because of the constraint given by the political leadership to not attack their military establishments and air defences”.“After the loss, we changed our tactics and we went for the military installations (and radar sites). So, we first achieved suppression of enemy air defences and then that’s why all our attacks could easily go through using Brahmos missiles (on May 10),” he additional stated, his feedback being in keeping with CDS Chauhan’s assertion in May that after preliminary losses, Indian armed forces took remedial measures and had been capable of carry out precision strikes at Pakistan’s airbases.After Capt Kumar’s 20-day-old remarks got here to mild and had been cited by Congress to criticise govt, Indian embassy in Indonesia stated Capt Kumar’s remarks “have been quoted out of context and 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 posted on X. Earlier, the CDS had stated in Singapore, “What I can say is that on May 7, in the initial stages, there were losses. Numbers are not important. What was important is why did these losses occur, and what we will do after that.”
