India-Pakistan Conflict: Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Anil Chauhan on Saturday admitted for the first time that India's fighter jets were downed during Operation Sindoor against terror bases in Pakistan earlier this month. However, CDS Chauhan refused to give an exact number of the jets that were downed during the four-day conflict and asserted that it is more important to find out why the aircraft were lost so that the Indian military could improve tactics and hit back again.

"Why they were down, what mistakes were made - that are important. Numbers are not important," General Chauhan said when asked whether India lost any of its fighter jets during the India-Pakistan military confrontation.

In an interview with Bloomberg TV on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, CDS Chauhan also dismissed Pakistan's claims that it downed six Indian fighter jets during the conflict, calling them "absolutely incorrect".

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"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 fly all our jets again, targeting at long range," General Chauhan added, as quoted by Bloomberg TV.

Since India launched "Operation Sindoor" against Pakistan, hitting nine terror bases in PoK and inside Pakistan, questions have been raised on the losses the Indian Air Force suffered during the four-day cross-border conflict.

While no Indian official mentioned the number of jets lost in the conflict, the Indian Air Force's Director General of Air Operations, Air Marshall AK Bharti, earlier this month acknowledged that "losses are a part of combat" and said all IAF pilots returned home safely after conducting successful strikes.

"I can't comment about loss of Aircraft as we are in a combat scenario and losses are part of combat," Air Marshall AK Bharti had said on May 11.

Underlining India's military superiority during "Operation Sindoor," CDS Chauhan said that the Indian Armed Forces decisively asserted its military superiority over Pakistan during the conflict, with its aerial strikes penetrating deep into Pakistani territory and delivering pinpoint blows to critical enemy infrastructure such as radar systems, control units and airbases.

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. Satellite imagery, both from Indian sources and global platforms, later confirmed the precision of these strikes as well as how devastating they have been.

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"Now that the satellite images for all the strikes that are available, not only through Indian media but from global sources, and you would have seen that most of the strikes were delivered with pinpoint accuracy, some even to a metre, to whatever was our selected mean point of impact, " Gen Chauhan was quoted as saying by Reuters.

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.