India’s CDS Breaks Silence on IAF Losses: Why the Admission is Significant

It’s not understood why the government tried to hide the marginal equipment loss as casualties are part of any war.

The despatch of political delegations to different countries to “explain” India’s perspective is part of that construct. So is the acceptance by the CDS of some losses. 

(Photo: Aroop Mishra/The Quint)

Social media and large segments of the Indian television media went berserk after General Anil Chauhan, India’s Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), who was in Singapore attending the Shangri-la Dialogue, confirmed for the first time officially in interviews to Bloomberg TV and Reuters that the Indian Air Force (IAF) had lost some fighter aircraft in the initial stage of Operation Sindoor, due to “tactical errors.”

While declining to specify the exact number or the type of Indian fighter jets lost, and describing Pakistan’s claim of having shot down six Indian jets as “absolutely incorrect”, he added, “What is important is not the jet being down, but….what mistakes were made”, and that the situation was “quickly corrected.”

A Confirmed Loss, After Weeks of Speculation

Post-interview, all kinds of silly accusations, character assassination attempts, and calls for “accountability” from the CDS began flooding social media by anyone who had a smartphone. Indian news channels too picked this up, with some even conjecturing that he would now be sacked by the Narendra Modi government for that revelation.

All this, in spite of Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri earlier refusing to say there were no Indian losses, and the IAF spokesperson, Air Marshal AK Bharti, stating that losses are to be expected during combat.

The senseless trolling can be partly explained by that apocryphal yarn, “Earlier, whenever that village idiot got up to speak, the wiser ones would pull him down and shut him up. Now, smartphones and the internet has connected all of them together—and also to us”. But the saner ones deserve an answer to that question: Why did the CDS say what he did? Was it an inadvertent admission, or a considered, government-approved disclosure?

The answer to that lies in two dynamics: the lunacy purveyed by India’s electronic news media; and consequent intervention by the US at the behest of an increasingly alarmed international community.

Losing a Jet isn’t Losing the War

To begin with, unless the intent was to derive political profit from those strikes into PoK and Pakistan, it’s not understood why the government tried to hide our marginal equipment loss.

Wars aren’t like police encounters, and since time immemorial, every victory in every conflict or war has been underwritten with abundant blood and material losses.

The Allies suffered over 2.5 lakh casualties and equipment losses running in lakhs in just 75 days of the successful Operation Overlord (1944). In Afghanistan, between 2001 and 2021, the US spent USD 2.3 trillion, and suffered 2459 casualties.

Even the ill-armed Palestinians have managed to inflict losses on Israel, the mightiest armed forces in the Middle-East. A look at all previous wars (1947-48, 1962, 1965, 1971 and 1999) will reveal that the Indian Armed Forces have never shied away from admitting losses. The three aircraft losses (two fighter jets and one helicopter) in Operation Vijay (1999) were promptly reported.

This is because in any battle with another country, casualties are to be expected. The CDS clarified the same, adding that losses in war are not important as long as the objective of that war is achieved, and professional militaries are not affected by losses in a war. 

Sacrifice and Military Honour

We need to remember that soldiers fight for self-respect, honour (their own, their unit's, of the armed forces service, and the flag) and love for their country. The families of fallen soldiers accept their losses stoically, knowing the nation stands alongside them.

In addition is the need to honour fallen soldiers through military funerals and render awards to those who performed acts beyond the call of duty. All this cannot be done while denying it ever happened. While there appear to have been no soldier losses in this conflict, a small material loss is part of that game. And material losses cannot be hidden – in this information era, they will eventually get revealed, with attendant embarrassment.

Hence, the admission by the CDS is what any sagacious military leader of a professional armed forces would have done. Russia’s ready confirmation—without political dodging, denials, or fortnight-long delay before sending someone abroad to quietly concede it—that several of its military aircraft were destroyed in the large-scale Ukrainian drone attack of 1 June is a case in point.

Nationalism, Noise and Nuclear Myths

Soon after the terrible massacre on 22 April of innocent civilians at Pahalgam, much of India’s media had begun baying for revenge and blood. The former, citing “sources” and with help of “defence experts”, began disseminating all sorts of “operational and strategic plans” to “destroy and/or dismember Pakistan."

Since the two earlier major attacks in J&K (Uri in 2016 and Pulwama in 2019) had triggered an Indian military response, the question after that reprehensible carnage wasn’t whether India would respond - but its form, intensity, and scale.  

Immediately after the attack on the nine terrorist infrastructure sites in PoK and Pakistan in the wee hours of 7 May, the media ran amok with alarming, hyper-nationalistic, disingenuous rhetoric, which later it tried to justify as “information warfare”.

Anchors and self-styled ‘defence experts’ made bizarre claims, such as destruction of Karachi port by the Indian Navy, Indian missiles “knocking on Pakistan’s nuclear assets”, attacks on Islamabad, Asim Munir fleeing to London, Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif surrendering to Indian forces, etc—accompanied by fake or unrelated visuals.

Although the IAF or PAF didn’t intrude into either’s airspace with manned aircraft, the use of cruise missiles by India and conventional-warhead-fitted short-range ballistic missiles (SRBM) by Pakistan, as well as the employment of armed and decoy drones, Beyond Visual Range (BVR) air-to-air missiles, air defence systems (including strategic surface-to-air missile systems) by both sides, and intense artillery and small-arms duels on the LoC, were evident to international observers.

The conflict marked only the second time airpower was used—albeit with stand-off weapons—by one nuclear-weapons state on territory occupied by another (the first being 1999’s Operation Vijay), and the third time two nuclear-weapons states fought directly (after the 1969 Soviet-China clash).

While the media’s shenanigans can yet be allowed to pass, regretfully, the fact-check unit of the Press Information Bureau (PIB) did virtually nothing to counter that plethora of outrageous claims. 

Hence, plausibly, all such "news," and the absence of official corrections or denials could have led to serious concerns about the direction the conflict seemed headed. A 28 May assessment by the Stimson Center sums it up: “The conflict generated unprecedented levels of mis-and disinformation that continue to cloud understandings of what actually transpired between 7-10 May.”

Global Stakes for Managing Optics

On 8 May, US Vice President JD Vance had declared, “We’re not going to get involved in the middle of a war that’s fundamentally none of our business." But as per Trump administration officials, "fresh intelligence of 9 May" led to Vance calling Prime Minister Modi to express concern about the “dramatic escalation."

Subsequently, on 10 May, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio engaged with Pakistan’s Army Chief General Munir and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, and then with India’s External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar.

According to Indian media reports, Jaishankar told Rubio the ceasefire proposal should be routed through established military lines of communication. Following this, the Director General of Military Operations (DGMO) of both countries spoke in the afternoon of 10 May, ushering in a ceasefire.

The announcement of a ceasefire led to a new round of trolling—this time targeting not only the Modi government, but also India’s Foreign Secretary and his family. The international impression and domestic opinion perhaps initiated introspection within the government, after which damage control began. Besides that, the loss of jets couldn’t be hidden forever.

General Chauhan underlined in his interview with Bloomberg that “During this operation…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 despatch of political delegations to different countries to “explain” India’s perspective is part of that construct. So is the acceptance of some losses by the CDS.

These efforts, albeit belated, are aimed at reassuring the international community about the the Indian politico-military decision-making, and the exceptional levels of professionalism of the Indian Armed Forces. Simultaneously, they seek to convey to the domestic audience that in a war with a contiguous neighbour, even a militarily superior side will inevitably suffer some damage.

(Kuldip Singh is a retired Brigadier from the Indian Army. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)