India established decisive advantage after losses in the air on first day: CDS

Speaking to international media, CDS Gen. Anil Chauhan denies Pakistan claim of downing six IAF jets; he says India rectified ‘tactical mistakes’ made initially, struck Pakistan with pinpoint accuracy The Hindu Bureau New Delhi India “rectified” its tactics after losses on May 7 and established an advantage over Pakistan during the four-day conflict between them, Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Anil Chauhan said on Saturday, speaking to international media for the first time since Indian forces launched Operation Sindoor in retaliation for the Pahalgam terror attack. Responding to questions about the loss of Indian jets, General Chauhan, India’s highest ranking General, told the Reuters news agency that the losses had occurred, the first official confirmation of “losses in the air”, the agency reported. However, he said, India had delivered strikes on Pakistan with “pinpoint accuracy, some even to a metre, to whatever was our selected mean point of impact”, and had achieved its objectives. In a separate interview to Bloomberg TV, General Chauhan described Pakistan’s claim that it had shot down six Indian fighter jets as “absolutely incorrect”, but did not enumerate India’s losses. ‘Remedied, rectified’ He said “tactical mistakes” made by the military during the “initial stages” had been “remedied, rectified” and Indian jets had been able to“hit deep inside Pakistan” subsequently. “What was important is, why did these losses occur, and what we would do after that,” he told Reuters on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue security forum in Singapore, referring to thePakistani claim of downing jets. “So we rectified tactics and then went back on [May] 7th, 8th and 10th in large numbers to hit air bases deep inside Pakistan, penetrated all their air defences with impunity, carried out precision strikes,” he said, adding that the Indian air force “flew all types of aircraft with all types of ordnance on the 10th.” General Chauhan also said that “almost 80% of the equipment which Pakistan has procured in the past few years has been procured from China”, adding that some kind of “OEM” or manufacturer’s support would have been provided by Chinese companies to Pakistan in terms of “refining, problem-rectification, maintenance”. https://epaper.thehindu.com/ccidist-ws/th/th_mangalore/issues/133890/OPS/GJ6EEPJQP.1.png?cropFromPage=true