NEW DELHI: India did lose some fighter jets during the strikes on nine terror hubs in Pakistan and POK and the consequent retaliation on May 7, but then changed tactics to inflict major damage on airbases deep across the border before the ceasefire three days later, Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan said on Saturday.The CDS did not specify the exact number of jets India lost but asserted that Pakistan's claim of having shot down six IAF aircraft, including three French-origin Rafales, was "absolutely incorrect" in separate interviews to Reuters TV and Bloomberg TV on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore.Gen Chauhan's admission of India's initial setbacks during Operation Sindoor is the most direct since director -general of air operations Air Marshal A K Bharti on May 11 said losses were part of any combat situation but "all our pilots are back home", implying that they had ejected safely after their jets were hit by enemy fire."What I can say is on May 7, in the initial stages, there were losses," Gen Chauhan said.India-Pak conflict came nowhere close to N-faceoff: CDSChief of Defence Staff Gen Anil Chauhan said the conflict with Pakistan from May 7 to May 10, which saw reciprocal air, missile, drone and artillery strikes, never came anywhere close to the point of nuclear conflagration, with both sides “displaying a lot of rationality in their thoughts as well as actions”.In another interview on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue, the CDS further said, “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 flew all our jets again, targeting at long range.”Gen Chauhan was also dismissive of the effectiveness of Pakistan’s air defence systems of Chinese-origin like HQ-9 missile batteries and radars as well as the use of Turkish-origin Byker Yiha kamikaze drones and Asisguard Songar drones. “They didn’t work. We were able to do precision strikes on heavily air-defended airfields of Pakistan 300km deep inside, with the precision of a metre,” he said.Pakistan was obviously prepared for the initial Indian strikes on May 7, which saw the IAF and Army hit four terror hubs in Pakistan and five in PoK, with fighter-launched missiles and ‘smart’ bombs as well as Kamikaze drones and extended range artillery shells between 1.05 am and 1.30 am.India immediately made it clear that the aim was to hit only terror infrastructure, and no military bases were targeted. Pakistan, however, chose to escalate the situation, which included launching waves of drones and some missiles to target Indian airbases, military assets and civilian areas.The IAF then struck nine Pakistani airbases and at least three radar sites, a few of them close to nuclear facilities as well as command and control structures, with Sukhoi-30MKI, Rafale and Mirage-2000 fighters using BrahMos, Crystal Maze-2, Rampage and Scalp missiles, among other precision munitions, for the calibrated pinpoint strikes, as was reported by TOI.Gen Chauhan, on his part, declined to comment on President Donald Trump’s claim that the US brokered the ceasefire to help avert a nuclear war but said it was “far-fetched” to suggest either side was close to using nuclear weapons. Pakistan’s chairman of joint chiefs of staff Gen Sahir Shamshad Mirza had made the same point a day ago, also on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue, but had stressed that a “strategic miscalculation” cannot be ruled out in the future.Gen Chauhan, however, said “people in uniform” were actually the “most rational” since they understand the consequences. “In every step that happened during Operation Sindoor, I found 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,” he said.There is “a lot of space” between the conduct of conventional operations and the nuclear threshold, the CDS said, adding that channels of communication with Pakistan “were always open” to control the situation and there were “more sub-ladders” on the escalation ladder that “can be exploited to settle our issues”.

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