Three months after Operation Sindoor began, the Indian Air Force officially revealed it had shot down at least five Pakistani fighter jets and a large surveillance aircraft during the clash. That the information came from Air Chief Marshal A P Singh brought authenticity and a fresh perspective to the table. Less than a fortnight ago, Parliament had acrimoniously debated the operation launched to deliver justice to the 26 civilians massacred in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam on April 22. Singh described the destruction of Pakistani warplanes as the largest-ever recorded surface-to-air kill by India. Known for his candour, the air chief went on to torpedo the main planks of the opposition.
Singh attributed the operation’s success to political will, adding that the armed forces were not at all fettered. Obliquely swatting Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s attack in the Lok Sabha on not giving the forces a free hand, the air chief said the constraints, if any, were self-imposed as they themselves decided the escalation ladder and how and when to wind it down. Admitting that people close to him peppered him with queries about pausing the operation after hitting nine terror targets in Pakistan and Pakistanoccupied Kashmir, he explained the attacks were calibrated because “we wanted to be mature about it”. The objective was to warn the leadership of terror outfits that the India-Pak border won’t be a constraint for pursuing them if they dared to repeat the crime. Singh was also profuse in his praise of the Russian S-400s, saying the enemy failed to penetrate the anti-missile shield. Another plus was the copious images available in real time. Contrasting them with the Balakot air strike in Pakistan after the Pulwama terror attack in 2019, he said, since no visual of the attack could be procured, convincing ‘our own people’ on the outcome became difficult.
Now that India has made public the kills of the Pakistani birds, it is only fair to expect clarity on the aircraft losses on our side. There is no need for secrecy. Disclosing the data will not hamper national security. Analogies such as “the result of the exam is important, not whether a pencil got broken or a pen was lost” underestimate the maturity of the very people in whose name the battle was fought.