Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Almost two months after India paused the ongoing Operation Sindoor at the request of Pakistan, Indian Air Force chief A P Singh revealed that five Pakistani fighter jets and one aircraft were taken down, the media reported on Saturday.
This was like India laying to rest the Balakot ghost. India shot down Pakistani aircraft from 300 km in the largest-ever recorded surface-to-air kill.
Air Chief Marshal A.P. Singh, delivering the keynote address at the 16th Air Chief Marshal L.M. Katre Memorial Lecture in Bengaluru, disclosed that the IAF took down Pakistan’s five fighter jets and one large aircraft during Operation Sindoor (May 7-10, 2025).
“We have at least five fighters confirmed killed and one large aircraft, which could be an ELINT aircraft or an AEW&C aircraft, which was taken out from a distance of about 300 km, which is the largest ever recorded surface-to-air kill that we can talk about,” he said.
This is the first time one of the senior-most officers of the Indian armed forces has officially confirmed bringing down Pakistani air assets during the highly successful Operation Sindoor, which India launched to teach Pakistan a hard lesson after its trained-and-sponsored terrorists killed at least 26 Hindu-only tourists at Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir, on April 22.
“Apart from these (aircraft), there are a large number of UAVs and drones, some of whose missiles had fallen in our territory; we have recovered them. Lot of wreckage has been recovered, which is being studied so we can make out what they did, where they were launched from, what route they followed, what kind of systems they had, what generation they belonged to, what kind of features they had, etc.,” he said.
Demonstrating the IAF’s feats on a large screen, he said: “These are the before and after images of the damage we caused (at Bahawalpur – JeM HQ)… There’s hardly any collateral here… The adjacent buildings are fairly intact… Not only did we have satellite pictures, but also from local media, through which we could get inside pictures.”
“Our Air Defence systems have done a wonderful job. The S-400 system, which we had recently bought, has been a game-changer. The range of that system has really kept their aircraft away from their weapons, like those long-range glide bombs that they have; they have not been able to use any one of those because they have not been able to penetrate the system,” he added.
He also interacted with serving and retired air force personnel after delivering the keynote address.