Ishara S. Kodikara—AFP
Foreign Policy magazine claims a recent count of Pakistan’s F-16s contradicts Indian claims
A U.S. magazine cast serious doubt on Friday on India’s assertion that it shot down a Pakistani F-16 fighter jet during the two nuclear-armed countries’ latest bust-up in February.
Citing two unnamed senior U.S. defense officials, Foreign Policy said that U.S. personnel recently conducted a count of Pakistan’s F-16s and found none missing. This contradicts a statement from India’s Air Vice Marshal R.G.K Kapoor that India downed a Pakistani F-16 in a dogfight over Kashmir on Feb. 27.
Pakistan denied at the time that this was the case.
Foreign Policy quoted one of the officials as saying that Pakistan invited the U.S. to physically count its F-16 fleet. Many agreements on the sale of U.S. military hardware to third countries include clauses allowing U.S. officials to regularly inspect the equipment.
Some of the aircraft were not immediately available, so it took U.S. personnel several weeks to account for all of the jets, the official said. But now the count has been completed, and “all aircraft were present and accounted for,” the magazine quoted the official as saying.
The Indian Air Force however said it had proof of shooting down the F16. “Radio communication of Pakistan Air Force … confirms that one of the F-16s that attacked India on Feb. 27 did not return to its base,” local media quoted IAF sources as saying.
Pakistani armed forces spokesman Asif Ghafoor tweeted that “truth always prevails.”
“Time for India to speak truth about false claims & actual losses on their side including the second aircraft shot down by Pakistan,” he said in a re-tweet of the Foreign Policy article.
There are no official figures from Pakistan on how many F-16s it has but reported estimates place the number between 70 and 80. In the dogfight Pakistan had also said it shot down two Indian planes, but India said that it lost only one aircraft.
Initially Pakistan said it had captured two Indian pilots but the military later clarified it had just one pilot in custody, who was later released.
The dogfight happened after Pakistani aircraft entered Indian airspace a day after Indian aircraft carried out an airstrike on what it said was a “terrorist training camp” in Pakistan. That in turn was in response to a suicide bombing on Feb. 14 in India-Occupied Kashmir that killed 40 Indian troops and which was claimed by a militant group based in Pakistan though perpetrated by a local separatist.
Doubt has also been cast over the success of India’s airstrike, which Amit Shah, president of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has claimed killed 250. Pakistan denied that there was any damage or casualties.
Independent reporting by multiple local and international outlets who visited the site also found no evidence of a major terrorist training camp—or of any infrastructure damage at all.
The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab said that open-source satellite imagery indicated “only impacts in the wooded area, with no damage being visible to the surrounding structures.” But Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose standing has been bolstered by the raids ahead of elections beginning on April 11, has stuck to his guns, while hitting out at those questioning the success of the strike as unpatriotic. In the next raids, “opposition parties raising these questions can be tied under the jets… so that they can look at the targets,” thundered junior foreign minister V.K Singh.