India-Pakistan Conflict: The Indian Air Force (IAF) has officially confirmed that five Pakistani fighter jets and one airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft were shot down during Operation Sindoor. According to Air Chief Marshal A P Singh, the aircraft were targeted and destroyed at long range by India’s recently acquired S-400 missile systems.
India’s ‘game-changer’ S-400 missiles
The IAF chief also revealed that F-16s and an early warning aircraft were destroyed on the ground. “Our air defence systems have done a wonderful job. The S-400 system has been a game-changer, keeping their aircraft well beyond the range of their long-range glide bombs,” he said, adding, “The F-16s deployed in Jacobabad were destroyed.”
Air Chief Marshal Singh showcased before-and-after images of the strike on the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) headquarters in Bahawalpur, emphasising the precision of the operation. “There’s hardly any collateral here… the adjacent buildings are fairly intact. We had both satellite pictures and local media sources to assess the damage,” he explained.
“In Balakot, we could not get anything from inside, and it became a big issue trying to tell our own people, unfortunately, as to what we have been able to achieve. We had intelligence of what had gone on inside, had human kind of intelligence where we had very clear picture of inside in terms of there’s had been a huge damage. There have been so many terrorists who have been neutralised, but we could not convince our own people that, look, we have achieved that…So I’m very happy that this time we were able to take care of that ghost of Balakot that we were able to tell the world what we have achieved,” he adds.
Backing the decision to pause Operation Sindoor, the IAF chief said, “People got down to their egos in this war… Once we achieved our objective, we should have looked for all windows of opportunity to stop… Some people very close to me said, ‘Aur maarna tha’. But can we continue to be at war?… The nation has taken a good decision.”
Operation Sindoor
Operation Sindoor was launched on the night of 7–8 May 2025, following a terrorist attack on 22 April in Pahalgam by Pakistan-based group The Resistance Front (TRF), which killed 26 civilians. The operation targeted nine terrorist training camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
India stressed that the mission’s objective was to dismantle terrorist infrastructure while avoiding military or civilian targets. “The strikes were precise and targeted only the sources of terror,” the IAF said in a statement.
Earlier, US President Donald Trump claimed that he helped stop a possible nuclear war between India and Pakistan. Trump said that both countries “shot down five planes in last attack”.
He added that the situation was tense and could have led to a nuclear conflict. Trump said he spoke to leaders of both countries and warned them that the US would stop trade if the fighting continued. He believes his intervention helped prevent further escalation between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.