India’s defense chief on Saturday acknowledged the loss of at least one aircraft during last month's brief conflict with Pakistan, marking the first official confirmation in an interview with Bloomberg.
India and Pakistan were engaged in a four-day conflict this month, their worst standoff since 1999, before a cease-fire was agreed on May 10.
More than 70 people were killed in missile, drone and artillery fire on both sides.
Pakistan claimed its Chinese-supplied jets had shot down six Indian aircraft.
India's chief of defense staff, Gen. Anil Chauhan, called Pakistan's claims that it shot down six Indian warplanes "absolutely incorrect."
But Chauhan, when pressed as to whether India had lost any jets, appeared to confirm New Delhi had lost an unspecified number of aircraft, without giving details.
"I think, what is important is that, not the jet being down, but why they were being down," he told Bloomberg TV, speaking on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue defense meeting in Singapore.
There was no immediate response from New Delhi.
On May 11, a day after the cease-fire, India's Air Marshal A.K. Bharti, speaking to reporters, had said that "all our pilots are back home," adding that "we are in a combat scenario, and that losses are a part of combat."
A senior security source told AFP three Indian jets had crashed on home soil without giving the make or cause.
But until the comments on Saturday, India had not officially confirmed that any of its aircraft were lost.
"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," Chauhan added, speaking to Bloomberg.
"Why they were down – that is more important for us, and what did we do after that," he added.
The recent conflict between the nuclear-armed rivals was triggered by an attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir on April 22, the deadliest on civilians in the contested Muslim-majority territory in decades.
New Delhi blamed Islamabad for backing the terrorists it said carried out the attack, charges that Pakistan denied.
