Ajay Ahlawat, a former IAF officer, gave a thorough response to criticism during the recent public debate regarding Indian Air Force (IAF) jet losses to the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) during Operation Sindoor in May 2025. He emphasized that the losses were caused by technical, not strategic, surprise.
According to Ahlawat, India lost a few jets since the initial round of airstrikes was executed under extremely strict conditions. “Our strikers were operating under very restrictive rules of engagements, against an adversary that was pre-warned and well-armed,” he stated.
Ahlawat claims that political directions that deliberately restricted strikes to terror infrastructure and shunned military objectives led to the first wave of Indian airstrikes being carried out under extremely stringent rules of engagement.
This resulted in the absence of regular SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses) and DEAD (Destruction of Enemy Air Defenses) missions, which are usually crucial to the initial stages of any air campaign.
Ahlawat clarified that because the enemy was forewarned and well-prepared, surprise—typically a benefit for the attacking force—was lacking. The IAF was instead confronted with a “technical surprise” when the PAF used data-linked beyond-visual-range (BVR) missiles at extremely long range, surpassing Indian missile capability presumptions.
The IAF’s electronic warfare threat libraries were not sufficiently updated to counter these methods, and it was not entirely anticipated that satellites and AEWC (Airborne Early Warning and Control) systems would offer guidance to these air-launched weapons.
However, Ahlawat pointed out that the IAF swiftly adjusted, gained knowledge from the initial setback, and successfully resumed operations in the days that followed, launching forceful attacks free from additional disruption.
At a seminar in Jakarta, Captain (Indian Navy) Shiv Kumar, India’s defense attaché to Indonesia, admitted that the IAF lost “some aircraft” during the operation. He attributed these losses to political restrictions that forbade attacking Pakistan’s air defenses and military assets. This heightened the controversy.
According to Kumar, after these defeats, Indian troops changed their strategy, gave priority to destroying enemy air defenses, and then used cutting-edge weapons like BrahMos missiles to successfully attack military targets.
In India, this disclosure sparked political backlash, with opposition parties calling for more transparency and accusing the government of concealing the magnitude of the losses. The Indian Embassy in Jakarta responded by stating that the media had misinterpreted and taken Kumar’s comments out of context.
The embassy emphasized that the goal was to show that the Indian military was committed to civilian political leadership and that Operation Sindoor was a non-escalating operation that was more concerned with counterterrorism than direct combat.
Technical underestimate and restrictive engagement restrictions, rather than strategic or political miscalculation, were the main causes of the IAF’s jet losses, if any. The incident spurred a wider discussion on openness and civil-military relations in India, and the IAF swiftly adjusted, and following operations went forward without experiencing the same difficulties.
