It can be safely said that the way India conducted itself since the Pahalgam attacks to its missile attacks on Pakistan on the morning of May 7, all indicate that it played a game of miscalculation, and paid for it with egg on its face, and a loss of close to a billion dollars.
It lost at least two of the newly-minted Rafales which were bought at the price tag of $285 million per jet from France not long ago, and the purchase was heralded as the new dawn of the Indian Air Force, and the jet fighter was propped by both the Indian government and its generally servile media as the new flagbearer aircraft of the Indian airforce.
In their first outing in a combat situation, two of the Rafales were lost, giving a deathly blow to the image and ambitions of the Indian Air Force. While Pakistan’s military spokesman said that five IAF jets had been downed, he also said that no Pakistan Air Force jet crossed over into Indian territory, which left the gate of speculation open as to how at least three Indian jets crashed well inside Indian-held Kashmir.
Either they were brought down using surface-to-air missiles, or Pakistani jets locked on to them as targets from Pakistan’s side of the Line of Control and the missiles were able to take out the IAF jets on the other side, or that some kind of electronic jamming equipment was used by Pakistan to knock out the Indian fighter jets.
Pakistan held a meeting of its Security Committee on the morning of May 7 where it said that it reserved to respond to the strikes by India at a time and place of its choosing. After the meeting ended, Pakistan’s airspace was reopened, initially with Karachi and Lahore airports operating as usual.
All major world powers, in particular the US, have quite strongly urged both Pakistan and India to work this out and prevent it from escalating any further
The entire Indian electronic media - following the cue from the Government of India - is pretending as if at least 3 IAF fighter jets did not crash inside India once the missile strikes were over and once Pakistan had said that a response was underway.
This can be looked at in two ways:
1. India as usual is denying the obvious and accepting that it lost 3-5 fighter jets as a result of what clearly is a miscalculation from the very start would be embarassing to say the least - and costly - one Rafale fighter costs the Indian government $285 million - and losing two would set it back by $570 million - and then there are the other losses.
So, this approach would seek to simply wish these losses away, as if they never happened - except that there is visual proof of the wreckage and independent media orgs have confirmed, citing Indian government sources that at least 3 Indian fighter jets went down.
2. India is deliberately ignoring this (and of course not choosing to honour the lives of its pilots and soldiers lost in these crashes) because it doesn't wish to escalate matters any further - after all, if it were to acknowledge these losses then the BJP and Modi Sarkar would have necessarily also come up with yet another response - right now this issue is not being reported at all in the Indian media - the one newspaper that did break the story and report it had its tweet taken down soon after.
And therefore, since it's not being covered, for the general Indian audience, it didn't happen, and hence there is no question of any retaliatory response. And consequently, any further escalation is unlikely. The narrative being pushed in the Indian media right now is that the ball is in Pakistan's court, because it has said it will respond to the missile strikes in a manner and time of its own choosing. This, however, conveniently ignores the fact (which is not being reported in Indian media) that India actually lost several fighter jets, including its prized Rafale fighter, and any response would now come from India, not Pakistan.
And this takes us back to the very important question asked in the headline to this piece – and which is whether the situation will escalate further. Bear in mind that all major world powers, in particular the US, have quite strongly urged both Pakistan and India to work this out and prevent it from escalating any further.
To that, the answer, in my view, and keeping in mind how the Indian government and Indian media is responding to its aircraft losses by acting as if they never happened, is no.