U.S. count shows no Pakistan F-16s shot down in Indian battle: report
Foreign Policy said in a report published on Thursday two U.S. defence officials with direct knowledge of the matter said U.S. personnel had done a count of Pakistan’s F-16s and found none missing.
Pakistan's F-16 combat jets have all been accounted for, U.S.-based Foreign Policy magazine said, citing U.S. officials, contradicting an Indian air force assessment that it had shot down one of the jets in February.
www.reuters.com
IAF Did Not Shoot Down Pak F-16 in Balakot Aftermath, Says US Scholar Christine Fair
Fair, whose work on Pakistan is frequently cited by the Indian side, took on former air chief BS Dhanoa, saying the IAF narrative is not based on an empirical body of facts but dictated more by “things deployed by politicians to win elections".
Chandigarh: Minutes after retired Air Chief Marshal B.S. Dhanoa attacked the Pakistani claim that IAF bombers dropped their payloads in haste and missed their target on February 26 when they bombed a Jaish-e-Mohammed terror camp in Balakot, Christine Fair – an expert on South Asian political and military affairs – said the IAF story of the operation and its aftermath is based on ‘dubious’ claims.
Fair, a professor of security studies at Georgetown University who has spent many years researching in Pakistan, stirred up a heated debate at the Military Literature Festival in Chandigarh on Saturday when she went on to assert that she did not believe India shot down an F-16 fighter during the dogfight between Indian and Pakistani jets in the aftermath of the Indian airstrikes over Balakot.
“I say this clearly with 100% certitude that there was no F-16 struck down. I do not believe you did. I believe that my bonafides as a critic of Pakistan stand for itself,” she said before a stunned audience. But Fair added that she and many others in the Pentagon actually wished that the IAF had indeed shot down the F-16, because India had “a right to bomb Pakistan” in retaliation for the Pulwama attack.
She, however, questioned the IAF’s narrative about the incident, saying that it is not based on an empirical body of facts but dictated more by “things deployed by politicians to win elections…. The world outside of India does not see things the way they were said here today. Though, I wish they were true.”
Fair, whose work on Pakistan is frequently cited by the Indian side, took on former air chief BS Dhanoa, saying the IAF narrative is not based on an empirical body of facts but dictated more by “things deployed by politicians to win elections
thewire.in
So many other sources too.