Karachi – India’s stand on shooting down one of the Pakistani fighter jets, F-16 in the February dogfight has come to end with a big ‘no’ from the US count.

Two of the senior defense officials shared that none of the F-16s from Islamabad is missing, the count is disapproving the statement given by the Indian Airforce Officials, who claimed that Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman shot down a Pakistani F-16 before his own plane was downed by a Pakistani missile.

The U.S authorities conducted an on-ground count in Pakistan and revealed that the Indian high authorities have mislead the international forums about the exchange occurred on Feb. 27. Possibly, it could have been a guess that Varthaman, flying a vintage MiG-1 Bison, locked the Pakistani F-16 and missed to score any hit.

Modi’s attempt to seek another term in office:  

Just a few weeks prior to India’s general election, India and Pakistan witnessed tensions, escalated to a point where the air force of both the regimes countered a dogfight. As more information and analytical figures are surfacing, it’s getting visibly transparent that it could have been Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attempt to fan nationalistic fire and seek another term in office.

Claiming that Pakistan-based militant group killed more than 40 Indian security officers in a Feb. 14 suicide bombing in India-controlled Kashmir, India has been refusing Pakistan’s official investigative help in the process.

According to an associate professor of political science at MIT, Vipin Narang says the way the events have unfolded may affect India’s efforts to deter Pakistan in the future.

“As details come out, it looks worse and worse for the Indians,” Narang said. “It looks increasingly like India failed to impose significant costs on Pakistan, but lost a plane and a helicopter of its own in the process.”

He continued that the news likely won’t sway Indian voters, this will largely impact the trust of Indian population over Modi’s claims against Pakistan because the other side is keen to normalize tensions and released the captured pilot in an effort to de-escalate the crisis. Moreover, the Indian population is now raising doubts around the defense funds being wasted on the claims made by the sitting government.

Read: Pakistan Doesn’t Belong to the Ugly Cult That India and Israel share

U.S Defense Policy:

It is a part of an end-user agreement signed when the foreign military sale happened that the company would track the performance, counts and incidents around the military equipment bought by the party. In fact, the jets Pakistan received from Jordan through a third-party transfer are also subject to the end-user agreement, said Richard Aboulafia, an analyst with the Teal Group, an aerospace and defense firm. Therefore, senior U.S. defense officials were invited by Pakistan to physically count its F-16 planes after the incident. The count unfolds the truth that none of the Pakistani F-16 jets was downed by the Indian Airforce.

 “If you are a user of American defense products … you need to go through a very clear process to send those weapons to a third party,” explained Aboulafia, noting that the United States has a rigid process in place to try to ensure its equipment does not fall into the hands of “hostile actors.”

More to go…

After the release of the US count report, Indian Airforce insists it shot down one Pakistani F-16. The argument is based on the intercepted radio communication recorded said, one of the F-16s did not return to base.

This story is taking a new route which would interestingly fan more nationalistic fire between the countries.

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