Preliminary

On October 4, Singh said: During Operation Cinnabar, the Indian Air Force shot down 13 Pakistan fighter jets, including the US-made F-16 and the Chinese-made JF-17 Xiaolong fighter jets.

The first time, India said "destroy"; the second time, Pakistan said "shoot down"; the third time, India simply doubled the results of the war. A series of increasing numbers were more exciting than the stock market curve, but it was difficult to see which line was the real line.

Is this a declaration of victory or an absurd play of a battle of faces?

How is the truth?

Five months ago, the smoke on the Indian-Pakistani border had long been scattered, but another war without aircraft was escalating, the weapon of this war was the war news, the battlefield on the press and the United Nations General Assembly.

The figures released by the two sides are not only diametrically opposed, but also continue to "evolve" in a few months. This is no longer a simple resumption of military confrontation, but a deep game related to national honor, military transparency and geopolitical anxiety.

Rather than focusing on who fired the first shot, it is better to see how this misfortune surrounding war reports has made the "truth" the first victim.

A muddled account that is constantly rewritten

The results of the war, which should have been cold numbers, have now become a propaganda tool for everyone to dress up. The most dazzling thing is India's constantly revised "shot down" ledger.

At the end of the conflict, their account was still vague, and they often used "destruction" to describe the attack on the Pakistani ground hangars.

In September, Indian Air Force Chief of Staff Singh gave a clear figure in a speech at a military academy for the first time: the shooting down of five Pakistani fighter jets, which sounds quite remarkable.

However, only a month later, the story reached its culmination, and on October 4, according to the Indian Times, Chief of Staff Singh sharply increased the battle to ¡°12 or 13¡± and doubled the number.

More interestingly, the new version of the war newspaper has not only increased the number, but even the strike methods have been unified "corrected", and the S400 missile system that was mentioned earlier has almost been replaced by a more heroic air "downfall".

On the other hand, Pakistan's statement appears to be much "restrained". Their Prime Minister reported the results at the United Nations General Assembly. The updated total is 7 Indian military aircraft shot down, and there are also reports that it is 6.

Compared with earlier battle reports, this list only quietly added a Legal "Rafale" fighter jet. This fine-tuning is in dramatic contrast to the drastic modifications made by India.

The fall of the card or the victory of the gun.

Beyond the number of controversies, the more core battlefield revolves around the ¡°destroyed¡± model, which is not just the statistics of war losses, but also a symbolic confrontation about technology and dignity, both of which are eager to declare to the world: we have defeated each other¡¯s jackpot.

Pakistan's published list of "war ransomware" almost covers the Indian Air Force's "World Chart" equipment, from the Russian Su-30MKI, MiG-29, to the Legislative Phantom-2000, with no survivors, among the most deadly accusations, is claiming to have shot down as many as three to four Indian treasure-looking "Arsenal" fighters.

This is tantamount to directly slapping the Indian Air Force's technological superiority theory in the face. In addition, the list also includes an Israeli-made "Heron" large drone, which is intended to demonstrate its watertight air defense capabilities.

India's counterattack was also not weak, and their battle list precisely targeted the backbone of the Pakistani air force, the US-made F-16 fighter and the JF-17 "Dragon" fighter jointly developed by China and Pakistan.

In order to highlight its systematic operational advantages, the Indian side even claimed that the powerful S400 air defense system hired six F-16 and JF-17 "human heads" and also hit a Pakistani special operational aircraft 300 kilometers away, the outside speculation is that it may be a early warning aircraft.

Behind this verbal victory is deep armed anxiety, and after the conflict, New Delhi is actively negotiating with Russia for the purchase of Su-57 fighters, whose motivation is obvious ¨C trying to build a new technological surplus advantage over the J-10CE fighters that Pakistan may have equipped.

This eager move in turn confirms their real worries about the performance of existing equipment in actual combat.

Who's gonna be the referee

When the war newspaper turned into a self-proclaimed propaganda, the international community felt that the tragedy seriously damaged the credibility of stakeholders, especially the continuously increasing Indian military.

The British Aviation Monthly once disclosed evidence supporting Pakistan's claims and commented that the Pakistan Air Force could have achieved greater results.

Even U.S. President Trump accidentally mentioned on two public occasions that multiple Indian Air Force fighter jets were shot down in that conflict, which was widely interpreted by the outside world as an indirect slap in the face to India's official statement.

For a time, the Indian military's behavior of constantly revising its results almost became an "international joke" in the international public opinion field. It was criticized for ignoring the facts because it "only cared about face".

In the face of questioning, the two sides' attitudes were very different, and Pakistan had proposed in August, hoping for the intervention of a third-party independent agency to verify the actual situation of the two countries' air fleets to be listened to.

The proposal sounds reasonable, but the Indian side has not accepted it, and they have not only evaded international verification, but even rejected the opposition party's reasonable demands in the country for the state of the "ventilator", which has undoubtedly intensified external suspicion.

Obviously, the high-level Indian military and government officials urgently need to show the domestic people a "winner" gesture. The inconsistent speech of Chief of Staff Singh is probably the result of being forced to constantly "overweight" under this huge pressure of public opinion.

The harsh warning, ¡°If Pakistan continues to support terrorism, it will be erased from the map,¡± sounds more like a gesture to restore the face.

conclusion

This "battle report" after the India-Pakistan air war clearly tells us that in modern conflicts, information control and public opinion shaping are no less important than real guns and live ammunition on the battlefield.

However, when the ever-expanding numbers and unconfirmed "Thrill Down" records become the protagonists, what is ultimately eroded is precisely the credibility that the nation and the military rely on to survive.

The premise of knowing shame and then being brave is to "know shame". When the battle report is completely reduced to a tool serving propaganda, then the real experience and lessons will be impossible to talk about.

For any army that looks to the future, this is probably the most dangerous signal. This tug-of-war around "truth" has not only failed to bring an end to the conflict, but has also planted deeper seeds for future mistrust.