NEW DELHI: Indians have finally seized the opportunity they’ve been waiting for like decades: hitting back at a US President over aircraft losses in the ongoing war against Iran.
After months of Donald Trump trolling and inflating the number of jets “shot out of the sky” during the May 2025 Pakistan–India war — starting at five, then seven, eight, ten, and finally eleven “very expensive jets” — a retired Indian Maj Gen has turned the tables.
Maj Gen Harsha Kakar, in a post tagging the US Ambassador to India, declared that the US lost more aircraft than in Operation Sindoor. The President of the United States must have the guts to admit US lost 11 aircraft including those damaged on the ground in Saudi Arabia. Why are you NOT admitting. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
The US lost more aircraft than in Operation Sindoor. @POTUS you must have the guts to admit US lost 11 aircraft including those damaged on the ground in Saudi Arabia. Why are you NOT admitting. Thank you for your attention to this matter. @USAmbIndia
— Maj Gen Harsha Kakar (@kakar_harsha) March 14, 2026
The jab has widely been seen as India’s cheeky counter to Trump’s airborne exaggerations. For years, Indian analysts complained that Washington’s narratives often spotlighted Indian losses while sidestepping US embarrassments. Now, with Trump’s jet math spiraling into stand-up comedy, Kakar’s post appears to have given India the perfect chance to flip the script.
Trump’s speeches had already become a running gag in South Asian media, with Pakistani outlets replayed his “five jets” line as validation of their claims, while Indian commentators groaned as the tally ballooned like a Bollywood sequel count. By February 2026, Trump was boasting of “11 jets, very expensive jets… both of them were all in,” leaving audiences unsure whether he was describing fighter planes or a Las Vegas poker game.
Commentators say the real danger isn’t nuclear war but keeping track of Trump’s arithmetic. “If this continues,” joked one Indian analyst, “by 2027 he’ll claim to have prevented the downing of 25 invisible stealth jets — nobody saw them, but he did.”
