New Delhi, May 31 -- India's military has, for the first time, officially acknowledged the loss of fighter jets during the armed conflict with Pakistan earlier this May, while strongly denying that the hostilities ever approached the threshold of nuclear war.

General Anil Chauhan, the Chief of Defence Staff of the Indian Armed Forces, made the admission during an interview with Bloomberg TV on Saturday, on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore.

"Why they were down, what mistakes were made - that are important," he said. "Numbers are not important," he added.

Without naming the incident in detail, he acknowledged that the Indian Air Force had managed to recover swiftly from the setback.

This is the clearest acknowledgme...