At the very least, one thing is near confirmed. Apart from the 4 aircrafts confirmed through open source evidence.
There is this 5th aircraft that was hit and damaged - limped back to the base somehow and got written off later on.
1. First hint was dropped by Alan Warnes when he reported about why it took more than a month for PAF to confirm 4th Rafale Kill.
2. The story was later reported by a French Media outlet mentioning that one Rafale was hit and managed to land back saving life of the pilot. Ironically, the story was celebrated across the social media by Bakhtoras with a narrative that it was the Bhatinda Rafale -- Lol.
3. Now, Trump just repeated the same story.
Now -- I really don't think, Trump takes time to read Alan Warnes / AFM or the random French Media outlets. Pertinent to note that, PAF didn't claim 4th Rafale directly, rather through Alan Warnes / AFM and after due time for obvious reasons as the verdict for write off / repair was pending --- so, it's not like he is taking PAF claims at the face value -- obviously somebody in his administration put this story about an aircraft which "got wounded badly" and later abandoned into his ears.
I mean there is a whole chain of reports pertaining to this story -- and not like one random day Trump woke up and put up what he saw in his dream last night ---
So at the very least, it makes it 5 confirmed aircrafts including 2 Rafales. Probably, that's the reason IAF still hesitates to disclose the losses -- and perhaps that's why many other sources said it's 5 aircrafts.
idrw.org
