Mentioning the F-16 is a very good tactic, with how hard the US is trying to court India and how fragile the Indian ego is right now. Imo it would have maybe even been better if he had directly said it was F-16 not J-10 that did the shootingin the qa session after the powerpoint presentation a reporter asked for specifics regarding employment of j-10/pl-15 and i took the trouble to transcribe the response:
generally it seems to be intended to be a nonanswer, but blurting out f-16's involvement is a tiny bit scandalous after us stated that f-16s were not involved against india haha.