 klippety says: First they sell the weapons by the billions to Pakistan and now US foreign policy and military intervention, is facing their own armor. From the sublime to the ridiculous. Pakistan has a whopping 32 F-16's. Big deal. The U.S. sells aircraft and weapons systems to many countries, including 'allies'. The aircraft as delivered are stripped down of advanced avionics and electronics, giving them a second rate piece of equipment for a reduced price. As any country will attest, it's not the aircraft that matter, it's the spare parts and training that are key. Without those they are short-life, expensive toys. that's the reason of the war. Remember the first golf-war, when Ronnie Reagan and his Generals (Cheney and Rumsfeld were in his boat too in 1981) sold all weapons, including Arms of mass destruction, to Irak to fight Iran, because they had thrown the Shah from his throne, and with him all the fine oil wells and ore-mines were lost. And meanwhile they sold weapons to Iran - for a longduring war, that needs many US weapons - an with the immens profit, that was made in this deal, because the US-Army had bought the missiles before, they armed the Somoza Facist Army in Nicaragua. Thousands of deads, a whole generation in daily horror. And before they did the same in chile, in Haiti, Guatemala, E... Napster is correct on this one: Those F-16s are Block 40s or earlier models. No AMRAAMs, earlier radar sets and pilots trained by the US with probably divided loyalties. The real worry is the Chinese made fighters with the new airborne radars, but those will take years to implement. The PAF is in no position to oppose an American strike, although the USAF/USN may loose the odd plane or two. Mind you the PAF pilots are no slouches, but they lost a lot of capabilities during the 1990s and are now rebuilding their structure. As for "selling" aircraft to Pakistan, that is not the way it works. Essentially it is the US taxpayer that "leases" these aircraft, most of them recycled from USAF stocks. The price for the aircraft, weapons, training and spare parts would bankrupt a nation like Pakistan. Nope, it is the US taxpayer who is underwriting the PAF in part (if not in whole). Of course the odd UAV or SOF helo is no match for even a downgraded F-16. Ratilfar- Are you talking about the A-5's? Because the bulk of the PAF is made up of French built Mirage F-1's A-5M is a single-seat, twin-engine supersonic fighter developed by the Nanchang Aircraft Company of China. Of the 60 aircraft of this class acquired by Pakistan, as of mid-1999 only 49 remained in service. Some are reportedly capable of carrying a single 5-20 kT nuclear bomb. The A-5's do not even have the speed, range or payload of an F-16. The PAF could easily be shot down in a couple days time by one or two aircraft carrier based attacks. F-14's and F-18's would chew them to bits fairly quickly. Nope, not the A-5 and not the Mirages (V or F1s) but the F-7s (with a decent Griffo radar) and the JF-10s. The A-5s where never meant to do air-to-air. Not entirely top of the line but the PAF has fought outnumbered before and pulled some interesting coups. Of course how well they would fair this time around is anyone's guess. I am not saying that they would stop an attack (that is if the F-16 pilots even bother to take off, as they are American trained), but a clever defender can make things hard on an attacker and prolong an otherwise short aerial campaign. |
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