NEW DELHI – Pakistan has produced the JF-17 fighter since 2007, with Russiaproviding high quality engines. In March, Chinese media reported the JF-17will be upgraded with active array radar, allowing it to detect and fire ontargets from a greater distance.
According to Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan, Russia’s potential approval forChina to resell its jet engines to Pakistan was the most frequent topic ofdiscussion at weekly meetings of the National Security Council when she wasassistant secretary to the NSC Secretariat from 2003-2007.
If Pakistan’s jets were equipped with the new radar and China’s PL-10missiles, now available for export, India’s aging Russian MiGs wouldstruggle to compete, she said, Hindustan Times has reported.
The arms sales are symptomatic of a much more worrying regional realignmentof Russia – traditionally India’s biggest arms supplier – with China, saidRajagopalan, now head of the Nuclear and Space Policy Initiative at theObserver Research Foundation, a New Delhi think tank.
“The Russians are in a weak position now, and they feel it is better to bein the Chinese camp,” she said.
India last month put out an international call for bids for a $15 billioncontract to provide 110 new combat aircraft. Pakistan has over 100 JF-17sand is producing 25 new ones a year, in next few years the number may touch250-300.
Beijing’s technological progress is also having knock-on effects beyondSouth Asia. China has moved from its traditional position as a provider ofcheap small arms to poor nations, to become the world’s number three armstrader in volume terms. That includes the sale of armed drones to SaudiArabia, Iraq and other nations to which the US declined to sell its Reaperdrone technology.
Some missiles China developed with Russian help are now considered as goodif not better than the originals, and are on the international market.
Russia, at least, isn’t overly concerned by competition from the expandingmilitary capabilities next door, according to Kashin. “They are certainly agrowing power,” he said of China. “But they are not omnipotent, and theyare Russia’s partner.”