ISLAMABAD – Pakistan is focusing on the rollout of the next batch of theJF-17, the fighter jet it is developing with China, and which is catchingup with the F-16 in terms of capabilities, Financial Times has reported.
Pakistan has been making advanced changes in the arms and avionics of thephase III of the JF 17 Thunder Jets.
Pakistan’s response encapsulated what had been a slow but steady shift inmilitary procurement away from American-made weapons towards Chinese ones,or those made domestically with Chinese support.
“Since 2010, US weapons exports to Pakistan have plummeted from $1bn tojust $21m last year, according to data from the Stockholm InternationalPeace Research Institute,” report added. During the same period, those fromChina have also fallen, but much more slowly, from $747m to $514m, makingChina the biggest weapons exporter to its southern neighbour.
The report also quotes, the shift coincided with Islamabad’s growingsuspicion about the closeness between the US and India, but was acceleratedby the killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil in2011, which badly damaged relations with the US.
It further added that this year, relations deteriorated again whenPresident Donald Trump suspended $2bn of military aid to Pakistan, accusingit of showing “nothing but lies and deceit” in its promises to crack downon the Taliban and affiliated groups.
“The problem for Trump is that he needs support from Pakistan as herecommits to the war in Afghanistan, and his officials are finding thatIslamabad is less responsive than usual to the US message.”
Harrison Akins, a research fellow at the Howard H Baker Jr Center forPublic Policy at the University of Tennessee, told FT: The Trumpadministration s decision … can only push Pakistan further into the arms ofBeijing — especially with Pakistan s shift from US military supplies toChinese military supplies.
The report also identified longer-term consequences of this development,noting that sales of weapons systems, often backed by preferentialfinancial terms, were central to the way the US managed its network ofmilitary alliances and partnerships. But many of those countries were nowbuying some of that hardware from other governments, particularly China.
The Financial Times noted that Pakistan has been buying from Beijing fordecades, starting after the US placed an arms embargo on it in the wake ofthe 1965 war with India. After that, every time Islamabad has suffereddiplomatic problems with Washington supplies of Chinese weapons haverisen, it added.