EDITORIAL: Let’s have a discussion on the F-16 purchase
Pakistan is close to signing a $5 billion deal for an advanced F-16 fighter-jet package with the US. The deal is being criticised both in Pakistan and the United States, sometimes for the opposite reasons. US lawmakers want stepped-up security demands before the fighter-jet can be sold to Pakistan. Much of this pressure is being created at the behest of the India Caucus because New Delhi does not want Pakistan to get these planes.
Within Pakistan, the criticism has revolved around two strands. One relates to the argument that the country would be better off spending more on alleviating poverty and extending education and less on buying conventional military hardware. This is a powerful argument for many reasons. One, it is not rooted in the crude equation of all butter and no guns. In fact, it is based on an assessment of national-strategic costs and benefits of incremental shifts toward relatively more or less guns and butter in a resource-scarce environment, the debate being undertaken in the context of a realistic regional matrix. The underlying argument here would be that while development and defence are important and must not be handled _ or looked at — one at the cost of the other, there is a compelling need to frame the development-defence paradigm right in strategic terms, in the same sense as an economist would do a social cost-benefit analysis of a project like a big dam or a nuclear reactor. But the tragedy is that such a debate is not encouraged by the liberal doves who are anti-military to the extent of being anti-defence. It is also blithely rejected by the reactionary or nationalistic hawks who are pro-defence to the extent of being pro-military in the political sense.
But we can realistically ignore both such hawks and doves by simply asserting a common-sense truth — the PAF has been the worst hit of the three services since the mid 1980s after the US walked out of Pakistan and sanctioned it for its nuclear programme. While the army was able to substitute Chinese armour for American, and the navy obtained access to French technology, the air force was denied advanced American and French aircraft. Thus a strong case can be made for updating and beefing up the PAF without getting entangled in the guns and butter debate.
The second argument against the acquisition of these aircraft is strictly within the domain of the military planners. The issue for critics here is not the acquisition of the F-16 platform but whether this is the best the PAF can get, especially considering that these aircraft would, for all practical purposes, be the mainstay of the PAF for many years to come. Let’s consider the objections.
It is now clear from reports emerging from the US that the sale of F-16s, even though Block C&D models, will be governed by stringent safeguards. These pertain to acquisition of spare parts and munitions from third parties, especially from China. The planes will also be denuded of cutting-edge offensive capability, including the capability to deliver nuclear weapons. Plus, they will be subject to US government approval on the matter of if and when they can be flown overseas. In a July 20 testimony to the US House of Representatives International Relations Committee on the initial security plan for the aircraft, a US government official described the conditionalities for the sale as “extraordinary” and “unprecedented”. He highlighted segregation of the aircraft from third country-origin aircraft and munitions, semi-annual F-16 inventories and more frequent looks at associated systems by US personnel. Despite this, the Committee members demanded even more US monitoring and oversight. While this is going on, this newspaper, in an op-ed, revealed that these F-16s would not have electronic warfare (EW) programming capabilities for their radar warning receiver (RWR). This means that these aircraft will have a pre-installed threat library and its RWR will only be able to identify non-NATO aircraft. In simple words, any NATO aircraft attacking these F-16s using beyond visual range (BVR) capability could take them out like sitting ducks _ simply, because these F-16s would not know when they would be locked in the sights of the attacking adversary and hence would be unable to take evasive measures.
These conditionalities are a serious issue. While we are sure that the PAF has conducted its assessment carefully, the issue should be debated in the concerned committee of parliament. This is the case even in the US. That this should not be done because it involves operational details is not a good argument, even as it is the most common one made by the military to stifle civilian debate on any issue. While Pakistan can and probably will rely on missiles for delivering nukes and has the capability to add to the capability of the platform, the issue of threat library (essentially a frequency matter) is serious. If it is indeed true that these F-16s will not have EW programming capabilities for their RWR, then these planes will be seriously handicapped, at least against NATO aircraft. On the other hand, it is inconceivable that the PAF is so blindly obsessed with the F-16 that it should have shrugged away such a vital issue. In combat, this would mean not only losing the aircraft, a very expensive machine, but also the pilot. In the event, if the PAF is still keen on the airplanes, it would seem that the report about any pre-installed threat library is dubious. If it is incorrect, then the PAF has nothing to worry about and it would be business as usual. If otherwise, then we must ask whether the PAF has the capability to re-programme the EW system of these jets. And if it has the capability, will it re-program the aircraft contrary to the deal it is going to sign with the US?
Most of these issues are highly technical and the PAF’s response will probably be that they cannot be understood by laypersons. But that is the challenge: to make informed generalists understand what is what. And there is nothing in this world, including details of the theory of relativity, that cannot be explained in non-technical terms to non-technical people. Five billion dollars is a huge sum. For a host of good reasons, we have the right to know and the need to be convinced that these aircraft will indeed give PAF the edge it needs against an adversary that is superior to it, at least quantitatively. *
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