That is not fair, you are deliberately misleading. The mid-life upgrade brings all of Pakistan's older f-16s up to the standard of the block 52s, for all intents and purposes. So 80 odd f-16s that have relatively advanced avionics are nothing to laugh at. Similarly, countless members have dispelled the myth of the limitations on the f-16s; they can be used against India and will be, in a war. The US will always curtail any potential use of their hardware against themselves, so obviously these f-16s are next to useless against them. India, on the other hand, is not the 51st US state, so the Americans have no reason to prevent the use of these f-16s against it. If the point is of sanctions, then that has been common knowledge since the 65 war. We may get sanctioned at the outbreak of a war with India, but those sanctions will have minimal impact on the capabilities of the f-16s in the said war.
The reality remains, the IAF is a formidable force, but with a limited ability to operate over Pakistani skies. The PAF presence is too concentrated to allow the IAF to consistently and successfully deliver the strike packages that can crush the Pakistani military machine from within. The PAF's weakness remains its offensive capability, and that is where the IAF will remain supreme. While Pakistani airspace will be well defended and hard to penetrate successfully, the Indian airspace defense will be even more formidable.
Either way the presence of the f-16s, which are not small in number, nor toothless, is a major issue for the IAF. If the PAF keeps a large percentage of these aircraft from getting shot down, then the IAF has virtually no chance of gaining any consistent access to Pakistani airspace and will have to devote a larger portion of their aircraft to a defensive footing, in order to prevent any offensive moves led by those very f-16s. Again, that is not to say that the f-16s will run wild over India, but keeping a portion of the IAF forces on defense interception missions is a success in itself. This is because a Pak-Indo war will always be decidedly short and the Pakistani footing will be defensive, if not from the beginning, then soon after one of our ill thought out offensives go wrong. In that scenario, the PAF will be a serious adversary that the IAF will not take lightly. Consequently, the presence of f-16s to divert MKIs and the like to defensive roles and concurrently provide a point defense presence within Pakistan against those aircraft, is definitely not rubbish. The MKIs will operate in a similar role for the IAF, but for that reason, I am not discounting their effectiveness; I believe the same courtesy should be extended to PAF f-16s.
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