Misleading reports related to IAF capability and Pakistani media bravado
Manticore
Recently a lot of reports are surfacing from India regarding its air force's acquisition problems. The Indian media is patriotic, intelligent and far sighted enough to provide its people with a false sense of insecurity so as to stress upon the government to provide necessary funds for IAF for modernization.
The Indian media conveniently leaves a lot of stats out of the report whereby giving a very gloomy and dismal outlook of the IAF's capabilities. Pakistan's media is stupid enough to take that report on face value and starts chest thumping thus playing its part in consolidating indian government's pledge for further hike in defence budget.
Just by glancing on the first page of the airforce subforum, we have two baseless threads.
''Pakistan Air Force has an edge over Indian Air Force: Indian Parliamentary panel''
''Indian Air Force faces risk as PAK, China modernise airforce: report''
''India's ailing air force at risk in tough neighborhood''
Below is a graph showing different generations of aircrafts in PAF inventory. The BVR capable fighters would be the only single engine 4/4.5 generation fighter which constitutes a little over 25% of the entire fleet!
As most of PAF's fighters are over 20 years old, their crash rates are gradually
taking their toll on paf fighter aircraft numbers. A lot of fighter pilots have lost
their lives because of the age of the aircraft fleet.
The production rate of the 4rth generation bvr capable JF-17 fighter has been alarmingly slow and is a matter of great concern for the people.These aircrafts are not the cutting edge of technology, however they allow paf to retire old 2nd generation fighters and thus save the lives of its young pilots both in war and peace.
Aircraft enthusiasts also recall the Mirage 2000 saga where a very potent aircraft was not inducted due to unknown reasons. The acquisition of 4.5 generation J-10 aircraft also seems to be put on the back burner. One can only hope that the economical situation in Pakistan becomes better so we can see induction of new platforms, more F-16s and long range surface to air missiles.
The Indian Su 30MKI with a huge 1500Km combat radius is capable of deep strikes in Pakistan. It is augmented with Mig29 and Mirage2000 both of which are also latest bvr capable fighters.These make over 300 bvr capable fighters not to mention the latest upgrades on their large fleet of 3rd generation fighters. None of the PAF aircrafts match the 200 su30 mki in their range and weapons payload capacity.
Even after the above quantitative and qualitative comparison, IAF is planning
to further induct another 126+ 4.5 generation rafale fighters not to mention
5th generation fighters like pak-fa and fgfa which will skyrocket the qualitative and quantitative edge that India already possesses. Pakistan can not afford a complete generation gap in capability and might need to induct 5th generation fighters at the same pace as India as you cant bring a knife in a gun fight.That would translate into the chinese J31 induction in paf. It's cost and capability remains to be seen.The Indian Navy plans to establish three naval aircraft squadrons that will fly MiG-29K/KUB.
In the past 7 years, PAF has inducted AWACS, Air refuelers and BVR platforms which is a testament to the higher ups in PAF who have infused these much needed capabilities rather quickly. PAF has maintained it's high level of training. Now Pakistan is slowly increasing the number of BVR capable aircrafts with better avionics and standoff weapons. There is a speculation that JF-17 block2 would be a much more capable platform than blk1.
This is just a request by air force enthusiasts to the Pakistani media to not to propagate Indian reports / propaganda without doing some in depth research on the matter. PAF does not have qualitative and quantitative edge over IAF.
perhaps the fb page
