Hi Bro,
I have read through the comments. I appreciate your knowledge about Tanks & PA. Have you served in the PA or worked with HIT ?
I also noticed various comments about Tank being an obsolete weapon and purchase of VT-4 is not liked by many for the same reasons.
I myself couldn't understand the urgency in buying Tanks but my reasons are different then most. I don't write-off tanks completely especially in Indo-Pak scenario. I understand we do need Tanks given our situation with India. But my concern is about Pakistan armed forces setting its priorities right. I would not have bothered, if we had surplus money and we would have replaced all of our F-7s, Mirages plus already would have invested heavily in drones and We would have bought modern gunship helis etc. But prioritizing the tanks over all those critical weaponaries does not make sense to me. What I think is that given our dire economic conditions, we should have focused only on critical weapon systems which we cannot build at home like Air / Naval platforms and relied locally on Tanks & APCs etc. So, in other words ideally, we should have relied on Al-khalid and improved it locally as much as possible. We already have huge number of tanks in our inventory. We also know, a war in 21st century will not always end up in tank vs tank battles. The list of vulnerabilities for tanks is grown exponentially lately. Every kind of drones have spurred out. Even saw video of Quad-ropters carrying a single anti-armour rocket in exhibition in china. Bigger UAVs carrying upto 16 anti-tank missiles, Gunship helis likes of Apaches are nightmare for armoured divisions, Air-power / air-force is another massive threat, mines and even shoulder fired ammunitions.. So I could be wrong, but my thoughts are that we should have relied on AL-khalids and invested this huge amount of $$ on somewhere else maybe gunships or maybe for air-force for more J-10Cs or JFB3s. You know our economy. Economy is seriously is at dangerous level. Again, I would not have critisized VT-4 inductions had our economy be great. But it bothers me seeing the priorities of PA.
What are your thoughts on it. Why PA believed that prioritizing Tanks was necessary ?
Also, I may have other questions, how can I communicate without going-off the topic. Is there a way to communicate one to one? if you like and if its possible.
Thanks.
Tanks are not obsolete, me and other members have explained why several different times, but for the perfect sum-up, I recommend Nicholas Moran’s (known as “TheChieftain” on YouTube) video on the same topic. This applies even more so to the Pak-Ind theatre and doctrines. That video should also answer your questions related to all these technologies that will apparently render tanks more vulnerable. Every time a new advancement in anti-tank warfare has been made since the 1910s, people have said that tanks will become obsolete, and yet here we are, in a world where everyone is still spending billions on them. You know the tank was originally made for trench warfare? Do we have trenches now? But we still have tanks. And don’t you think the biggest advocate for the retirement of the tank would have been an ATGM? Well 40 years since those were made, and we still have tanks.
a VT-4 is more important to the Pakistani army than a JF-17 and a J-10, because guess what, the army doesn’t fly jets, the Air Force does. They have separate budgets, separate priorities and separate requirements. We cannot view them as a single component.
Yes, In times of need the navy and Air Force have cut down their budgets to allow the army more money to operate, as in the war on terror, but the army is always going to be less keen on reciprocating that due to more than just tactical reasons.
The vast majority of the tanks in the PA are decades older than the oldest F7 in the PAF. I know that analogy doesn’t really work given the entirely different machines, but it should give you a sense of why there’s an urgency to replace the older tanks as well. And I simply don’t see how a JF-17 or a J-10 or a gunship or a drone is more important or urgent as compared to a tank, they all serve completely and entirely different roles. What good is a modern gunship if the tanks it’s covering are obsolete? What good is a drone when the enemy can simply push through your defensive lines or obliterate your offensive lines (again, tanks)? What good is a fighter jet if there are no tanks and troops on the ground to take and hold land or defend an airbase to operate out of?
The PA invested in modern gunships far before it invested in the VT-4, twice, the deals didn’t work out do to several other reasons, buying or not buying VT-4s wouldn’t have affected them. There isn’t just a set amount of money that the forces get to buy new weapons, they hardly get any, the weapons are bought on long term loans and installments, the VT-4 deal doesn’t effect the J-10C deal, and neither of them effect the T-129 deal. It’s much much more complicated than simple 2+2.
And what about drones? The Pakistani forces have one of the most versatile and capable drone fleets on the planet. If there’s anything they have literally put all their money on, it’s drones. WL-1, WL-2, CH4B, Akinci, TB-2, Anka, Shahpar 2, Luna, Burraq, Uqab NG is there any type of drone on planet earth PA/PAF/PN hasn’t bought?
And then let’s discuss the point everyone seems to be bringing up, why a new tank? Why not more work on the Al-Khalid? So let me just put it this way.
The Haider will be more Pakistani-made eventually than the Al-Khalid ever was and could ever be. The Haider IS the next Al-Khalid. Just think about it, it’s the same basic platform but with a bunch of improvements, let’s say we didn’t buy the VT-4 and HIT made an AK-2, guess what engine it would have? The same one as VT-4. Guess what ERA and armor HIT would put on it? The same one as VT-4. Basically, if HIT made an AK-2, it would literally be a VT-4, so why bother when the work is already done? It would cost
significantly more to develop the AK into what would essentially just be another VT-4 than to start making the VT-4 locally, which is exactly what we are doing.
Another point people seem to be confused over is how Pakistani the AK is and how not-Pakistani the VT-4 is, well, let me put it this way, the Al-Khalid is a lot less Pakistani than people keep thinking it is and the VT-4 (Haider) a lot more so (in typical Pakistani fashion, all we did was reverse engineer, and assemble with little development and innovation)
The PA isn’t just ordering VT-4s from China, they bought TOT for it, the same production lines that made the AK will now make the Haider, and maybe we will see a Haider I and Haider II someday, For all intents and purposes, the Haider
IS the next Al-Khalid. There are Some important things I simply cannot say here that would make PAs VT-4 acquisition make a lot more sense.
You can ask all the questions you want, but responses are not guaranteed, I don’t always have the time. As for direct messages, you can post on my profile, open a new thread, ask a moderator, there’s plenty of ways.
Including nuclear submarines, J-20, ICBM's etc...
