Bilal Khan (Quwa)
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It's easier for the PN to secure surface ships than it is for the PAF to get off-the-shelf fighters.Yeah I have seen this too. The only issue I have with the Chinese ship is china's willingness to allow 3rd party weapons. If they can come up with a quad packed medium ranged missile then great, otherwise I hope they would allow PN to incorporate Turkeys future G-40 quad packed missile. Giving such a ship 32 HQ-9 and 64 medium range (40km) G-40 would make it pack a strong fleet level defense. Beyond that, I hope the the Type 054A will also consider moving to such a missile.
I beg to differ with the first part. The 057 artist rendition is what many people believe to be the Type 054B concept. If that is the case then they are intended to serve in PLAN. As for extending the range of HQ-16, the current range of the HQ-16B is 70km which is fairly good for a medium range missile. Maybe it could be extended to 100km but I don't see the utility of a long range HQ-16 when there is the HQ-9 already present. If anything they should look into quad packing a medium range missile with a 40-70km range as it would be a huge force multiplier.
First, each full multi-mission vessel is the equivalent in price to a single 4.5/4+-gen fighter, and the PN needs far fewer said ships in absolute terms than the PAF needs fighters.
Second, it seems the world is generally okay with supplying the PN with surface ships and aircraft; these arms are defensive in nature and are unlikely to alter the naval balance in South Asia (but submarines are a different story).
Third, the ship design process works differently than fighter aircraft. With a fighter design, you can't mess around with the existing subsystem configuration, the OEM tends to package things as-is and you'll seldom see customized fighters (the Block-60 and MKI are exceptions). But with ships, you're largely integrating off-the-shelf components and subsystem -- the key is having the design expertise to implement it.
With the MILGEM-J, the PN is looking to build that exact expertise. So, it wouldn't surprise me if any future 3,000+ ton ship (or even larger) is an internal design (with foreign help) leveraging COTS. The PN could design the frigate, but it will import the engines, electronics and weapons from various sources, and integrate it locally.