LegionnairE
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Not really - Pakistan pioneered in house drones in the 90s before dropping off during the mid-2010s. Proportionally Pakistan needs more UAVs that can take on more and more surveillance roles especially in the large lifeless tracts of Balochistan and the Afpak border.
From operating costs and basic human costs - a drone is much cheaper to operate and can potentially supplement and even replace everything from Recon to attack choppers for the PA.
@Signalian @JamD @PanzerKiel @Bilal Khan (Quwa)
JASDF is fully retiring all of its helo recon and attack fleet in 5-10 years to be replaced completely by UAV/UCAVs
Too soon or this is the reality forward seeing how attack helos and helos in general were mauled over Ukraine?
Unless there's a new technology to defeat MANPADS, the attack helicopter has no future.
The Akinci drone is going to be transformational for Pakistan's counter insurgency operations, which make up the bulk of military operations outside of conventional warfare. The Akinci Drone is going to be the largest drone in the Pakistani inventory, and its able to support a wide range of munitions up to and including bigger munitions like cruise missiles, its endurance is incredibly long, as it can be inflight for more than a day(25 hrs to be exact). and its operational range is 7,500 km, which should cover all of Pakistan as well as all of Afghanistan. Its equipped with satellite navigation so its there isn't a fear of a loss of signal like with smaller drones, and it has a strong electrooptical sensors. In short its the perfect mix of a long endurance UAV along with the payload capacity of something that would normally be carried on an f-16, plus the added benefit of the electrooptical sensors, and the fact that is unmanned so there isn't an issue with Pilot fatigue. When you add on to the fact that flying counter insurgency strike missions on something like the f-16 is far more expensive, it really seems like the perfect platform for counter insurgency. If fielded in numbers is can have a significant impact to capabilities in COIN operations.
You could have an Akinci sit 45,000 ft above Kabul, or even anywhere over Afghanistan given its operational range. Waiting and stalking a target for example Daesh or TTP, watching it closely with the Aselsan CATS and other sensors(some that can also be added additionally on pylons), sit there for hours and hours, and if its decided to hit the target, you can hit the target with something as small as a cirit missile or a MAM-L guided bomb, or something as big as a SOM cruise missile. Its the type of flexibility that very few platforms possess, and certainly not at the same price point.
It's extremely unlikely that Pakistan would be wasting million dollar cruise missiles on Afghan targets lol. TB2 is much better for counter insurgency ops.