Bilal Khan (Quwa)
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If the ideal was to develop an original jet, then in all likelihood, that's long over. The PAF will likely roll into the FC-31. The actual groundwork for an effective original design simply isn't there. Sure the innate ability might be there, but the SOE set up, institutional arrangements, policies, etc are all out of sync or underwhelming.This is not only abysmal for the country's development but also worrying for Project Azm. With the sheer scale and complexity, the number of subsystems will be well beyond PAC's ability to build, particularly if they are over ambitious, this could potentially cause Azm to fail.
Simply, a good sign of the bare minimum to pull such a feat off is in Turkey. Yet the gap between Turkey and Pakistan in terms of policy, genuine R&D investment, horizontal integration, etc is huge. Simple terms, one is on track to making its own turboshaft engine, the other is scurrying to China because Uncle Sam set up a fence.
That said, once you set the right policies and implementation frameworks, it need not take that much time to develop key inputs. For Pak, 15 years is a good bet, and while it seems like a lot, in the context of countries, it's not much time.
Ideally, we should course correct today, but roll into the FC-31 anyways. The FC-31 will manage the urgent manned next gen fighter need, but we can use the next 15 years from now to give R&D lots of breathing room to grow. In that 15 years, we can develop the inputs for advanced drones, new types of A2A and A2G weapons, etc.
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