But equally if one multirole fighter is shot down, it is equal to two single role fighters being shot down. While if one single role fighter is shot down, the other is still flying.
But the same roles can be taken over by other multirole fighters, while a dedicated strike fighter can't take over the A2A role of a fighter that was shot down, so you remain more capable with multirole fighters.
For example, a strike during Kargil included several strike fighters and dedicated fighters for escorts, lets say 3+3. Today you often need only 3 multi role fighters to do the same, so even if 3 fighters were lost, the remaining once can still do the job.
Supply of which could be compromised at any time depending on political climate. On the other hand we have something we build ourselves. No one can control that. And much cheaper as well.
That would be worth considering if we would be in place of Pakistan, with the US as the prime weapon supplier like it was in the past. They were too dependent on the US and their policies and suffered from it as well, while we had reliable partners like Russia, Israel or France for decades (one of the benefits of an excellent foreign policy) and our relations to them just got better through the years.
Today we are partnering many defence projects and are not dependent anymore, which gives us the chance to get the highest techs from them, with full operational freedom and even industrial benefits.
Having our own is obviously the best choice one can have, but unless our industry is able to develop similar high techs, at similar quality and most importantly in the same time, not years later, JVs and co-developments with reliable partners are the best choice we have!
