I fail to see how this constitutes an effective rebuttal. The surge in 2010 does not preclude the occurrence of IED and similar attacks pre-2010. It just means they were stepped up. Even if we took your claim at face value, the fact that it took three years for a country with far greater resources to get MRAPs into the field effectively makes your argument largely a moot point because it would mean that there is nothing that the Army Senior Command could do in the more immediate term vis-a-vis MRAPS.
Yes, and that insurgency for 20 years has contributed heavily to bleeding Pakistan's economy and budget near dry. On the subject of budgets itself, yes, Pakistan may have a $10bn budget but all budgets are allocated spend. Off the top of my head, I would estimate around half of that would be personnel costs, with the rest split up for various forms of maintenance. A smaller portion would probably be set aside for planned acquisitions (decided on many years in advance). There would be very little spare cash for emergency purchases, especially in the numbers that would be required for MRAPs in the way many members envision them to be.
Delaying the acquisition of Thunders would technically be in the domain of the Pakistan Air Force and not the Army. Considering institutional rivalry is par for the course everywhere, I doubt the PAF would make such a sacrifice for the Army, considering the institutional envy other branches already have for it. One practical issue aside is that delaying acquisitions of fighter jets, particularly ones made domestically, carries certain commercial consequences as you have to essentially cancel industrial preparations you had already made. You can't just hit a button on these things.
In the case that such a deal could be made, one really needs to think about the trade-offs: you are putting national security at a serious strategic backfoot against India (the main strategic enemy in Pakistan's doctrine) for a tactical benefit in the field against the secondary strategic enemy.
Those sort of fault lines are common in an insurgency as you end up having collateral damage (and often the insurgent will pull you into creating it to build resentment in the populace). The insurgent can do a Mad Jack Churchill every night but when a counter-insurgent force acts in populated areas, it has to do so with care and precision. Ergo, it has to find the needle in the haystack whereas the insurgent can blow up the haystack and the barn with it. Once you lose the populace, you lose the war.
