But why is US approving sale of pre-owned F-16s but not allowing us to buy straight from them? Is it a price issue on our behalf?
It is a diplomatic currency issue - India will object(smartly) on even a screw being given to Pakistan because they want every possible advantage in their next fight against Pakistan which is both ongoing (economic, political,diplomatic) and coming at reelections.
The US is doing its best to both make money off India by investing and selling the best military hardware but also looking to create pressure on the Chinese military machine by doing so.
Pakistan isn’t worth 1:20th of India economically or politically - it is essentially a bad investment even for Pakistanis so forget anyone from outside.
The idea for the US isn’t to get India into some military alliance because they know the Indians are too cautious and timid to get into a conflicts with anyone larger than 1/5th their size thanks to historical context.
However, having the Indians on the US side is important from a economic and geopolitical pressure standpoint and so any new sales to Pakistan are done. Finally, Pakistan no longer has value no matter what instability and “nuclear danger” is pitched by its primary ruling elite. The “cry wolf” isn’t working as well so what is being done is the bare minimum.
Pakistan is welcome to go find any used F-16s that might be worthy of keeping alive(provided that country too is willing to sacrifice its relationship with India for it) and upgrade them - but the US cannot find wiggle room for it because the Indians are hyper sensitive about even the slightest advantage Pakistanis might get.
Your COAS wasn’t venting aimlessly that any deal for western hardware is scuttled so what is Pakistan to do except run to China…
At the end of the day, the current F-16 fleet will soldier on to become the Mirages of their time and the US is happy to let that happen.
Maybe Pakistan will be allowed in 5-10 years to go and find F-16 like it does with Mirages and pretty much have a F-16 rebuild factory and so on depending upon its own budgets.
But for now, all there is being given are structural upgrades, spares restocking? ECM threat library updates and software tweaks to keep that bare minimum calculation alive of Pakistan being able to just hold off enough for the world to intervene in case of a major escalation
This has been addressed. PAF was never restricted on buying new F-16. In fact Obama admin had approved the sale of an additional 8 jets BUT congress restricted the use of coalition support funds for the purchase of F-16s meaning that PAF can buy them but needs to spend its own money. The fact that they were $50M per aircraft made it cost prohibitive for the number of jets being aquired.
That said older models being given MLU and SLEP or even the V/SABR upgrade would be more potent than any blk 52 PAF would be able to get (i doubt they would be able to get Blk 70/72).
Water under the bridge since then - however, money has never been object if Pakistan even had enough to make any sales worthwhile versus Indian interests