FuturePAF
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Pakistan will treat F-16 in next 20 years as it treated Mirage in last 20 years. We will buy spare and used ones whereever we can at low cost, upgrade them and replace old F-7s and Mirages. Ultimately Azm will be final replacement for F-16. JF-17 cannot truly replace F-16.
Only issue is in past no country needed French permission to sell on it's second hand Mirages to Pakistan. Now all F-16 users need US permission to sell their F-16s to Pakistan. We just need US to play ball here. Not a big ask if we carry on pouring money into US companies for the upgrade kits and more weapons
Exactly, if Pakistan can get a favorable window to purchase as many used F-16s the better. The JF-17 was never designed to be a replacement for the F-16 but a replacement for the short legged F-7s. If the PAF can procure a further 100 new/used F-16s and keep building JF-17s until it reaches 250, it can safely retire all its Mirages and F-7s. It’s the most cost effective stop gap until Project AZM is ready, even if the F-16 are not fully upgraded, they are still better then what we can expect if we upgraded our mirages.