Washington: The Donald Trump administration has announced its decision to resume military aid to Pakistan in a move set to add tensions between New Delhi and Islamabad. India, though, is not much concerned. Days after Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s visit to the US, the US government announced $125 million worth of technical and logistics support for Pakistani F-16 warplanes. However, it almost simultaneously announced the sale of $670 million worth of support equipment and services for Indian Air Force’s C-17 transport planes. India recently received the first four of the 22 Apache attack helicopters from the US under the £1.39 billion deal inked in 2015.
While the US decision regarding military aid to Pakistan is bad news for India, good news is the amount is a modest $125 million which India suggested was done in breach of its end-user agreement. However, India is viewing the developments as a “victory” and not something to be concerned about, officials said. This is because Washington has said that as part of the $125 million aid to Pakistan, US will post its government officials as well as representatives from Lockheed Martin, the maker of F-16 fighter jets, in two of Pakistan airbases constituting a Technical Security Team (TST).
In a statement, the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency said the TST will be “protecting US technology through the continued presence of US personnel that provide 24/7 end-use monitoring” of the refurbished F-16s. “India has nothing to be concerned at all with these developments,” said a senior government official. The official added that the delivery of the first batch of French Rafale fighter jets (in September), coupled with an upgraded fleet of Mirage-2000s, also French, India will have “much better competitive edge” over Pakistan.
No need for India to be jittery
The Pakistan Air Force (PAF) now boasts not just the F-16 but also China’s JF-17 Thunder, which is their mainstay. Pakistan is now even producing these Chinese aircraft and plans to export them to other countries. It has so far assembled more than a hundred units of JF-17 Block I as well as Block II in its aircraft manufacturing factory at Pakistan Aeronautical Complex in Kamra.
“It does not matter what the Pakistanis do with the JF-17 Thunder. They need the F-16 fighters as it is much superior to JF-17. Both will co-exist,” said former Air Chief Marshal S Krishnaswamy.
“This should not make India jittery that we start shopping for fighters in a rush, spend a lot of money and make a mess of it. The Indian Air Force is much bigger. They (Pakistan) can do nothing to us,” said Krishnaswamy.
He added that Pakistan will “go to any extent to make money” at a time when its economy is in a ramshackle condition. “The $125 million aid (given to Pakistan by the US) is nothing compared to the huge operating cost of the F-16 that Pakistan will have to bear.”
China-US strategic scheme in play
Officials also said that the US move to revive military sales to Pakistan should be seen from the prism of its plans to have a smooth exit from Afghanistan, which will be a key factor in President Donald Trump’s plan for a possible second term in office. According to national security expert Bharat Karnad, it does not make any difference whether the PAF uses the F-16 or the JF-17 Thunder. He believes there is going to be a larger China-US strategic scheme in play in South Asia now.
“Washington and Beijing are free to carry on with their big power struggle to gain ascendancy in the Indo-Pacific while exploiting, in separate and similar ways, the squabbling India and Pakistan for their own purposes,” said Karnad, a professor at the New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research.
Karnad also added that US and China will now play a “basic military balance in South Asia because such a military balance encourages Islamabad to continue engaging in cross-border terrorism, keeps India distracted with the Pakistan bogey and unprepared and incapable of diverting the limited resources to tackle the more substantive China threat”.
