Bharat Rakshak

I expect 90% of PAF and our bison/mig29s will fall apart inside of a week in
sustained combat ops. but thats ok, because with PAF grounded we can make
the falling apart process more permanent by bombing their bases with jags, mig27, mirages and su30s.

Singha,

What do mean when you say fall apart ? Are you commenting on maintainance related issues ? Secondly, what kind of a timeframe are you talking about ?

Recall reading somewhere that the Pakis have ordered few Il-78 refuellers from Uzbekistan??
Is it true or just a unmentionable site rumour??

Why does a relatively small country like pak need refuellers?? Esp when it is the first to proclaim that it is a "defensive" air force( meaning they wont be going far from their bases??).......

Navy materiel ``generally cannot be misused for internal repression or human rights infringements and the regional conflict with India doesn't have a naval component,'' the government said

Btw,how will the Pakis finance this when their economy is in shambles even with Unkil's aid being pumped in??

At least nine brigades of various Strike Corps, including two from the crucial I Corps's (also known as Army Reserve North) Kharian-based 17 Infantry Division, have been moved towards violent Afghan borders, sources said.

...Sources said three Brigades of Peshawar-based XI Corps and two of Quetta-based XII Corps were also moved to take on violence in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) on bordering Afghanistan.

...Meanwhile, sources said one Brigade each from the XXX Corps (Gujaranwala) and Bahawalpur-headquartered XXXI Corps has also been relocated to meet the ''internal crises'' in Pakistan.

A technical malfunction in a Bell helicopter resulted in the killing of General Officer Commanding Kohat Major General Javed Sultan, two Brigadiars, two pilots and a Junior Commissioned Officer in South Waziristan Agency.

Been gone for a bit, but this *really* ought to have been put up by someone else;

Pakistan Air Force fighter plane ‘Mairaj’ crashed Friday in Shaheenabad area near Sargodha, killing its pilot Wing Commander, Azhar Ismail

If India is clever this is the ideal time for cross border Spec op missions to wipe out the training camps. Its a golden opportunity to wipe out a few thousand terrorists at one go. But you need leadership with balls like PVN or IG.

Saturday, February 16, 2008
LONDON: A former senior officer of Pakistan Air Force has called on the West to provide his country with modern weapons for dealing with counter insurgency and to avoid collateral damage.

Air Marshal (retd) Masood Akhtar was speaking at a seminar titled "The Role of Air Power in Counter-Insurgency. Pakistan's Experience in the Tribal Region" at the International Institute of Strategic Studies here on Thursday. He said the Pakistani forces are battling a Taliban insurgency in the tribal areas in the NWFP in which the PAF is playing an important role. However, he added that helicopters rather than fixed-wing warplanes had been found more useful in these hilly areas.

Air Marshal Masood, who has been a fighter pilot for 35 years and with over 2,500 hours of flying experience on a variety of PAF fighter and training aircraft, said the Air Force had been using this air power with caution and restrain in order to prevent collateral damage. He was of the view that precision guided ammunitions were better suited for PAF's requirement rather than 1,000-pound or 500-pound bombs which caused greater collateral damage. "If we are provided with smaller and smarter bombs, we could easily avoid unintended damage to civilian life or property," he said. For the air power to be successful in counter-insurgency, he said a lot depended on good ground intelligence because any wrong information could lead to unwarranted damages.

Air Marshal Masood, who also served as a Commandant, Air War College, during the course of his service with the PAF, noted that damages to civilian life and property had resulted into a backlash which had been evident by the recent attacks on the PAF personnel by suicide bombers. He also explained the circumstances, which led to the rise of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban and said such extremists groups emerged as a result of the global politics in which Pakistan, willy-nilly, had been caught up with and was paying a heavy price.

Masood said during the Soviet Unionís 10 years of occupation of Afghanistan, the PAF had brought down a dozen Soviet and Afghan Air Force planes found in violation of the Pakistan territory. The retired air force officer said Pakistan was pushed into thinking itself as a citadel of Islam as a consequence of the Cold War in which the West's primary motive was to defeat Communism of the Soviet Union and stop its spread.

He said both Osama Bin Laden and Mulla Omar had used globalisation to the hilt and achieved their objectives. He stressed the need for launching political, economic and social campaigns in the tribal areas to win the hearts and minds of the people and wean them from extremist ideology.

Masood called for overhauling the education system in Pakistan with greater focus on providing an effective primary education to replace religious seminaries. "Only a well-established and efficient unified education system could provide a basis and sense of nationhood," he asserted.

He pointed out the difficulties of fighting an enemy without a face and thought that Pakistan will have to fight such non-state factors for a long time.

Responding to questions, he said there is reluctance on the part of the West to give Pakistan sophisticated weapons while the country is averse to allowing Nato troops to operate inside its borders.

I'll believe it when I see it! The PA really, seriously engaging the Tal Qaida (the Taliban-Al Qaida combine), that is.

With the reduced oversight will the HUJI and LET vermin not use the opportunity to bolster and energise its ranks? I agree that PA was never interested in securing Indian interests but the fact that they were the big bad dog in the neighborhood would have kept some of the other jehadis in check. This shift in focus of PA strength, could embolden the Jehadis to use the opportunity to gain the upper hand in J&K affairs and torment us?

If India is clever this is the ideal time for cross border Spec op missions to wipe out the training camps. Its a golden opportunity to wipe out a few thousand terrorists at one go. But you need leadership with balls like PVN or IG

If India is clever this is the ideal time for cross border Spec op missions to wipe out the training camps. Its a golden opportunity to wipe out a few thousand terrorists at one go. But you need leadership with balls like PVN or IG.

Who said that the PA was serious about eliminating Al Qaeda or Taliban?

the FC from looks of it consists of middle aged or green types, left to their own to scrounge for food, without proper cold weather gear and 10 rounds of ammo each. no wonder they broke and vanished into the bush when confronted by heavily armed talibs with jeeps, RPGs and 4x4s.

to all intents all the paki paramils are combat ineffective against tribal forces only the PA can seek out contests with tribal formations and hope to survive.

WASHINGTON — The United States military is developing a plan to send about 100 American trainers to work with a Pakistani paramilitary force that is the vanguard in the fight against Al Qaeda and other extremist groups in Pakistan’s restive tribal areas, American military officials said.

Pakistan has ruled out allowing American combat troops to fight Qaeda and Taliban militants in the tribal areas. But Pakistani leaders have privately indicated that they would welcome additional American trainers to help teach new skills to Pakistani soldiers whose army was tailored not for counterinsurgency but to fight a conventional land war against India.

Sunday, March 2, 2008

Change in US policy

….. According to the existing arrangements, the US pays Pakistan $ 650 per soldier per month whereas it spends $ 80,000 per soldier per month in Afghanistan and $ 100,000 per soldier per month in Iraq. Not only the allocation for Pakistani soldiers, for keeping up it efforts in the war against terrorism, is far lower than what is allocated for other contributors, especially the American soldiers, but also one finds extremely slow reimbursement of bills as far as Pakistan is concerned. …….

Pak pips India in arms-deal race
2 Oct 2007, 0000 hrs IST , Chidanand Rajghatta & Rajat Pandit , TNN

SMS NEWS to 58888 for latest updates

WASHINGTON/NEW DELHI: Pakistan, a country about a sixth of India in size, population, economy and several other metrics, has for the first time outstripped India in purchasing military hardware and software, notching up arms deals worth $5.1 billion in 2006, as compared to $3.5 billion by India, to be ranked the world’s largest arms shopper, according to a Congressional study released Monday. ……….

TOI