PAF goes nuclear; Air chief says $9 bn being spent on upgrading
Wednesday March 18, 2009
ISLAMABAD: Chief of Air Staff Air Chief Marshal Tanvir Mehmood Ahmed on Tuesday said that the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) had been made nuclear for giving it the status of a real deterrent force.
He expressed these views while talking to the media after launching of a book, titled "A new dawn of PAF". Air Chief-designate Air Marshal Rao Qamar Suleman was also present on the occasion.
Tanvir said: "We have made the whole of PAF a nuclear force." He said the PAF had achieved such a deterrence level that no one could cast an evil eye on the motherland.
He added that the country achieved nuclear power back in 1998, aimed at defending the country. Over the years, he said, the PAF had been able to successfully achieve the target. "We fought two wars with India in 1965 and 1971 and prevented three imminent wars in 1998, 2002 and in the recent days in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks", he added.
India had threatened Pakistan of undertaking surgical strikes but seeing the level of preparedness and alertness of the PAF, the looming dangers were averted, which showed that the attainment of nuclear power helped in achieving peace in the region.
"It helped deter any misadventure in the region", he said. Answering a question, he said 95 per cent of the PAF personnel and officers were not out to earn livelihood, but they joined the PAF with the passion to defend the motherland through obtaining mastery over the machine and ammo.
He said at the moment, the PAF was a much more effective and potent force than what it was in 1998 and it would continue to excel further with the passage of time. Earlier, making remarks at the book launching, he termed all the sanctions imposed by the west from time to time a blessing in disguise. "It has brought us at the higher pedestal."
He said: "We would have not gone nuclear. We are now a nuclear state and it is all due to the sanctions." The co-production with China of a modern fighter aircraft like the JF-17 Thunder was also an outcome of the sanctions, he added.
"We achieved all that with minimal spending while living within our limited financial resources", the air chief said. About the book, he said the author, Alan Warne, the editor of the UK-based Air Forces Monthly, had written the book on his own, as the PAF had facilitated the writer to carry out his work with an unbiased approach independently. Earlier, the author, Alan Warne, said the PAF had been undergoing sanctions during the last 40 years and despite all that, what it had achieved was highly appreciable.
Meanwhile, in an interview with a TV channel, the air chief said that during his tenure, several agreements, worth $9 billion, were reached with different countries to modernise the PAF.
He said the Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) was being obtained from Sweden and China.
He said agreements had been reached with the US to provide electronic warfare system, smart bombs and long-range missile system. He said air-to-air refuellers were being modified and after some time, its pilot programme would be matured.
He said the PAF was the only institute in the public sector, which was totally online. Responding to a question, he said the PAF had almost 550 aircrafts, including helicopters and transport aircrafts.
The number of fighter planes was around 350, he added. At the moment, he said, there were 46 F-16 aircrafts in the PAF, including 14 F-16 aircrafts obtained from the US almost free of cost.
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PAF goes nuclear; Air chief says $9 bn being spent on upgrading
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