Efficiency-sizing the Armed Forces-V
(This is the FIFTH and CONCLUDING article on the DEFENCE BUDGET).
The advent of aircraft completely changed the dimension of warfare in the 20th century. At the beginning of World War I, aircraft were seen as a useful addition to the armoury, airpower came into real prominence as a force-multiplier during the Spanish Civil War (1936) pre-World War II. By the end of the World War the Air Arm had become a tactical and strategic weapon of some consequence to the final result of any war. Two fairly recent wars have showed what domination air power has over the course of battle. During the Six-Day War in 1967, the Israelis routed the Egyptians after a concentrated surprise air attack on the very first day made their airfields first unserviceable and, thereafter, destroyed most of Egyptian combat aircraft on the ground. As a direct result the Egyptian land forces across the Suez Canal in the Sinai were left at the mercy of marauding Israeli aircraft, entire tank and transport columns lay in flames end to end. Without the same aerial advantage as in 1967, the Arab-Israeli fight was far more equal in 1973. During the Gulf War, General Norman Schwarzkopf first mounted a sustained air assault to take out Iraq’s air defences and having driven the Iraqi Air Force from the skies and obliterated the Iraqi radar and communications, he set about softening Iraq’s ground troops. When the US and “allied” troops ultimately swept in to liberate Kuwait almost two months later, it was more of a “flag march”, they met virtually no ground resistance. In our case many factors contributed in 1971 to reverse the success of the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) in 1965 (the virtual role model for the Israelis in 1967) with almost serious repercussions for our land forces in the Rajasthan Sector and adverse consequences for Karachi, if not so much in material losses, certainly in civilian morale.
Despite the overwhelming superiority in numbers enjoyed by the Indian Air Force, the PAF has always maintained a qualitative edge because of our superior manpower, in addition the force-multiplier induction of the Fighting Falcon, the US origin F-16 in the 80s enhanced this superiority. To overturn this advantage into their favour, the Indians have been on a shopping blitz in both the East and the West. To add to their aging fleet of Russian-origin MIG-21s, the Indians added MIG-23s, MIG-25s, MIG-27s and MIG-29s. They also went in for a large number of deep-strike British Jaguar aircraft and 40 French Mirage-2000s. However, the Indians faced a setback in the upgradation of their fleet of MIG-21 and MIG-23s due to a number of factors, one of them was their failure to pay the Russians for the work done. Their MIG-21 fleet has also had a very high accident rate, same is the case with those MIG-23s and MIG-27s which were overhauled in India, almost half of the fleet has been grounded. The Indians bought eight of the high speed (Mach-3) MIG-25R reconnaissance aircraft (the type that caused such a furore in Pakistan a few weeks ago), presently 6 are left. Their main strike aircraft presently are the 100 Jaguars, 40 Mirage-2000s and the fairly new 90 MIG-29s. To this complement the SU-30 MK 30s has been added recently, while presently only eight of them have been pressed into service, this is indeed a real force-multiplier for Indian airpower. Add Prithvi missiles and a country like ours without much strategic depth has a real problem.
To counter the Indian air threat we have the balance of the 40 F-16s acquired in the mid-80s and an aging fleet of upgraded Mirage-3s and 5s. Pre-dating these are our F-6s (upgraded Chinese MIG-21s) which have performed much better than their Russian counterparts, having a negligible accident rate. However, the numbers are vastly against us, we were able to counter this in the 80s with the F-16 air superiority weapon platform but the PAF will be hard put to maintain their own with the present array against us. The Mirage-2000s and the SU-30 MKs makes it imperative for PAF to induct a new air superiority factor, if not in the material qualitative edge, at least in such numbers that the superior quality of our pilots and ground crew can match the vast array of combat aircraft thrown at them. Despite hiccups, the fighting machine put together and honed by Air Marshal Asghar Khan as Commander-in-Chief Pakistan Air Force (PAF) and set to excellent use soon after his retirement by his successor Air Marshal Nur Khan during the 1965 Indo-Pak War, is still an excellent fighting machine but is in severe danger of being swamped into obsolescence by numbers and technology. If that should happen, Pakistan’s very existence as a nation will be threatened.
The primary aim of the PAF must be to gain air superiority over the battlefield, the secondary aims must include destruction of the enemy’s vital military installations and giving Close Air Support (CAS) to our land and the sea forces. Economic targets are important but are a distant third unless vital to the enemy’s immediate war effort. As far as civilian targets are concentrated, one must remember Churchill having a sigh of relief when Goering inexplicably turned the German Luftwaffe against London to break the civilian movable and in the process gave a welcome respite to military targets, particularly British airfields.
Proliferation of enemy numbers and quality enhancement of their fighter aircraft dictates that unless we induct in a minimum of 100 aircraft of the Mirage-2000s/SU-30 MK type and soon, we will face a major crisis in time of war, the magnitude of which can be assessed from the aerial damage pictures taken in the 1967 and 1991 air campaigns in the Sinai and the Gulf respectively. Even with 100 more aircraft, we will be hard to put to stabilize our air posture over the battlefield despite our obvious quality edge in manpower. A few days must elapse during which our land forces will be at the mercy of Indian CAS missions, we will find it difficult to contain their ground offensive without adequate air support. In an earlier article, we have contented that the Army Aviation, which already operates Super Mashaks must have them properly armed and fitted in a CAS role. While the attrition rate in this “poor man’s airforce” will certainly be high, it will not be of the Kamikaze-level as some are suggesting. The artillery forward observation officer (FOO) always have a high casualty rate but their impact on the course of battle is far in excess of the quantum of force applied. In this category one must exclude Javed Ashraf Qazi, Pakistan’s Rommel incarnate (and the man who would be COAS) as the only artillery-man to successfully dodge all of Pakistan’s wars and skirmishes. This “great soldier” never heard a shot being fired in anger but the civilians in the PM’s Secretariat held him with awe, his booming voice extolling his own “wartime exploits”. CAS by Super-Mashaks under the control of the immediate battlefield commander will be an effective local force-multiplier which will free the PAF to carry out its primary aim of gaining air superiority without having to divert its resources for missions extraneous to the prime one. The PAF can return to the CAS role with a vengeance once it wins the battle for air survival.
This country must come up with about US$ 3-4 billion to purchase advanced combat aircraft “even if we have to eat grass”. What a difference between this quote of Ms Benazir’s father, late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, in the context of acquiring nuclear technology at all costs to counter Indian nuclear potential and his greedy and grubby son-in-law, Asif Zardari, who reduced the entire country to eating grass simply to survive as an economic entity. This money is vital to purchase 100 Mirage-2000 type aircraft at US$ 35-40 million per copy. If we can manage to acquire the Chinese version of the SU-27s, the numbers will increase and/or the quantum of money required will be much less. Greed played an overwhelming part in firstly diverting critical resources from the PAF to the Navy for the French submarines and then in the remarkable price increase of the Mirage-2000 from US$ 36 million per copy to US$ 90 million per copy almost overnight. The net result is that the endless avarice of one man and his cronies riding on his gravy train has endangered our national security, PAF’s weakness is a grave threat to our existence. Some fine hand manipulated the purchase of submarines to get commissions and then had the price of the Mirage-2000 hiked to get a further windfall. This matter should be properly investigated and all those in the chain of decision-making, including those applying overwhelming influence from outside the chain, should be punished for gross and wilful negligence of duty.
The bottom line is that we desperately need to augment our present airpower. Either we get the F-16s still in the Mojave Desert or get our money back. That money, presently in limbo, could go a long way on the down payment for the force-multiplier air weapon that is of critical necessity for this country.
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