FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1969
1969 - 0111.PDF
PAKISTAN'S AIR POWER By JOHN FRICKER IN THE PAST TEN YEARS OF President Ayub Khan's regime, Pakistan has made great progress politically and economically in the evolution of its present key position between East and West. Militarily, it is still nominally com mitted to the Cento and SEATO pacts for collective action against possible Communist aggression. In recent years, how ever, its geopolitical situation has bred a more independent and realistic foreign policy tending towards non-alignment in general, and peripheral defence against India in particular. There was no ambiguity, so far as Pakistan was concerned, as to the location of its main military threat, even before the 1965 war with India. This had 'the unexpected advantage, however, of freeing th«j Pakistan Government from its political and military ties with the United States, following the sudden cessation of Military Assistance Programme funding and pro curement, on which jt had previously been entirely dependent for defence purposes. Pakistan was then immediately forced to look elsewhere for military equipment, both for long-term procurement and for sufficient spares to keep its completely US-equipped air force from being grounded. This is why today the Pakistan Air Force is flying such a polyglot mixture of aircraft, with American F-104A Star- fighters operating from the same base as Chinese-built MiG-19s and French Mirage IIIEPs. And there seems little doubt, from the recent visits of Pakistan military missions to Moscow, that these will be joined before too long by Soviet-supplied MiG-21s and possibly Sukhoi Su-7s, which will place the PAF in an even more unique position. No air force likes operating such a diversity of equipment, and the high standards of serviceability achieved are a tribute to the resourcefulness of PAF maintenance personnel. This is symptomatic of the entire Pakistan Air Force organisation, which has to make up with quality what it inevitably lacks in quantity, compared with its opposition. When India and Pakistan went to war in September 1965, the Pakistani Army began operations with few illusions as to the degree of close support it could expect from its air force. Above, Pakistan's supersonic trio, left to right; MiG-19, Dassault. Mirage I HEP and Lockheed F-I04A Starfighter. below, the C-in-C of the PAF, Air Marshal Nur Khan, believes in first-hand experience of all types under his command. Here he checks out in one of the first Mirage IIIEPs to arrive in Pakistan India outnumbered Pakistan by about five to one in the air; and against substantial numbers of British-supplied Hunters and Canberras, plus Indian-built Gnats and the first squadron of Mach 2 MiG-21 fighters from the Soviet Union, the PAF could field only 12 early model Starfighters, six Sabre squad rons equipped from 102 F-86Fs originally received under MAP, and a couple of squadrons with 24 Martin B-57B Cartberras. Both sides claimed to have destroyed about 100 of each other's aircraft during the 23-day war. Since this number represented virtually the entire first-line strength of the PAF
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
