Pakistan's firepower gets Russia edge on the sly

[Vikrant]

Russia may have vowed not to sell its arms to Pakistan, but India’s archrival is getting some key Russian/Soviet military equipment, surreptitiously through China, thereby jeopardising New Delhi’s defence confidentiality.

One example of such Chinese arms sales, though they do not sell full equipment of Russian origin, is the aeroengines for Pakistan’s JF-17 combat aircraft for which Russia too has given its consent, much to India’s chagrin.

China is jointly developing JF-17 lightweight combat planes with Pakistan and has provided the Russian-origin RD-93 aeroengines, an upgrade of the MiG-29 combat plane’s RD-33 aeroengines, to Islamabad for the purpose.

The Klimov RD-93 is a turbojet engine and Pakistan intends to get around 150 of these engines for the JF-17s. In August 2007, Russia signed a contract for re-export of 150 of the engines from China to Pakistan for the JF-17, though they had till then denied such plans.

With 150 engines now available to Pakistan, it could easily match India’s three-squadron MiG-29 fleet, which are based facing the Pakistani borders in Adampur airbase. Thus, the JF-17s will be the backbone of the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) counter to India’s 65-plane MiG-29s fleet. India had bought the MiG-29s from the erstwhile Soviet Union in the late 1980s and has now signed a fresh agreement with Russia for upgrade of these planes.

With military sales such as the JF-17s and its RD-93 engines, no wonder China has now emerged as the world’s fifth largest arms exporter for the five-year period from 2008-2012 from being the world’s largest importer of arms till about five years ago. “China, however, does not sell any whole military equipment of Russian origin. The Chinese military systems given to Pakistan do have some parts that are of Russian origin,” a senior Indian military officer, a keen China watcher, said. According to a March 2013 report from Stockholm-based SIPRI, an international military think-tank, China’s arms exports in 2008-2012 grew by 162 per cent compared to the previous five years, of which 55 per cent were for Pakistan alone.

Pakistan's firepower gets Russia edge on the sly - The New Indian Express

 

[waltky]

Pakistan under suspicion of playin' both sides of the fence...

Secret files reveal new levels of US distrust over Pakistan
September 3, 2013 > WASHINGTON — The $52.6 billion U.S. intelligence arsenal is aimed mainly at unambiguous adversaries, including al-Qaida, North Korea and Iran. But top-secret budget documents reveal an equally intense focus on one purported ally: Pakistan.

No other nation draws as much scrutiny across so many categories of national security concern. A 178-page summary of the U.S. intelligence community's "black budget" shows that the United States has ramped up its surveillance of Pakistan's nuclear arms, cites previously undisclosed concerns about biological and chemical sites there, and details efforts to assess the loyalties of counterterrorism sources recruited by the CIA. Pakistan appears at the top of charts listing critical U.S. intelligence gaps. It is named as a target of newly formed analytic cells. And fears about the security of its nuclear program are so pervasive that a budget section on containing the spread of illicit weapons divides the world into two categories: Pakistan and everybody else.

The disclosures — based on documents provided to The Washington Post by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden — expose broad new levels of U.S. distrust in an already unsteady security partnership with Pakistan, a politically unstable country that faces rising Islamist militancy. They also reveal a more expansive effort to gather intelligence on Pakistan than U.S. officials have ever disclosed. The United States has delivered nearly $26 billion in aid to Pakistan over the past 12 years, aimed at stabilizing the country and ensuring its cooperation in counterterrorism efforts. But with Osama bin Laden dead and al-Qaida degraded, U.S. spy agencies appear to be shifting their attention to dangers that have emerged beyond the patch of Pakistani territory patrolled by CIA drones. "If the Americans are expanding their surveillance capabilities, it can only mean one thing," said Husain Haqqani, who until 2011 served as Pakistan's ambassador to the United States. "The mistrust now exceeds the trust."

Beyond the budget files, other classified documents provided to The Washington Post expose fresh allegations of systemic human rights abuses in Pakistan. U.S. spy agencies reported that high-ranking Pakistani military and intelligence officials had been aware of — and possibly ordered — an extensive campaign of extrajudicial killings targeting militants and other adversaries. Public disclosure of those reports, based on communications intercepts from 2010 to 2012 and other intelligence, could have forced the Obama administration to sever aid to the Pakistani armed forces because of a U.S. law that prohibits military assistance to human rights abusers. But the documents indicate that administration officials decided not to press the issue in order to preserve an already frayed relationship with the Pakistanis.

In a statement, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council said the United States is "committed to a long-term partnership with Pakistan, and we remain fully engaged in building a relationship that is based on mutual interests and mutual respect." "We have an ongoing strategic dialogue that addresses in a realistic fashion many of the key issues between us, from border management to counterterrorism, from nuclear security to promoting trade and investment," said the spokeswoman, Caitlin Hayden. "The United States and Pakistan share a strategic interest in combating the challenging security issues in Pakistan, and we continue to work closely with Pakistan's professional and dedicated security forces to do so."

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