Pakistan Calls for Joint AAM Development with Turkiye

On 15 February, the Pakistan Air Power’s (PAF) Chief of Air Workers (CAS), Air Chief Marshal (ACM) Zaheer Ahmed Baber Sidhu, met with the Deputy Chief of Common Workers of the Turkish Armed Forces, Common İrfan Özsert, at Air Headquarters (AHQ) in Islamabad.

In response to an official PAF press launch, the 2 leaders centered on “mutual coaching initiatives and endeavours of expertise collaboration” between the armed forces of Pakistan and Turkiye.

The 2 leaders “agreed to raise the present partnership by Joint Working Teams centered on expertise enhancement and core functionality exchanges.” In addition they mentioned enterprise an “Air-to-Air Missile expertise alternate program to accrue most advantages for each Air Forces.”

It’s at present unclear what this air-to-air missile (AAM) “expertise alternate” program would entail.

For instance, the PAF could possibly be fascinated about leveraging Turkish experience in supporting the home AAM program, i.e., the FAAZ by the Nationwide Engineering and Scientific Fee (NESCOM).

Alternatively, the PAF could possibly be pursuing an alternate AAM program in collaboration with Turkiye, doubtlessly on the Nationwide Aerospace Science and Expertise Park (NASTP).

General, it needs to be famous that the present PAF management is concentrated on increasing NASTP actions, particularly by joint-ventures and partnerships with overseas defence distributors. The PAF’s ongoing engagement with Baykar Group, for instance, is ensuing within the growth of recent munitions, equivalent to loitering munitions and miniature air-launched cruise missiles (ALCM), at NASTP.

Coverage of Indigenizing Munitions

This announcement makes one side of the PAF’s growth priorities sure – i.e., it’s pursuing the indigenous manufacturing of key munitions. To date, the majority of this exercise concerned the manufacturing of air-to-surface munitions, such because the Ra’advert/Taimur-series of ALCMs, the Takbir/Indigenous Vary Extension Package (IREK) precision-guided bomb (PGB) equipment, and others.

Nevertheless, the longer term product roadmap disclosed by World Industrial and Defence Options (GIDS) options an in-house AAM program by the designation of “FAAZ.” Thus, it seems that in some unspecified time in the future, the PAF recognized the home manufacturing of AAMs a precedence.

That mentioned, the PAF is just not the one Tri-Companies arm aiming to indigenize munitions manufacturing; fairly, this coverage additionally appears to be a precedence for the Pakistan Military (PA) and the Pakistan Navy (PN). Similar to many different nations, Pakistan possible acknowledged the operational challenges Ukraine was dealing with as a consequence of its weaker munitions provide channels Thus, every of the Pakistani army’s Tri-Companies tabled the manufacturing of munitions – particularly guided weapons – as a purpose.

For the PAF, nonetheless, the query is whether or not it desires to depend on solely the NESCOM FAAZ program or complement it with a NASTP initiative. This name to Turkiye for AAM collaboration is probably going a push to offer NASTP an AAM mission, both by authentic designs or, doubtlessly, co-produce the TÜBİTAK-SAGE Bozdoğan within-visual-range (WVR) AAM and Gökdoğan beyond-visual-range (BVR) AAM in Pakistan. With NASTP, both state of affairs is believable as, to this point, the entity has undertaken each authentic tasks (e.g., KaGeM V3) and co-production (e.g., Bayraktar TB2) with overseas companions.

Correcting Missed Alternatives

In 2016, an earlier piece from Quwa had projected that Pakistan would ultimately require a home AAM program. In reality, the elemental expertise for AAMs – equivalent to rocket motors – is also re-leveraged to develop surface-to-air missiles (SAM), which every of the Tri-Companies at the moment are shopping for at scale, however by expensive imports from China and Europe…

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