Pakistan Air Force showcases advanced Chinese weapons as tensions escalate with India
Wire desk byline Sourced from Xinhua, Dawn, Arab News, Anadolu and Minute Mirror. Translated and abridged by the GSRRA Desk.
The PAF releases footage highlighting its ‘potent’ PL-15 missiles and a radar system described as a ‘game-changer’
The Pakistan Air Force (PAF) has released footage showing it has armed its combat aircraft with long-range Chinese missiles.
The footage, published online on Tuesday comes amid spiralling tensions with India following a terrorist attack in Kashmir last month that killed 26 people. New Delhi has blamed Pakistan for the incident, but Islamabad has denied any links to the attackers.
The three-minute video showed warplanes, including the JF-17 fighter, armed with Chinese-made PL-15 missiles and described them as the “PAF’s potent punch”.
The PL-15, originally developed for the fifth-generation J-20 stealth fighter, is China’s most advanced fighter-to-fighter missile and is reported to have an engagement range of 200km to 300km (125-185 miles).
Although other weapons that featured in the video were labelled as being the export version, the PAF did not say this was the case for the PL-15, hinting that it may be using the same version as the People’s Liberation Army. If confirmed, this would be the first time a foreign military has been armed with that version, rather than the shorter-range export version.
However, military analysts also said Pakistan’s biggest advantage was likely to lie in the Chinese-made active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar system fitted to the JF-17.
Reference Link:- https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3308808/pakistan-air-force-showcases-advanced-chinese-weapons-tensions-escalate-india
Zamir Ahmed Awan is the founder and Chair of the Global Silk Route Research Alliance, a think tank in Islamabad. He studied engineering at Shanghai University in the 1980s, and years later he went back to China as Pakistan's science counsellor in Beijing, from 2010 until 2016, working on science and higher education cooperation between the two countries.…
