AEWC&C Aircraft for Pakistan

Abstract

Over the last several years, Pakistan and the United States have discussed O at length a potential transfer of Airborne Early Warning Command and Control (AEWC&C) systems. The circumstances justifying such a Pakistani acquisition have existed since the 1965 conflict with India, when the problems afflicting its air defense were first made manifest. These concerns grew after the disastrous 1971 war, when the Pakistan Air Force (PAF), forced to contend with newer Indian low-altitude tactics and combat maneuvers, came to realize that future conflicts would involve operational profiles of a kind that placed it at a relative disadvantage. This realization, arguably, surfaced acutely during the war itself, when the Indian Air Force (IAF), supposedly utilizing the primitive ability of a borrowed Soviet TU-126 Moss AEWC&C platform, managed to effect uninhibited low-level night penetrations into Pakistani airspace as well as to provide improved detection of all PAF aircraft entering India.' The general recognition of the versatility of AEWC&C aircraft did not translate, however, into any immediate Pakistani purchases: A potent combination of penury, supplier uncertainty, and ideational exhaustion in the aftermath of the 1971 conflict, conspired to postpone such an acquisition. The brutal Soviet invasion of Afghanistan dramatically altered the geopolitical premises of Pakistan's defense policy. Almost overnight, its internal fractiousness was complicated by the threatening specter of total encirclement. The perception of being surrounded by two large and historically hostile powers, the Soviet Union in the west and India in the east, exacerbated Pakistan's sense of precariousness and forced an unpleasant review of its cus-