Unfortunately for you Military grade tech does not scale that way, technology absolutely does, but not mainstream military tech, and given the acquisitions by both India and Pakistan, I think the leadership agrees.
As I mentioned before - in the military the first trial for any technology is logistics, everyone here, including you, is thinking about AI and UCAVs from a purely tech demonstrator perspective and giving examples of countries like Japan and South Korea with niche defense requirements and logistical capabilities that will allow for them to achieve this within the next decade (certainly not this one). None of this applies to Pakistan and our theatre at all.
Nobody is saying that UCAVs don’t have a place in the battlefield or that we shouldn’t be investing in them, if anything Pakistan has invested far more heavily in UCAVs and LMs than most peer militaries and you’ll see this in the coming years with the amount and type of platforms being inducted, but at the same time, the planners (thankfully) understand that no matter what social media shows, AI and automation is not ready to take over traditional combat roles in the south Asian theatre, not because we are limited by technological capabilities, I didn’t argue that at all, but because for the foreseeable future we are limited by logistical capabilities.
As a very small example - buying Z-10MEs to replace Cobras is a traditional military acquisition, and it will still come with massive logistical planning and execution to upgrade hangars, train pilots, maintenance crew, engineers, weapon techs etc etc etc.
Now imagine the requirements to shift this entire role from a manned gunship to a VTOL UCAV in our theatre, with our capabilities, our constraints (logistical and financial) and our doctrines (which have been in place and have been trained for 20 years) and then tell me wether you still think it is a worthwhile risk and investment to replace Manned gunships with UCAVs right now or anytime soon when a potential war over water is a high possibility within the next 5 years (as you say “near future”). Mind you an equivalent platform doesn’t even exist right now, it will have to be designed, tested and then be put on sale by an ally nation, and then we’ll have to test and evaluate it, and then we’ll have to buy it and implement it, if this takes till 2030, then what do we do till then?
There is a good border between using foreign conflicts and armies as examples to judge how our theatre will change, unfortunately everyone seems to be on the far side of the border where they consider that “because this is happening in X, Y and Z, it also applies to us”, it absolutely does to some extent, but not enough to risk it right now…it takes several years to plan and implement a major weapon acquisition and the required training and doctrinal changes with it, And we needed these gunships 10 years ago.
