Absolutely, there's a lot of nuance, but the underlying point we've been making is...don't take any supplier for granted, and leverage a diverse pool where it's available, as was the case with SAMs.
We were crapping on the Chinese SAMs because they a lot of scarce money
was spent on outdated and Cold War-era tech. This goes all the way back to the Army procuring the HQ-16, which -- with its SARH-based set-up -- was already technologically behind compared to the Umkhonto, CAMM, or HISAR.
Now, one can argue that the Army could procure many more batteries because of a lower acquisition cost, sure, but then OTOH, what good would those savings be if those missiles can't keep pace with the BrahMos or SCALP threats? What about the cost of losing assets to enemy fire because those SAMs couldn't succeed in the moments we needed them the most?
And, finally, was the HQ-16 (and for that matter, HQ-9P, HQ-9BE, and HQ-16FE)
really the best bang for the buck for our specific threat environment?
For ex., could we have achieved comparable results by repurposing the SD-10 for the SAM role instead? Why did we get so fixated on total range when that coverage net (260+ km) wouldn't even matter in our environment (i.e., that range works at higher altitudes, but then the Indians can and will leverage the Earth's curvature to fly low within their borders where we neither have low-level radar coverage or SAM coverage to cut them off).
And, in relation to the Chinese SAMs that we actually have, realistically, what is the actual level of interoperability between those and the cutting-edge Chinese systems we have? I know folks want to trumpet CEC and all, but I'm not sure that older generation platforms -- i.e., the HQ-16 and HQ-9P/BE -- were designed with that compatibility in mind in the first place. Perhaps HQ-9C or HQ-19, sure, but then did we need to procure soon-to-be-out-of-date Chinese SAMs just to get the modern ones? What does that say about the whole situation if this had been forced on us? Or worse, if we decided ourselves this was optimal when actual real-world results show that something like ground-launched SD-10s could have sufficed in 80% of the things we needed? Or why did we not develop something -- or (as with the Raptor-I/II) buy-out a South African program outright? when it had been available back in the early 2010s?
Finally, and this is very critical, the qualitative strength of the Pakistani armed forces had come from its ingenuity, i.e., the ability to integrate diverse systems, to build our original TDLs and network-enabled warfare layer, and so on. If we keep deferring more and more to the Chinese (or any other one supplier), we're at critical risk of basically, for a lack of a better term, dumbing ourselves down to the level of Indian procurement planners, where we go full lock, stock, and barrel with one party, adopt their doctrine, and not develop our own unique insights. Before moving to Canada, I spent my earliest years in Qatar, where my dad was an advisor to the Qatari MoD. I lived in a time where Pakistanis were seen as leaders in a field, such as (in my dad's case) setting up an original air defence system via the best solutions off the market rather than single-sourcing, and building automation + interoperability in-house, rather than deferring to Westerners. This, we're at losing of also losing this, and that would also be a tragedy.
The point here isn't to just crap on the Chinese for the sake of it. In fact, it has nothing to do with the Chinese per se in as much as our own procurement approach. Yes, there are periods where we learn the West is unreliable, fair enough. But at the same time, it doesn't mean we close our eyes to inefficient decisions being made with the Chinese. It's funny, but
@Oscar will attest to this, but during the 1980s, my dad was auditing a project that involved several Chinese suppliers. One of these guys was charging like $10 per bolt or something that should cost like 10 cents, my dad inquired, "What is this?" to Chinese OEM guy, and he said, "oh it was a mistake." My dad said to him, "So why does your 'mistake' always involve moving the decimal to the right and not the left?"
In fact, I asked him if he (in the context of the Army HQ-16 purchase back in the mid-2010s) signed off on buying the HQ-16, knowing the differentials about pricing and stuff. He said, "If a technologically newer SAM was available, be it from anywhere, I would've advocated for that, even if it meant buying them at a slower pace. Because, we'd always prioritize guarding our most sensitive, critical assets first, so a smaller initial order is tenable." And this had been PAF mentality with projects like the Mirage III/5, the Erieye, R&S SDR stacks, and so much that no one seems to appreciate, but are the glue of our war-fighting.
www.defensenews.com
sorry, but I couldn't help but chuckle. But joking aside, I agree with some of the points raised. There's pros and cons dealing with any third party, we all know what those are when it comes to the West and Chinese, but even when we try to diversify away from our historical sources, we get stung like the T129 debacle. The reality is that we're moving away from primarily the US ecosystem towards 80-90% integration with the Chinese ecosystem, but that only reflects broader factors like strategic necessity, more than anything else. There'll be a smattering of projects with the Turkish and home grown efforts, and maybe a few systems from European suppliers. The South African OEMs have largely been cannibalised by the UAE and there's not much of a defence sector left there, while Brazil doesn't really produce much that fits with our requirements, the MAR1 is another example where we acquired a weapon that we quicky realised didn't match our requirements and promptly vanished from sight, only to be replaced by a better performing system from China to fill that role (anti radiation SEAD missile in the for of the CM-400AKG).
