prothought
Registered Member
While I agree with all your points, I would like to differ on your question that why China would help us build hypersonic wind tunnels and testing facilities. I would rather generalize it in the sense why would China help us in building our capability in various sensitive technological areas.Sorry for the thread jump but I thought this was a better thread for the discussion.
My reply to that is two pronged:
1. Contrary to popular belief (especially on the other side of our eastern border), even things that we are "license producing and absorbing" like Harbah, Barq, Shaheen 1, Faaz, etc, we are developing in house on some level. Otherwise we would not have seen entirely local products at all. What we do is that we buy some articles from China and in many cases with the express permission to reverse engineer them. Yes, they could give us everything we need for it but that won't build any capability, only the capacity to produce. For example, we bought AR-1s. Then AWC took the exact same aero-shape, mass distribution because they know that that is a design that works. Then they fitted it with their own rocket motor, guidance computer, and warhead - we have the capability to do these things. This is the kind of TOT that happens between Pakistan and China. I think the same is going on with SD-10/Faaz.
2. Related to 1, if we just copied the YJ12E we would just be a production line and we could only ever produce that exact product and nothing more. That is, because of the reasons I wrote in my earlier post, there would be no capacity to innovate as there is in the cases mentioned in point 1. The cases in point 1 have tech that is well known and well understood, thus enabling that techs absorption. There's a lot of trial and errow with scramjets, preventing their absorbtion unless China helps us builds hypersonic windtunnels and testing facilities. Why would they do that?
Every country follows its supreme national interests and so does China (and Pakistan too). The cooperation between any two nations is proportional to the width and depth of their shared national interests. The reality that is well understood by both Chinese and Pakistani governments is that there exists a huge overlap of national interests of China and Pakistan for the foreseeable future.
While we Pakistanis find a solidly supportive global player as an ally in the form of a neighboring country, China has a friendly country located just below its soft belly that once acted as a window for the world into a diplomatically isolated China. You can imagine of the trouble for Chinese if, God forbid, Pakistan is removed and terrorists take over, comes under the control of western puppets, or falls into a perpetual in-fighting and civil war. Pakistan’s sovereignty is as important for Chinese as to us Pakistanis. Once that territorial sovereignty of Pakistan is ensured, as has been achieved with Chinese active support, and Pakistan emerges as a strong regional player, it can facilitate China’s access to Arabian sea through a land corridor. In fact, the CPEC project is a crucial step towards the realization of that goal.
It is quite logical that adversaries and rival global powers will frantically try to disrupt the Chinese strategic growth along that dimension through the use of separatists/terrorist groups. However, the question is for how long? Ultimately the misguided Pakistanis-turned-terrorists will realize the futility of their terrorism. The flow of strategic compulsions cannot be blocked through the acts of terrorism by a tiny fraction of the misguided population.
China has played an overwhelming role in the remarkable growth of Pakistan’s military industrial base, be it military planes, tanks, radars, missiles, and even the nuke technology. Could anyone imagine a few decades ago that Pakistan would be producing fourth plus generation fighter plane in-house? Now Pakistan is poised to get the fifth-generation planes from China, could anyone imagine Pakistan could get such a high-tech plane at all except from China? Can we claim that Pakistan would have acquired tools and technologies used in developing/testing missiles from any western country? If China is allowing our access to such strategic technologies then, I am wondering, what would stop our Chinese friends from sharing the required knowhow/technology for building hypersonic wind tunnels and testing facilities in Pakistan. Many other factors (such as economic feasibility, lack of lower utility of such facilities, even Pakistanis being incapable of absorbing such technology at this stage, the availability of cheaper testing in China, etc.) might very well be at play. As one Chinese friend mentioned in this thread that Pakistan’s current military industrial base is not strong enough to start manufacturing even the parts of a fifth-generation planes. I think we need to look inward much before doing that outward.
Last edited:



