300 AIM-9M Tactical Missiles for Pakistan

In a Pentagon contract announcement Raytheon Systems d/b/a Raytheon Systems Co., Tucson, Ariz., is being awarded a $29,443,350 ceiling-priced modification to a previously awarded firm-fixed-price contract (N00019-03-C-0003) for 300 AIM-9M tactical missiles and 10 captive air-training missiles for the Government of Pakistan under the Foreign Military Sales Program.

Work will be performed in Tucson, Ariz. (93 percent) and Andover, Mass., (7 percent), and is expected to be completed in August 2007. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year.
source


I wonder how India will feel about this? Anybody got any info on their reaction?

The sale also included Harpoon Block II missiles.
www.dsca.osd.mil...
Pakistan already has 32 F-16's still flying. Armed with AIM-9P-1/2 missiles.
An order for 40 more F-16's was cancelled years ago, and the money eventually refunded. Sales of F-16's to Pakistan are again being considered.

Pakistani F-16 Photo Album


Secretary of State Rice was in both Pakistan and India, in March 2005. She discussed these issues with both countries, as well as the sale of F-16's to both countries.
www.globalsecurity.org...

BBC News - Pakistan Weapons Sales

...India - which may also buy F-16s in the future - has warned the US deal with Pakistan risks creating an arms race. ... India's concerns that the deal could disturb the region's military balance.... A spokesman for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said he had expressed "great disappointment" on Friday about the decision to supply F-16s to Pakistan....

Various news sources:
iecolumnists.expressindia.com...
www.atimes.com...

The AIM-9M has counter-countermeasures capabilities, and an improved warhead.

www.fas.org...

The AIM-9M missile utilizes a guidance control section with counter-countermeasures and improved maintainability and producibility. The AIM-9M is configured with an annular blast fragmentation warhead.

The AIM-9P-1 has an active optical target detector instead of the infrared influence fuze; the AIM-9P-2 added a reduced-smoke motor.

Details of AIM-9 Sidewinder History

>>
I wonder how India will feel about this? Anybody got any info on their reaction?
>>

Probably cheering. If not rolling around in the aisles laughing their ventral anatomy off.

1. ALL AIM-9s prior to the X are inherently restricted by a 2-axis sprung gyro system which effectively covers X-Y okay but cannot do Z (roll orientation) except by virtue of a limited ability to literally push the reticle arm out of alignment (off focus) with the detector grid. This limits them to about 27.5 degrees off boresight in search and about 40` once lockon has occured. By comparison, even the most primitive R-73 export variant has always been capable of 45` HOBS excursions AND it has a 6.5 inch motor to exploit a full midzone (to about 8-11nm BVR) engagement envelope. Which the puny little AIM-9, Mk.36 cannot even come close to matching.

2. The combined Indian AF tactical airpower ORBAT is something like 750 aircraft. For Pakistan it's about 314. And while a large number of the Indian aircraft are unmodified MiG-21's the fact remains that ALL can use the Archer. And about 229 have at least nominal ability with a range of other, true-BVR, capable weapons. While only 22 PakAF F-16's have even the basics of a longrange (AIM-7 with ADF mod electronics interface were predelivered before their Blk.20 F-16A's were embargoed) AAM capability at all. The Mirage III being basically hamstrung by the export Cyrano II-III 'small nose' radar onboard all marks, even if they ever received the ancient and largely laughable R.530 to go with.

If the Indian's wanted to, 'purely tactically', they would be able to roll over Pakistan in a matter of hours and I doubt /seriously/ if even a full USAF Expeditionary/GSTF (Raptors and all) deployment would be able to retain sufficient national air superiority to allow for maneuver warfare operations along the border.

Which is of course why Chinese M-11 'technology' was ported across while the CIA conveniently turned a "No Telling If That's A TEL!" blind eye during the embargo period.

The latter nation also being the principle 'FMS' secondary sale threat to the U.S. delivery of these weapons in that access, even to 'export variant' IRCCM and homing logic as well as select (highly miniaturized/VHSIC gated) components inherent to the M-9 or later block Sidewinder GCS section will almost inevitably end up on the next flight out to PRC-CATIC.


KPl.

Way to take the long view... when Musharraf is overthrown by Islamic fundamentalists, they'll have a nice set of high tech US missiles at their disposal. Did we learn nothing from Iran? The only reason we should be supporting Musharraf is as an ally in fighting terror, but these missiles are intended for use against India and/or China, not terrorists.

This is why I don't believe for a second the lies about fighting terror. If we were really concerned about fighting terror we wouldn't be selling these weapons to the world's NUMBER ONE proliferator of WMD technology.

As I said,

There are elements of the Mike's GCS which are indeed sensitive and could likely be exploited by a high tech nation able to break the antitamper safeguards.

However; _as a baseline AAM_; the AIM-9M offers less than all models of 'equivalent' (generational) SRM the world over. ASRAAM, P-3/4, MICA-IR, R-73, Darter. They are ALL better, as a total system metric, than this weapon.

As far as defining how as a function of why these weapons are being sold, again, as I stated it is foolish beyond belief to think that AIM-9s of /any/ make or model (including X-Rays) could tip the balance of airpower back towards Pakistan's favor in an Indiaakistan confrontation. I might be slightly more worried if the weapons delivered were AIM-120C7's but only to the extent that the technology would be compromised, almost instantaneously. I see existing-stock transfers of a capable but narrow bore FQ heater as an easy-out intermediate option to replace whatever lifed-out AIM-9L's and technologically dated AIM-9P4/5s the Paks still have in the inventory without doing anything 'real' to commit ourselves to their defense.

And be assured, they are looking for a big brother. For along with the total infiltration of ISI by the very people we are hunting, this is why Pakistan is half-a$$ing it in terms of finding Osama. They know we are but Allies of convenience and while we remain so they have some UN assurance against what they perceive to be Indian inequities in Kashmir (and their own blood game counters in return).

As soon as that utility is over, we will leave and so will the FMS credits which are necessary to revitalize Pakistan's air defense towards anything like what they would need to stand against India's might (20 PAC-3/ERINT batteries and 200 AIM-120 on 60-100 F-16C.50+ for a minimum starting point).

i.e. Selling them junk IS the long view. Because the terrorists are going to neither use nor sell AIM-9Ms when the governments can hock them cheap, directly, under the table using secure nationalized delivery methods.

And the while there is no achievable endgame purpose inherent to hopping in bed with the Paks, that is not the present Administration's (or the controlling powers behind all such Presidencies) goal. Their goal is to 'stabilize' Iraq into contractor ownership of the oil production rights.

Coup De Crude.

And towards that end, it is not necessary, indeed it is /counterproductive/, to find and finish Osama as the living symbol of WILL behind which terror masses.

They need the hysteria as bad as the bad guys do to keep a military presence in Iraq and thus secure the slow but continuous process of rebuilding and updating of the extraction, partial refinement and delivery/lading infrastructure there.

You can mutter all you like about WMD. In 10-15 years it will be so widely proliferated that the only way to ensure our safety is to make it clear that isotopic analysis will let us back track the country of origin on any weapon detonated over U.S. or Allied soil. A nation which will promptly be annihilated in turn.

No Questions Asked.

Thus making each and every 'rogue nation' into responsible card carrying members of the Nuclear club, willy or nilly. Such is the only means to isolate nuclear material within federal control of each nation and it was an assured outcome consequence the very /moment/ we let Israel steal material from U.S. back in the sixties.

A FAR more dangerous event will happen in the period 2015-2020 when NON NUCLEAR directed energy weapons along the lines of THEL and M-THEL begin field trials and become the 'new nukes' as rapidly proliferated weapons systems which effectively KT-Boundary manned airpower overnight.

Again, from this 'far sighted' perspective; the likelihood that the transfer of a few surplus AIM-9M will have any meaning at all to the strategic equation is tangential at best.


KPl.


P.S. Ask ANY halfway competent tacair pilot in any service and he will tell you right off the bat that WVR combat is a spin of the cylinder with 3 bullets loaded. Expendables don't work well on modern imaging or pseudo imaging seekers and the increasing offboresight and envelope cue sophistication as well as kinematic weapon performance makes a hash of conventional airframe EM diagrams because a man can come into a fight slow, stop his plane dead, 'flip it' 50-60` to minimize weathercock. And fire across the circle with upwards of .7 SSPK at any point in any evolution you care to describe. In this context, at least until TADIRCM or similar systems come online; Robbie Shaw's 'Fighter Tactics' have largely become meaningless for the value and replacement interval of the plane as much as pilot.

And even a (datalink shoot list cueing) passive engagement refusal to merge does not always bring dominant certainty of leverage because there is as much as 4-5 miles of extended envelope positioning on the bigger 6" weapons which makes inner-zone AMRAAM dangerously uncertain to succeed in a cleanup second shot condition from an initial 12-17 mile outer pole.

Originally posted by ch1466


Which is of course why Chinese M-11 'technology' was ported across while the CIA conveniently turned a "No Telling If That's A TEL!" blind eye during the embargo period.

The latter nation also being the principle 'FMS' secondary sale threat to the U.S. delivery of these weapons in that access, even to 'export variant' IRCCM and homing logic as well as select (highly miniaturized/VHSIC gated) components inherent to the M-9 or later block Sidewinder GCS section will almost inevitably end up on the next flight out to PRC-CATIC.


KPl.

Yeah so tell me why the US puts with with this..
Its been happening for the better part of the last 20 years!!