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This is also the first AMRAAM missile procurement between Raytheon
Company (NYSE: RTN) and Pakistan. Delivery of the AMRAAM missiles will
start in 2008 and continue through 2011.
Originally posted by WestPoint23
The AMRAAMs are the AIM-120C-5 variant, I suspect the reason the US allowed this sale now is because in a few years we'll be using the AIM-120D (IOC 2008). When they are all delivered it will be 2010, however this will still increase Pakistan A2A BVR capability and it should be interesting to see how India responds, if at all.
Originally posted by mel1962
Well WP23, I am not a weapons expert, but common sense does not seem to drive US foreign policy. We hurt our fiends and help our enemies. Go figure!
The USA has clear concerns regarding technology transfer from the F-16s or associated weapons it sells to 3rd countries like China, which has close military ties with Pakistan.While the US was reluctant to discuss details, Assistant Secretary of State for political-military affairs John Hillen was more open with Congress on July 20, 2006.
In his testimony to the House of Representatives' International Relations Committee, Hillen reportedely said that: the United States was withholding unspecified technologies "that would usually go with an F-16," including ones that would let it "be used in offensive ways to penetrate air space of another country that was highly defended". It added that Pakistan's F-16 fleet and its munitions would be segregated from aircraft supplied by other countries, so that unauthorized engineers could not get access to the U.S.-made planes, and that U.S. personnel would carry out inventories of the F-16s and their associated systems every 6 months. There had even been a proposal that F-16 flights outside Pakistani air space, including for exercises with other countries, would have to be approved by the U.S. government in advance.