The United States (US) has approved the \u201crelease and export\u201d of a $686 million support package to upgrade Pakistan\u2019s F-16 fighter aircraft, according to letters sent by the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) to Congress. The DSCA notification, issued under Section 36(b) of the Arms Export Control Act, states that Congress must be informed in advance of certain proposed arms sales. The agency said the package is intended \u201cto retain interoperability with US and partner forces in ongoing counterterrorism efforts.\u201d The DSCA said the sale supports US foreign policy and national security objectives. It added that the upgrades would help Pakistan \u201cmeet current and future threats by updating and refurbishing its fleet.\u201d The package includes major defense equipment valued at $37 million, notably 92 Link-16 systems and six Mk-82 inert 500-lb general-purpose bomb bodies, along with $649 million worth of non-major defense items. The updates are expected to \u201cprovide more seamless integration and interoperability between the Pakistan Air Force and the US Air Force in combat operations, exercises, and training,\u201d the DSCA wrote. It further noted that the refurbishment would extend the aircrafts\u2019 service life \u201cthrough 2040 while addressing critical flight safety concerns.\u201d The letters state that Pakistan has demonstrated its commitment to maintaining its military forces and \u201cwill have no difficulty absorbing these articles and services into its armed forces.\u201d A final determination concluded that Pakistan can provide \u201csubstantially the same degree of protection for the sensitive technology\u201d as the United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The United States (US) has approved the \u201crelease and export\u201d of a $686 million support package to upgrade Pakistan\u2019s F-16 fighter aircraft, according to letters…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29418,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29417\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}