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Pakistan’s Quest for a Domestic Fighter: The JF-17 Emerges as Pakistan’s Mainstay Fighter (Part 2) Plus

The Pakistan Air Force’s (PAF) search for a domestically built, sanction-free multi-role fighter ended through the induction of the JF-17 Thunder. However, it had been a long-term process with starts and stops that, arguably, date as early as the first years of the PAF. In this article, we review that history to understand how the JF-17 came-to-be and, just as importantly, how it stages the PAF for the future.

By Bilal Khan · · 9 min read

This is a continuation of Quwa’s series, “Pakistan’s Quest for a Domestic Fighter.” In Part 1, we examined the events that lead to the eventual development of the JF-17, particularly in the late 1980s when Pakistan had studied using an extensively modified F-7M as a complement to the F-16.

In 2010, the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) inducted its first squadron equipped with the JF-17 Thunder, its new, mainstay multi-role fighter that is developed in collaboration with the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC). Since its entry, the JF-17 is now in use with six PAF squadrons located across Pakistan. Be it the country’s maritime operations environment, the plains and deserts of interior Punjab and Sindh or the mountains of Baluchistan, Northern Areas and the Himalayas, the JF-17 is the PAF’s workhorse.

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