The Pakistan Air Force (PAF) recently revealed low-resolution stills of apparent plans – or proposals – by the National Aerospace Science and Technology Park (NASTP), the service’s rising in-house research-and-development (R&D) bureau, to upgrade its F-16, JF-17, and Saab 2000 fleets.
For the Saab 2000 – which Quwa examined separately as a possible NASTP airframe upgrade – and the F-16, NASTP framed its approach around structural upgrades paired with some apparent, but likely modest, subsystem additions or changes. In the F-16’s case in particular, the apparent proposal aligns with recent US approvals to release new tactical datalinks (TDL) and other modest subsystems.
With the JF-17, NASTP showcased concepts and illustrations for a new active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar, tying back to an earlier reveal of Project PFX Alpha – an apparent upgrade to the Thunder platform.
Examined as a whole, the corpus of NASTP’s emerging work points in one direction. New loitering munitions, land-based surveillance and air defence radars, airborne radars, custom upgrade and modification projects, and – potentially – drones together suggest that NASTP is quickly becoming the PAF’s lead design and integration vendor.
At its core, NASTP is the evolution of the PAF’s original effort to build that capability through the ill-fated Aviation City initiative, which was intended to lead the development and production of Project AZM, the shelved next-generation fighter aircraft (NGFA) program.
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