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In October, Pakistan's prime minister Nawaz Sharif walked with a throng of cadets through the sprawling campus of the Navy War College in Lahore to inaugurate a new facility. "I feel proud to have learnt that Pakistan Navy is constructing indigenous large warships," Sharif told a group of students. "The emphasis should remain on indigenous construction and joint ventures through transfer of technology." With Pakistan's lone shipyard in Karachi now fully operational, the Pakistan Navy is getting its sea legs in producing defense equipment, having built two tugboats in early 2013. Sharif has lofty hopes that the defense sector of Pakistan will soon churn out warships big and small, from frigates to corvettes. For years, Pakistan has talked of a major naval modernization campaign. Can Islamabad actually make it happen? It's not likely, at least for now. Financial trouble has sidetracked modernization for over a decade. Former prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani's $24 billion strategy to revamp the entire military , known as the Armed Forces Development 2025 plan, was shelved when Islamabad agreed to a strict bailout from the International Monetary Fund in 2008. Strapped for cash, the navy was forced to abandon its submarine acquisition, corvette and frigate programs. "By 2015, they were supposed to have fifteen frigate-class vessels, and six or seven submarines," says Haris Khan, a Senior Analyst at PakDef Military Consortium, a Tampa-based think tank. When Admiral Muhammad Zakaullah assumed command of the navy, around the time of Sharif's visit to Lahore, Pakistan had just received six new Yuan-class submarines from China, but maintained just ten frigates.
Read more:
Debt Strangles Pakistan's Naval Ambitions | The National Interest
Read more:
Debt Strangles Pakistan's Naval Ambitions | The National Interest
