After years of haggling and delays caused by political differences, Pakistan has finally closed a deal to obtain six AWACS aircraft from Sweden, reported Strategypage.com on Friday.
| Makes sense, I guess, for a military that's never won a war to buy equipment from a country that hasn't fought one since Charles the Great. |
The purchased systems is a SAAB 2000 airliner mounting a Swedish Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar, which consists of thousands of tiny radars that can be independently aimed in different directions. This is similar to the AESA radar used on the American JSTARS aircraft, enabling it to locate vehicles moving on the ground. Pakistan is getting the six SAAB 2000s with the Ericsson PS-890 Erieye radar and another SAAB 2000 configured for regular (fifty seats) passenger service for $1 billion. |