President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have said Pakistan needs the F-16s to combat terrorists in the mountains on the Afghan border.

Oh yeah, we’re going to use F-16′s in case one of those non-celphone-using, horseback-mounted terrorists is storing an attack jet in his cave.

Here’s what’s really going on:

… the Pakistanis gave a clue as to what they really want with the planes: They are requesting that the F-16s be armed with top-of-the-line air-to-air missiles that would be of little use against targets like the Islamists it’s fighting on the ground. Other equipment Pakistan is getting from the United States—navy surveillance planes, for example—is similarly useless against a guerrilla insurgency. They would, of course, be useful in a war against India.

Worse still, the latest version of the plane, the F-16C/D—which is the model Pakistan will receive—can carry atomic bombs under its wings. The plane’s wiring would have to be modified in order for the bombs to be fused and dropped, but German intelligence agencies reported long ago that the Pakistanis have figured out how to do this.

There’s a non-trivial inversion that happens when one goes from consumer goods to heavily engineered planes–an inversion in the sense that the comparison between new vs. used plane isn’t the same as new vs. used iPod.

There’s a huge advantage to not being an early adopter of heavily engineered items–things do break, in unforseen ways, and take years to get right. Instead of viewing a plane as used, one needs to view it as having gone through extensive testing (of course this curve tapers off due to wear & tear).

Also, for complex systems such as planes, the overall failure rates are memoryless, which suggests that the main advantages to buying new are (1) possibly newer features, and (2) nice “new plane” smell.

I would like to second Anonymous Coward here. Countries do play chess and they play it on a three dimensional board. Kinda like that stupid Star Trek 3-D chess board [Insert standard nerd joke here, yes live long and prosper].

In any case, the ‘Arms Race’ is nothing new for the region and has been ongoing for say, the last 50 years. Ya know, like FREAKING NUKES!!! that have missle delivery platforms from short range ballistic missles to intermediate range missles. India has been on a program of moderization, which in may aspects has been caught up in the usual slow Indian bureacracy. Only difference is that there is a spotlight on the region now that the USA wants a piece of the money.

Heck, the French and Russians literally sell to everyone. France sells subs to Pakistan, they are selling subs now to India. Russia sells SU 30MK’s and subs to India, they sell the same to China. Ukraine sells T-80s to Pakistan, Russia sells t-90s to India. US greenlights the Phalcon AWACS to India along with Firefinder radars, they sell Pakistan F-16s. Now they are willing to have civilian nuke relationship with India along with a technology of transfer for F-18s or F-16s.

Nothing new, nothing alarming, business as usual, and the sky has not fallen.

.. despite India having been a bigger economic ..

The cost of weaponry is compensated by the amortized savings in potential collateral damage as well as the commercial gains its might commands.

Amortized savings? How so? Well, first understand what amortization is – it takes a discerete system, e.g. a bimodal system having a 5% chance of war with $1.2trillion in losses or 95% chance of peace with no losses, and amortizes it into a scalar – $60billion worth of losses. Even by excerbating the chance of conflict to 9%, if the damage can be contained to within $100billion (skirmish vs alright war), then we may amortize it as $9billion – a whopping $51bil in savings. Thus, with $20bil spent to shift the former system to the latter, $31bil is still saved. Of course, we have to offset the “opportunity cost” of spending the money elsewhere, but I’m not about to single-handedly redo the countless hours spent by beancounters and think tanks.

That’s just savings; then there are gains from Bush’s “trickle-down” economics, having to hire pricey pilots, jobs to maintain and service those aircrafts, convincing the youth in the area that science is cool and perhaps go into aeronautics, etc, etc.

My point is, don’t over simplify complex equations without the disclaimer that you’re bullshitting.

Oh, the value of human life? Airlines peg you at $1.2mil as the amount your whiney family will successfully sue them for. Countries with lower volume of lawsuits and smaller rewards (usually because most foreign courts don’t have the asinine concept of giving the plaintiff rewards from punitive damages) have their lives cheaper.

It’s people like you, the IMF, and WB (world bank, not warner bros.), that has India’s infrastructure languishing behind China’s, despite India being a bigger economic power in the late ’70s. China has followed the “screw the unwashed masses” attitude, creating showcase cities that make G7 supercities seem like a dodgy alley in the bronx. The economic theory is, slightly uplifting an entire nation of a billion will bleed money with negligible long-term rewards; whereas, drastically uplifting a sector or industry employing a few hundred thousand will create a “first-world” localization inside a third-world country. In the 21st century, only a first-world localization can compete, be profitable, and grow. Then, once a sustainable subsystem has been incubated, go Slinky(tm) and repeat, having an income source this time.

Should India ape China? No. Should it learn from China? Would be nice. A nation isn’t a charity organization, it’s playing chess; a little less compassion and a little more long-term thinking would be nice.