Pakistan is likely to receive the AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM) from the US, amidst improvement in ties between the two countries, a media report said on Tuesday.
An arms contract recently notified by the United States Department of War (DoW), formerly department of defence, lists Pakistan among the buyers for AIM-120 AMRAAM, The Express Tribune reported.
Last month, in Washington DC, Donald Trump met Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and his Army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir, who had earlier held a rare one-on-one meeting with the US President at the Oval Office in June.
According to the DoW, Raytheon - the manufacturer of the AMRAAM - was given a modification of over $41.6 million on a "previously awarded contract (FA8675-23-C-0037)" based on "firm-fixed-price (P00026)" for the production of the missile's C8 and D3 variants.
The modification, which includes Pakistan among its foreign military sales recipients, raises the total value of the contract to over $2.51 billion.
"This contract involves foreign military sales to UK, Poland, Pakistan, Germany, Finland, Australia, Romania, Qatar, Oman, Korea, Greece, Switzerland, Portugal, Singapore, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Japan, Slovakia, Denmark, Canada, Belgium, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Italy, Norway, Spain, Kuwait, Finland, Sweden, Taiwan, Lithuania, Israel, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Turkey," the notification states.
It adds that work on the order is expected to be completed by the end of May 2030.
Although it remains unclear as to exactly how many, if any, new AMRAAM missiles would be delivered to Pakistan, the development has triggered speculation about potential upgrades to the Pakistan Air Force (PAF)'s F-16 fleet.
In PAF service, the AMRAAM is compatible with the F-16 fighter jet and was reportedly used to shoot down the Indian Air Force MiG-21 flown by Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman in February 2019, according to The Express Tribune.
PAF chief of air staff Air Chief Marshal Zaheer Ahmed Babar visited the US state department in July.
According to the defence publication Quwa, the AIM-120C8 is the export version of the AIM-120D, the main AMRAAM variant in US service. The PAF currently operates the earlier C5 variant, 500 of which were acquired alongside its latest Block 52 F-16s in 2010, the The Express Tribune said.
Pakistan had previously bought 700 AMRAAM in January 2007, which at that time was the largest international order for the weapon, according to Dawn.
The contract follows Islamabad’s shipment of its first consignment of rare earth minerals to Washington on Tuesday.
The shipment was done as part of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that was signed between Frontier Works Organisation (FWO) of Pakistan and the US Strategic Metals (USSM) in September.
The US and Pakistan reached a trade agreement in July that is expected to allow Washington to help develop Pakistan’s largely untapped oil reserves and lower tariffs for Islamabad.
All these developments come as relations between the two countries showed marked improvement following the four-day military conflict between Pakistan and India in May.
PM Shehbaz Sharif has gained favor with Trump since endorsing the American leader for a Nobel Peace Prize for his administration’s efforts this year at reducing tensions between Pakistan and India, following Trump’s repeated assertion that he brokered the ceasefire between the two warring nations.
India has maintained that the understanding on cessation of hostilities with Pakistan was reached following direct talks between the Directors General of Military Operations (DGMOs) of the two militaries.
India and Pakistan agreed to a ceasefire in May to end the most serious military confrontation between the nuclear-armed rivals in decades.