Islamabad, May 20: The Pakistan Air Force (PAF) will soon have female fighter pilots flying its jets, including F-16s.
“For the first time in Pakistan’s history, the air force has inducted 10 lady officers in its general-duty (pilot) branch on a trial basis. They are currently undergoing flight training at the air force academy,” a PAF official said in Islamabad today.
Apart from the trainee pilots, women officers are already serving the air force in the engineering, logistics, accounting, administration and education branches.
The official said of the 10 female officers, five are flying Mushshak (Cessna) trainer planes while five others are being trained to fly T-37 jets.
After completing their training from the academy, these pilots will be granted commission in the air force as fighter pilots in April, 2006.
However, the PAF will induct more female pilots only after assessing the flying performance of the first group, the official said.
The PAF has recently begun flying the US-origin T-37 trainer jets after military sanctions, that were imposed after Pakistan conducted nuclear tests in May 1998, were lifted.
The PAF uses T-37s to train male and female aviation cadets in its academy at Risalpur, south of Islamabad.
“The aircraft has already gone through the life enhancement programme for which Americans also supplied necessary spares to the PAF,” an official said in Islamabad today.
Consequently, Pakistan Aeronautical Complex (PAC), which rebuilds all fighter jets in the PAF arsenal, has stopped co-production of the Karakoram-8 jet trainers with China for the time being as the present fleet of T-37s and K-8s are enough to meet the training requirements of the air force, the official said.
The PAF also plans to use the PAC for the assembly of the JF-17 (Thunder) jet components.
Pakistan and China have jointly manufactured the JF-17, which had its maiden test flight in September 2003.
Another prototype of the jet took to the skies in April 2004. The JF-17 is a lightweight, all-weather fighter equipped with state-of-the-art equipment including fire control and jamming systems.
