Documents accessed by Wikileaks indicate that Washington agreed to sell F16 fighter jets to Pakistan so that in the eventuality of a conflict, Islamabad could fall back on conventional warfare and not resort to utilising its nuclear arsenal.
Even as India continues to insist that Pakistan violated the F-16 purchase agreement with the US during the aerial clash with India on 27 February, a correspondence of Anne Patterson, the then-US ambassador in Islamabad’s with the State Department in 2008, reads that F-16 aircraft, armed with AMRAAMS, were meant to essentially buy time to delay Pakistan considering their nuclear option in a conflict with India.
The 20-paragraph communique, disclosed by the Wikileaks, reads “an enhanced F-16 program also has deterrence value by giving Pakistan time and space to employ a conventional rather than nuclear reaction in the event of a future conflict with India.”