How Pakistan is busting the Great Power monopoly on air power

It was a familiar refrain heard through the packed halls of the Munich Security Conference this year — soliloquies on the “decades-long prosperous international order” now under unprecedented strain. The gathering, as ever, was an echo chamber of transatlantic anxiety, tinged with denial about the steady unraveling of Western primacy.

Thousands of miles away, however, a more consequential transformation is unfolding.

Inside the National Aerospace Science and Technology Park (NASTP) in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, visitors moved through halls lined with scaled-down models of fighter jets and combat drones, pausing at flight simulators where students honed their skills, and observed engineers guiding startups through prototype development.

More than an industrial showcase, NASTP captured a structural shift reshaping global security, as airpower is steadily democratized and credible aerial capability passes from the monopoly of wealthy Western states into the hands of emerging powers in the Global South.

For much of the modern era, scenes like this would have been unthinkable outside a narrow circle of elite powers. Advanced airpower demanded massive defense budgets, well-developed technological ecosystems, and political alignment with Western security networks that controlled access to cutting-edge aircraft, avionics and precision weapons.

Air superiority became the strategic privilege of close U.S. allies, the Soviet Union/Russia, and the handful of wealthy states able to sustain the financial and diplomatic costs of maintaining modern fleets. Export controls, sanctions regimes and political conditionalities ensured that control of the skies remained tightly guarded. Today, however, that long-standing monopoly is steadily eroding.

An example of this monopoly was U.S. control of the F-16, one of the most coveted fighter aircraft of the Cold War. Produced by General Dynamics, the multirole jet combined air-to-air combat capability with precision strike, a versatility it demonstrated in 1981 when Israeli F-16s destroyed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor.

For Pakistan, the F-16 became the geopolitical reward for serving as Washington’s frontline ally in expelling the Soviets from Afghanistan after 1980, while its rival India remained largely dependent on Soviet aircraft during the Cold War. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and increasing tensions between the U.S. and Pakistan after 2001, led to a strategic regional realignment in South Asian arms procurement, and the erosion of Western dominance over advanced airpower.

The shift became impossible to ignore when Washington moved in 2020 to block fellow NATO-member Turkey from acquiring advanced F-16 upgrades following Ankara’s purchase of Russia’s advanced S-400 missile air defense system. The decision exposed how even close allies remain vulnerable to Western export controls. Ankara responded by accelerating its indigenous drone program, producing low-cost, combat-proven platforms that would soon reshape battlefields from Ukraine and the Caucasus to the Middle East and Africa, a transformation catalyzed and accelerated by the war in Ukraine.

In parallel, Pakistan and China advanced the JF-17. The name of the affordable jet took a swipe at its Western competitors, with “JF” standing for “Joint Fighter” and the number 17 suggesting an upgrade over the F-16.

China's willingness to transfer technology and co-produce advanced systems enabled Pakistan to field a modern multirole fighter capable of shooting down aircraft with beyond-visual-range missiles, delivering precision-guided munitions against ground targets and tracking multiple threats through its active electronically scanned array radar. Together, Turkish combat drones and the JF-17 have shattered the exclusivity of airpower, dismantling the financial and political barriers that long restricted credible aerial capability to a narrow circle of privileged states.

For Pakistan, this transformation has been both strategic and reputational. Co-developed with China and increasingly produced domestically, the JF-17 anchors Islamabad’s shift from arms importer to aerospace power broker. That evolution gained global visibility during the four-day conflict last May, when Pakistani aircraft allegedly downed the Indian Rafale aircraft purchased from the French firm Dassault.

That success generated international attention and drew rare public praise from U.S. President Donald Trump, sharply boosting interest in the aircraft. Since then, the JF-17’s export footprint has expanded across Nigeria, Myanmar, Azerbaijan, and Iraq, with interest growing across Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.

By offering a capable, affordable alternative to Western and Russian fighters, Pakistan is reshaping procurement choices for mid-tier states. In doing so, it is no longer merely buying security but it is increasingly enabling it, positioning itself as a strategic node in a rapidly diversifying global defense ecosystem.

The consequences of this shift extend beyond arms markets, as smaller and mid-tier states acquire credible airpower for the first time and regional hierarchies flatten and deterrence relationships recalibrate. In volatile regions from South Asia to the Middle East and the Caucasus, this diffusion of airpower is fundamentally altering how influence, coercion, and stability are negotiated.

“For mid-tier powers, the war in Ukraine showed that without effective airpower, maneuver alone cannot deliver decisive battlefield outcomes. Instead, it drives conflicts toward attritional stalemate and forces a reassessment of force structure and operational concepts,” observes Lt Col Steen Kjaergaard from the Royal Danish Defence College, Denmark, who has closely followed the war in Ukraine to study the battlefields of tomorrow.

Back at NASTP in Rawalpindi, the objective is not merely to manufacture aircraft, but to cultivate human capital and technological depth underpinning long-term strategic autonomy. By embedding aerospace development within an entrepreneurial framework, Pakistan is laying the groundwork for enduring defense sovereignty, ensuring that its growing airpower is supported by indigenous skills, research capacity and industrial resilience rather than perpetual external dependence.

According to Air Marshal (Ret.) Aamir Masood, who served in the Pakistan Air Force for over 40 years, “Aerospace [is likely to] remain as a weapon of choice for future leadership.”

He says that the future “is all about non-contact warfare with beyond visual range precise ammunition, swarming drones and combat unmanned vehicles assisted by Artificial Intelligence based algorithms Decision support tools (DSTs). A country with better integration and networking would be able to have a faster OODA (Observe- Orientate- Decide- Act).”

The cumulative effect is a reshaping of the global balance of military power. Western dominance of defense markets is weakening as a new cohort of arms exporters led by Turkey, Pakistan and China is redefining access to advanced aerial capability.

“It is not only about cheaper alternatives. These states offer new solutions for markets confined by the political conditionality, or export mechanisms imposed by the Western world. This change is especially appealing in the Global South, eroding the domination of Western suppliers over elevated military capabilities,” said Flavius Caba-Maria, President of the Middle East Political and Economic Institute in Romania.

As more states acquire affordable fighters and combat drones, deterrence relationships are shifting and regional competitions are intensifying, injecting both stability and volatility into fragile security environments.

The democratization of airpower does not automatically produce peace. Instead, it redistributes leverage, accelerates arms races and complicates strategic calculations. It also signals the arrival of a genuinely multipolar military order, in which technological capability is no longer the exclusive domain of a few privileged states. This transformation is unfolding in real time, redrawing the geopolitical map of the skies and, with it, the nature of air power itself.