It’s more likely than not that the Pakistani Army will turn the wreckage over to the Chinese who will reverse engineer it bit by bit. That is probably what they did with the tomahawks they recovered, and the Babur is probably a Chinese cruise missile with Pakistani characteristics.

Even if they were to identify areas or technologies of interest, how would they go about manufacturing it?

The shell is probably (not sure since I don’t know) made of carbon fiber, and it’s a foregone conclusion that Pakistan does not have any effective or substantial carbon fiber manufacturing capability. The Chinese don’t either. The Japanese own the market.

What about the electronics? Pakistan cannot manufacture any advanced and complex silicon-based or other compound semiconductor based semiconductors. The Chinese have the capacity for silicon-based chips since a number of contract manufacturing plants have been built in the country. But, I don’t think they have any for compound semiconductor manufacturing.

The Pakistani state won’t get anywhere by picking up the crumbs left by others. Better to innovate on your own. But, with the current leadership in place, that is a wishful dream left to the far, far, future.

-R

Second, here is an interesting post on the subject:
Is it an attempt one one side by our army to take credit away from the tribesmen and on the other an attempt by US army to cover up their embarrassment at loosing the craft?
Whose Drone is it Anyway?
Following up on yesterday’s myriad of reports regarding what did or didn’t happen to a US Predator Drone near the South Waziristan border, Pakistan’s military has officially admitted to recovering the wreckage of a downed US drone near the border which suffered a malfunction and crashed, finally putting to rest speculation about the incident.

Or perhaps not. Residents still insist the plane was shot down by tribesmen rather than crashing on its own. And though yesterday a US defense official denied that any drones were missing, today a military spokesman conceded that a drone did in fact go down. However, he maintained that the drone crashed in Paktika province, and not close to the Pakistan border. He also said the US recovered the downed craft “immediately.”

So the US claims to have recovered its lost drone, and Pakistan also has recovered another drone. Whose is it? Pakistani TV showed footage of the wreckage, and the footage is apparently consistent with an American Predator Drone. But the part shown has been sold to other countries, so its also possible the drone belonged to the British or some other nation….

What’s your take on Iftikhar Chaudhry – is he going to be restored or not?

The real utility of aself-destruct mechanism comes into play when the drone is carrying sensitive information. That, I doubt was the case here. The drone was probably relaying.

Prudent to consider is also the irony of the matter if there were a self-destruct mechanism but could not initiate because it got damaged due to the shot and the consequent fall.

In any case Pakistan Army has a toy to play with. Good luck to them.

What I question is, do the Americans place some sort of destruct mechanism if this technology falls out of their control – I mean that would be the first line of action to prevent their secrets from going out. Just a question

I have heard the newer version of UAV hawks are far more better – so this should now be old-generation – but that said we will still take the cake and enjoy it