drone near the Pakistan-Iran Border in Balochistan in 2017, and in Operation Swift Retort during the 2019 Jammu and Kashmir airstrikes and aerial skirmish between India and Pakistan. Development Background The JF-17 was designed and developed primarily to meet the PAF requirement for an affordable, unsanctionable, fourth-generation, lightweight, multi-role combat aircraft as a replacement for its large fleet of Nanchang A-5C bombers, Chengdu F-7P/PG interceptors, and Dassault Mirage III/5 fighters, with a cost of , divided equally between Pakistan and China. The aircraft was also intended to have export potential as a cost-effective and competitive alternative to more expensive Western fighters. The development of this aircraft was headed by Yang Wei, who is considered China's "ace designer", who also designed the Chengdu J-20. By 1989, because of economic sanctions by the US, Pakistan had abandoned Project Sabre II, a design study involving US aircraft manufacturer Grumman and China, and had decided to redesign and upgrade the Chengdu F-7. In the same year, China and Grumman started a new design study to develop the Super 7, another redesigned Chengdu F-7. Grumman left the project when sanctions were placed on China following the political fallout from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. After Grumman left the Chengdu Super 7 project, the Fighter China project was launched in 1991. In 1995, Pakistan and China signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for joint design and development of a new fighter, and over the next few years worked out the project details. In June 1995, Mikoyan had joined the project to provide "design support", this also involved the secondment of several engineers by CAC. Launch of FC-1 project In October 1995, Pakistan was reportedly to select a Western company by the end of the year to provide and integrate the FC-1's avionics, which was expected to go into production by 1999. The avionics were said to include radar, Inertial navigation system, Head-up display, and Multi-function displays. Competing bids came from Thomson-CSF with a variant of the Radar Doppler Multitarget (RDY), SAGEM with a similar avionics package to those used in the ROSE upgrade project, and Marconi Electronic Systems with its Blue Hawk radar. FIAR's (now SELEX Galileo) Grifo S7 radar was expected to be selected due to the company's ties with the PAF. In February 1998, Pakistan and China signed a letter of intent covering airframe development. Russia's Klimov offered a variant of the RD-33 turbofan