Pakistan’s Ballistic Missile Arsenal Detailed

Contrary to widespread popular belief, the bulk of Pakistan’s arsenals of ballistic and cruise missiles of Chinese and North Korean origin that have been acquired from the late 1980s till to date are armed with conventional high explosive (HE) or fuel air explosive- (FAE) based warheads. Such weapons, to be employed in wartime for striking hostile static/land-mobile military and strategic economic infrastructure targets, are currently being re-equipped with hybrid inertial navigation systems and terminal homing sensors that will significantly reduce the weapons’ circular error probable (CEP). In parallel, efforts are being made to overcome the critical shortcomings in the area of strategic target acquisition-cum-designation through the induction of force multipliers such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and a constellation of overhead reconnaissance satellites, with Iran, Turkey and Ukraine being the major technology-cum-financial partners of Pakistan in these fields.

Pakistan’s nuclear weaponisation programme, which is estimated to have cost US$10 billion thus far, has, since the early 1980s, been planned and sustained by the Directorate General of Combat Development (DG-CD), Special Works Organisation (SWO) and the Missile Technology Board (MTB), all of which were created by the Pakistan Army’s Rawalpindi-based General HQ. The principal nuclear warhead-carrying ballistic missiles are an estimated six solid-fuelled two-stage Hatf-6/Shaheen-2/M-18/DF-25 intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBM) of Chinese origin, an equal number of liquid-fuelled single-stage Hatf-5/Ghauri-1/Nodong-1 IRBMs of North Korean origin, and about eight solid-fuelled single-stage Hatf-4/Shaheen-1/CSS-6/M-9/DF-15 TBMs that were inducted into service on March 8, 2003. The Ghauri-1 was inducted into service on January 8, 2003 under the 47th Missile Group of the Pakistan Army’s Strategic Forces Command (SFC). The Ghauri-1’s pre-surveyed launch pads and related underground command-and-control bunkers are located at Sargodha on the Kirana Hills in Punjab province, and at Ras Koh mountain range in Chagai in Baluchistan province. The nuclear-tipped Shaheen-1’s and Shaheen-2’s launch pads are located in the lower Hunza Valley and Deosai Plains. To manage its nuclear forces, Pakistan on February 3, 2000 created a National Command Authority (NCA), whose nuclear-hardened command-and-control bunkers are located in tunnels dug deep inside the mountains of the Karakoram Range in Gilgit, Chitral, Skardu and Doran, all located in the Northern Areas (NA). The NCA is responsible for policy formulation and will exercise employment and development control over all strategic forces and strategic organisations. The NCA comprises an Employment Control Committee (ECC), a Development Control Committee (DCC), and a Strategic Plans Division (SPD). The President/Chief of the Army Staff heads the NCA, while the Prime Minister (PM) chairs the ECC. Other members include the ministers of foreign affairs, defence, interior; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee; the Chiefs of the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) and Pakistan Navy; Director-General of the SPD; and technical advisers as required. The DCC controls the development of strategic assets. The PM also chairs the DCC. Other members include the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee; the three armed service chiefs; Director-General of the SPD; and representatives of Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), Kahuta Research Laboratories (KRL) and the National Development Complex (NDC). The SPD acts as Secretariat for the NCA and is responsible for establishing a reliable command, control, communications, computer, and intelligence network. The SPD is co-located with the Joint Services HQ in Rawalpindi.

Ballistic Missile Forces
Pakistan’s quest for acquiring conventional warhead-carrying ballistic missiles began in September 1988, when Islamabad inked a contract with Beijing for ‘wet-leasing’ for a 10-year period some 80 solid-fuelled single-stage M-11 (Hatf-3/Ghaznavi/CSS-7 Mod 1/DF-11) 280km-range TBMs carried and launched from MAZ-543 8 x 8 vehicles, and thirty-four 600km-range M-9 (Hatf-4/Shaheen-1/CSS-6/DF-15) TBMs. China then insisted that these missiles, powered by solid-fuel rockets, carry only conventional HE/FAE warheads and remain deployed only in locations at Sargodha and within the lower Hunza Valley. China also refused to re-life the missiles beyond 1999. These missiles were developed by the state-owned China National Precision Import-Export Corp (CPMIEC) and China Metallurgical Equipment Corp (MECC), assembled by the Sanjiang Aerospace Group in Yuanan, 210km west of Beijing in Hubei province, and the entire contract was serviced by the state-owned China Great Wall Industry Corp (CGWIC) under the supervision of China’s state-owned Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence (COSTIND). By December 1988, China commenced deliveries of M-9 and M-11 TBMs, with all remaining deliveries being concluded by mid-1992. Between January and March 1989, the then Pakistani PM Miss Benazir Bhutto decreed that an IRBM to be developed by KRL (now known as the Institute of Industrial Control Systems) with North Korean assistance be called Al Zulfikar. By early 1990, Pakistan had inked a $516 million turn-key deal with CGWIC and CPMIEC to establish localised industrial facilities for licence-building a total of 64 solid-fuelled missiles such as: the Hatf-3/Ghaznavi/M-11/CSS-7 Mod 1/DF-11 (with a CEP of 250 metres and carrying a 500kg conventional warhead), Hatf-4/Shaheen-1/M-9/CSS-6/DF-15 (with a CEP of 50 metres when carrying a 1-tonne conventional warhead), Hatf-6/Shaheen-2/M-18/DF-25 IRBM (with a CEP of 300 metres and carrying a 1-tonne nuclear warhead), and another 64 Hatf-2/Abdali/P-12 precision-guided tactical missiles each with a 180km-range, CEP of 15 metres and carrying a 500kg conventional warhead. While China agreed to supply the jigs, lathes and moulding/machining/milling tooling required for fabricating the missile sub-assemblies, it insisted that Pakistan independently source raw materials like Grade 18Ni (250) maraging steel, nono steel, powder materials for flame- and plasma-sprayed coatings, corrosion-resistant neodymium iron boron magnets, ablative liners, beryllium-aluminum alloys that can be cast into complex shapes that need little or no machining; plus propellant-related materials like aluminum oxide powder, acrylic acid, ammonium perchlorate, polybutadiene, monomethyl hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide. Beijing also refused to supply nuclear warheads for any of these missiles, but agreed to keep its options open for the M-18 and M-9 in case India became a declared nuclear weapons state in future.

By late 1990, Pakistan had created the state-owned NDC for establishing a chain of industrial facilities at Fatehjung in the Tarwanah suburb of Rawalpindi (final assembly plant), plus at Lahore, Karachi and Gujranwala. These facilities included a solid-propellant and chemicals plant to produce aluminum powder fuel, ammonium perchlorate oxidizer, hydroxyl-terminated poly-butadiene binder, curing agents and other ablative materials; a guidance and control centre for fabricating inertial navigation and flight control systems (actuators, radar altimeters, warhead control suite, safety and arming systems, and fuzes), and conducting trajectory analysis and software development; automatic missile testing and launch control systems for carrying out pre-launch testing procedures like for automatic gyro-aiming and fabricating all-terrain, all-weather, mobile missile launchers; a facility for building telemetry systems used to transmit data in S bandwidth for in-flight tests of guided-missiles; a facility to build power batteries; an aerodynamics-cum-structural analysis centre providing engineering solutions for aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, gas dynamics, weapon designs, structural analysis, computer software development, and networking supported by experimental model analysis and wind tunnel facilities; and a production facility with computer- and numerically-controlled lathes and milling machines, die-casting machines, heavy-metal working facility, dynamic balancing machines, coordinate measurement machines, and a heat-treatment facility to temper high-strength metal alloys. Overall, the NDC’s facilities were an exact replica of the Sanjiang Aerospace Group of China’s facilities in Hubei.

In June 1992, KRL and DG-CD officials visited North Korea’s Sanum-dong guided-missile development centre to examine the Nodong-1 IRBM. Between August 4 and 7 the same year, North Korea’s then Deputy Premier-Foreign Minister Kim Yong-nam travelled to Pakistan to discuss the licenced-assembly of Nodong-1s. On May 29 and 30, 1993 Pakistani and Iranian officials were present for Pyongyang’s test-firing of one Nodong-1. On December 30 the same year, PM Bhutto travelled to Pyongyang and struck a deal to purchase technical design data of the Nodong-1 and use it to indigenously develop the Al Zulfikar. On August 22, 1994 Pakistan paid CPMIEC $15 million for a contract under which the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) 2nd Artillery Corps was to train Pakistan Army personnel to deploy and launch the Shaheen-1 and Ghaznavi TBMs. A month later, a PLA team of instructors arrived at Sargodha. Concurrently, NDC began work on building the instrumented 200-hectare Flight Test Range at Sonmiani, 75km north of Karachi, Sandhak, 50km east of the Iranian border in Baluchistan province, and at the Ratla Range off the Siwalik Hills west of Dera Ghazi Khan. In September the same year, a delegation led by Choe Hui-chong, the then Chairman of North Korea’s State Commission of Science & Technology travelled to Pakistan and visited KRL. During this visit, Choe inked a $220 million deal to provide Pakistan with fuel tanks and liquid-fuelled rocket engines for the Al Zulfikar IRBM, which by then had been renamed as the Hatf-5/Ghauri-1, along with 12 fully-assembled Nodong-1s and related launch-control systems valued at $60 million, plus their fixed-base launch facilities in the Kirana Hills off the Pakistan Air Force’s (PAF) sprawling air base at Sargodha. These items were produced by Pyongyang’s 4th Machine Industry Bureau of the 2nd Economic Committee. By April 1996, Changgwang Sinyong Corporation (aka North Korea Mining Development Trading Corp) began delivering 12 Ghauri-1s in fully knocked-down condition, plus equipment for assembling them at a new customised facility built by KRL at Kahuta. The Ghauri-1’s land-mobile MAZ-543TLM wheeled transporter-erector-launchers were supplied off-the-shelf by the Sungni General Automotive Factory of the 2nd Machine Industry Bureau. At the same time, work began on the construction of related missile test-firing infrastructure near Nowshera in the North West Frontier Province, at Dera Ghazi Khan (in the Dallana tribal area near the Suleiman Range), and the Mashhood Test Firing Range at Tilla Jogian in Punjab’s Jhelum district, with a monitoring station located at Basti Jarh, some 6km from Dera Ghazi Khan along the Dera-Quetta road. In December 1997, Pakistan’s then Army Chief Gen Jehangir Karamat, accompanied by the then Director of KRL Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, visited North Korea’s 125 Factory where the Ghauri-1/Nodong-1s were being built. Following this, North Korean IL-76MD transports began making about three flights a month until January 1998, when the number of flights increased three-fold. These flights ferried in technical experts and telemetry crews to KRL between February and March 1998.

In July 1998, the Pakistan Army conducted its first launch drills involving a Missile Group of Ghaznavi TBMs at the Deosai Plains in Pakistan-administered ‘Azad’ Kashmir. In August the same year, Beijing had agreed to keep at least six M-18s armed with tactical nuclear warheads on permanent standby at Chengdu in Sichuan province and pledged that in the event of Pakistan facing dismemberment during future military hostilities with India, these M-18s would be deployed to pre-surveyed launch pads in the lower Hunza Valley and Deosai Plains by a Mechanised Brigade of the PLA’s 2nd Artillery Corps, thereby constituting Pakistan’s minimum credible nuclear deterrent. The missile launch codes, however, were secured by the PLA, and were not shared with Pakistan, meaning China would not endorse Pakistan’s nuclear first strike doctrine. In September, unable to obtain complete operational sovereignty over its China-origin nuclear warheads and M-18s from Beijing, the DG-CD, through the MTB, authorised KRL to develop three variants of the Hatf-5/Ghauri IRBM, all of which were to be nuclear-tipped, carrying warheads co-developed by the PAEC and North Korea. The 1,300km-range Ghauri-1 was to carry a 700kg warhead, while the Ghauri-2 was to have a 2,300km-range and 700kg warhead, and Ghauri-3 a range of 3,000km. The same month, construction began with North Korea’s civil engineering assistance at Sargodha air base of six above-ground fixed-base Ghauri storage/assembly/launch sites, along with related hardened underground command-and-control centres in the Kirana Hills. In early 2001, the National Engineering & Scientific Commission (NESCOM) was formed through the merger of MTB, Project Management Organisation or PMO, the Air Weapons Complex or AWC, Pakistan Maritime Technologies Complex or MTC, and the NDC. NESCOM was charged with fast-tracking the licenced-production of missiles of Chinese origin like the Hatf-4/Shaheen-1/CSS-6/DF-15/M-9, Hatf-6/Shaheen-2/M-18/DF-25, Hatf-2/Abdali//P-12 and Hatf-3/Ghaznavi/M-11/CSS-7 Mod 1/DF-11A.

By May 2002, operational Abdali precision strike missiles (with a CEP of 30 metres) with conventional warheads and GPS-based navigation systems were deployed along the Deosai Plains, Gujranwala and Mangla, while the Shaheen-1s were deployed to pre-surveyed launch pads in the lower Hunza Valley. The Ghaznavi TBMs were inducted into service on February 22, 2004. Present plans call for the Pakistan Army to deploy two three Missile Groups each of the Abdali and Ghaznavi (grouped under two separate Artillery Brigades (these being the Hyderabad-based Missile Brigade South comprising Missile Groups 25, 35 and 40 and the Sargodha-based Missile Brigade North comprising the 14, 28 and 47 Missile Groups) during hostilities, with all missiles being armed with conventional HE or FAE-based warheads. Each such Group comprises 18 Ghaznavi TELs each with one ready-to-fire missile and two missile reloads, and 18 Abdali TELs each with two ready-to-fire missiles and two reloads. A Group can also be divided into three Batteries (with six Ghaznavi TELs and six missiles plus two reloads and six Abdali TELs with 12 missiles and 24 reloads). Presently, Batteries of the Abdali and Ghaznavi are deployed at Gujranwala, Okara, Mangla Multan, Jhang, Sonmiani, Quetta and Dera Nawab Shah. Joining them in 2009 will be the Babur land attack cruise missile (LACM).--Prasun K. Sengupta