Pakistan sets up tri-command nuclear force: officials

0 Comments | Asian Political News, August 14, 2006

ISLAMABAD, Aug. 9 Kyodo

Pakistan has set up three commands in its armed forces equipped with nuclear weapons and missiles and capable of retaliating for any first nuclear strike by India, Defense Ministry officials, strategists and nuclear experts have revealed.

The Armed Strategic Force, or ASF, is comprised of special commands in Pakistan's army, air force and navy that store nuclear weapons and nuclear-capable missiles in semi-knocked-down condition in peacetime for assembly and deployment during periods of high tension with India.

''We have an Army Strategic Force Command, we have the Air Force Strategic Force Command and the Naval Strategic Force Command...They are being controlled by responsible people,'' Defense Ministry spokesman Shaukat Sultan told Kyodo News in a recent interview.

''The strategic force in the army is headed by a three-star general and they have various missile groups under them,'' he said.

The army component, set up in 2003 under Lt. Gen. Ghulam Mustafa, forms the backbone of the combined strategic force and its silos and warehouses, mostly underground, dot the map of Pakistan, according to officials and experts interviewed by Kyodo.

''There might be up to 100 facilities where missiles and nuclear weapons and their parts are stored in peacetime,'' said a source well-versed with developments on the nuclear front.

Sultan refused to divulge the number of people involved in the storing, security and possible deployment and operation of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, but independent inquiries reveal the army's strategic force has nearly 6,000 ''appropriately trained and skilled people.''

It is equipped with medium-range Shaheen missiles along with long-range Ghauri missiles with a range of up to 2,500 kilometers, capable of striking almost anywhere in India, with which Pakistan has fought three wars since independence in 1947.

The air force component of the ASF has F-16 fighters, supplied by the United States in the 1980s to support Pakistan's frontline role during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and French-made Mirage aircraft, both modified to deliver nuclear weapons.

In what has been hailed as an impressive technological feat, Pakistan rewired the F-16, reprogrammed its computer and fitted it with under-wing carriages to carry a nuclear device, the shell of which was reconfigured for the purpose.

''It is poetic justice that the nuclear device fitted on the F-16 aircraft resembles an American conventional bomb,'' remarked an official source.

As for the navy's strategic force, defense analysts said Babar, a newly developed cruise missile, is the best candidate for induction, though Pakistan has yet to follow India in test-firing such a nuclear-capable missile from a naval platform.

Both Pakistan and India carried out nuclear tests in May 1998, triggering international sanctions and calls for them to desist from weaponization, namely miniaturizing nuclear devices for placement on surface-to-surface missiles. Neither, however, has discontinued their weaponization and missile development programs.

Shireen Mazari, head of Pakistan's Institute of Strategic Studies, an Islamabad-based think tank, said it would be ''ludicrous'' to do otherwise. ''If you develop weapon capability, you are going to weaponize,'' she said.

Sultan confirmed that Pakistan has indeed been carrying out an India-specific modernization and weaponization program, but he said its nuclear weapons and related missiles have never been deployed.

Likewise, India has carried out a weaponization program but without moving to deployment, according to P.R. Chari, a former Indian Defense Ministry official who is currently a research professor at the Institute of Peace & Conflict Studies in New Delhi.

As a precaution against theft or misuse, Pakistan's nuclear devices and nuclear-capable missiles are stored in partially knocked-down condition, nuclear warheads are not mated with delivery systems, and the weapons require codes to operate, Sultan said.

''The launch mechanism, the device and various other mechanisms, they are kept at different places. To launch them, you have to first put them together,'' he said, adding that the codes are available to very few, even among strategic force personnel.

Despite having been sanctioned for their 1998 nuclear tests, India and Pakistan have both engaged in dialogue with developed countries like the United States and Japan to introduce safeguards against pilferage, theft and accidental use of nuclear weapons.

''We are in touch with the International Atomic Energy Agency, we are in touch with the U.S. authorities, and they fully know what kind of command and control system we have...There is no chance that there is any pilferage or any accidental use,'' Sultan said.

The defense spokesman said that while the three strategic force commands remain affiliated with the respective services -- army, air force and navy -- they take orders from the Nuclear Command Authority headed by President Gen. Pervez Musharraf with representatives from the government and the military.