Safriz, i always wonder... How babur gonna workout if it has to pass over thar or cholistan desert? Pakistani mission planner must have thought of this and may have chose the path which Babur will follow avoiding desert terrains...
No the missile wont fall off the sky over cholistan as alternative more reliable navigation methods are available for babur,such as Satellite navigation via Baidou and inertial navigation.\the only thing that may be compromised is the missile's stealth as there are not many land features in a desert like cholistan for the missile to blend in and hide behind,and the sand of the desert may not allow missile to fly too low as sand ingestion will certainly effect engine.
But a course can be made round the larger more permanent sand dunes,so much that an observing enemy Radar cannot have a continuous lock on the missile and it keeps losing the missile.
The Tomahawks we were told on Nat geo and Discovery channel being Fired Via Zargos Mountains instead of Iraqi Desets were in 1990-91.
Back then GPS had about 15 meter accuracy in 2D positioning and in 3D, or the height data was much less accurate,in the order of 50 meters,and a missile flying say 50-100 meters above flat desert wont be stealthy,and since it was the first wave of attack the commanders may not be wanting to take risk and make absolutely sure that the missiles remains as stealthy as possible.
This is the video footage of Tomahawks from back in 90s.
at the end of the video the reporter says that two missiles fell off target and have caused civilian causalities...That was the 1990s technology.
Things have improved since then.
The main improvement has been in satellite navigation accuracy,available SAR data and computational power available..Now even countries like Pakistan can create very accurate TERCOM maps and , sending a missile over Desert shouldn't be a problem any more.
