A lethal missile attack this week on Islamist militants by Pakistani forces was carried out with an armed drone likely to have been supported, designed or supplied by China, according to defence analysts.
The
Pakistan army on Monday claimed it successfully used the “Burraq” unmanned aerial vehicle for an attack on a terrorist compound in the north Waziristan region along the
Afghan border, in which three Taliban militants were killed.
Announced via Twitter by Major General Asim Bajwa, chief spokesman of Pakistan’s armed forces, it was the first known use of an armed Pakistani drone. “For now, the authorities believe their ability to target hardcore militants has improved with this drone capability,” said one western diplomat.
The attack appeared to mark a significant milestone for Pakistan, which has now joined the small club of countries with armed drones. In the past, Islamabad repeatedly sought to buy them from the US but Washington, reluctant to export sensitive technology, refused.
However, China — an ally of nuclear-armed Pakistan and its most important conventional weapons supplier — appears to have stepped up its support.
Neil Gibson, a weapons analyst with IHS Jane’s, said that despite the claims of Pakistani manufacture, “close analysis of imagery released by Pakistan suggests at least a heavy debt to Chinese systems”. The Burraq, he added, “strongly resembles” China’s CH-3 UAV.
Pieter Wezeman, a senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri), said China must have helped Pakistan if it did indeed produce a UAV that goes beyond basic reconnaissance.
“Developing a drone with armed capability is much more difficult than just a reconnaissance one because the reconnaissance one can be built with very basic technology, but integrating weapons is a different level,” he said. “Either it is a Chinese UAV or based on Chinese technology.”
Drone attacks by governments, whether on foreign targets or their own citizens, have become increasingly controversial, with the
British government in the spotlight for killing two British jihadis in Syria this month.
Pakistan has been the site of numerous attacks by
US drones on militant targets. Some of the raids caused civilian deaths and the US drone killings — although carried out with the knowledge of the Pakistani authorities — have been routinely condemned in public by the Pakistan government.
A 2013 report by Amnesty International analysed 45 drone strikes in North Waziristan and alleged that the US had carried out unlawful killings, some of which could amount to war crimes.
China’s suspected link with Pakistan’s drone programme underlines Beijing’s status as the main weapons supplier to the country.
Sipri said this year that just over half of Pakistan’s weapon imports from 2010 to 2014 came from China, and 30 per cent from the US. Pakistan emerged as China’s largest arms customer, accounting for 41 per cent of Beijing’s exports during the same period.
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