Pakistan Expanding Nuclear Program

[Patriot]

I agree.I don't think our scientists at NESCOM give a damn about these reports ./

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

All old news - the 'report' is a collection of reports and rumors on various aspects of Pakistan's nuclear and weapons program.

The expansion at the Khusahab complex (most of which was accomplished during Musharraf's time and therefore before the economic crises) has been reported on for several years now and is nothing new.

Similarly, there have been reports and rumor for years on the development of longer range ballistic missiles and cruise missiles. On the cruise missile side, after the development of the Babur (LACM) and Raad (ALCM) it was a pretty safe assumption that the R&D would also be focusing on a ship and/or sub-launched capability.

So absolutely nothing new in terms of what is being reported.

Moreover, if this report is true Pakistan is clearly going beyond the moratorium existing as an unwritten code of conduct in South Asia to halt the arms race.

What 'moratorium existing as an unwritten code of conduct in South Asia to halt the arms race'?

Utter BS.

Which country is by far spending the most on the expansion of its conventional forces?

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

I thought Pakistan was in the midst of an economic crisis so how could they afford any of this?

You can join shchinese on a vacation if you keep up your trolling.

Stick to the topic.

 

[ratolz]

I think increasing no of nuclear weapons up to a minimum requirement level is not bad thing. We all know that India and Pakistan are having much much lower number as compare to USA and Russia. But the control should be always in the hands of Government. And in the case of Pakistan the thing makes worry is that military always show the corner to civilian government.
Some people will say these nuclear weapons are danger to world..YES these are, but we have to admit this also, that these weapons are a reality, so what can be done is, that these weapons should be for as defence tactic not to fire first. Moreover always In the control of Government.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Thread merged with an older thread on Pakistan's alleged nuclear expansion.

There is also a thread on the Indian Army Chief's statement on Pakistan's expansion:

http://www.defence.pk/forums/wmd-missiles/27489-india-army-chief-calls-pakistan-nuclear-cap.html

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

But the control should be always in the hands of Government. And in the case of Pakistan the thing makes worry is that military always show the corner to civilian government.

Please see the threads on Pakistan's nuclear controls - the elected leadership is involved in the decision making process, at the top.

Additionally, on issues such as strategic programs and military capabilities, civilian governments the world over place a lot of importance on the feedback from their military and intelligence services - Pakistan is no different.

 

[ratolz]

Please see the threads on Pakistan's nuclear controls - the elected leadership is involved in the decision making process, at the top.

Additionally, on issues such as strategic programs and military capabilities, civilian governments the world over place a lot of importance on the feedback from their military and intelligence services - Pakistan is no different.

You missed my point. If its civil government ruling, all is fine. But what if military is ruling??? So Pakistan is different here.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

You missed my point. If its civil government ruling, all is fine. But what if military is ruling??? So Pakistan is different here.

So what - Hitler was 'elected', and the US is the worlds oldest democracy and has nonetheless been involved in more military and covert interventions in other nations than most countries.

India, under a civilian leadership, instigated the separatist movement in East Pakistan and supported what we would today call 'terrorists', which eventually led to the events of 1971 and the third war between India and Pakistan.

India, again under a civilian leadership, also created and supported the LTTE, which eventually morphed into arguably the worlds most deadly terrorist organization.

So it is clear that the lack of responsibility and restraint is not limited to a military government alone.

 

[sensenreason]

Pak's 'India specific' nuke arsenal exposed - India - NEWS - The Times of India

NEW DELHI: Times Now has accessed a report prepared by top US nuclear scientists that suggests that Pakistan is busily enhancing its nuclear

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weapons and productions capabilities across the board. ( Watch Video )

The report states that Pakistan is readying a new nuclear capable ballistic missile for deployment and two nuclear capable cruise missiles.

It also says that Pakistan is building two new plutonium production reactors and a second chemical separation facility.

The nuclear weapon facilities that are being expanded are located in Chasma, Khushab and Dera Ghazi Khan in southern Punjab.

Pakistan, according to the report by top strategic experts, is renewing work on a partially built separation plant at Chasma, and is also planning to build three more nuclear reactors at Chasma.

The details of three separate nuclear facilities at Khushab, Chasma and Dera Ghazi Khan have not been available in the public domain till now, and expose Pakistan’s secretive attempts to build up a substantial arsenal, likely to target India.

With regard to Khushab – the report says the country is building two heavy water reactors at the site which will more than triple the nation’s plutonium production and processing capability. Plutonium is one of the main fuels for nuclear weapons. The nuclear reactor will thus become a source while the under construction separation facility nearby, a means to purify the plutonium.

Based on official estimates of Pakistan’s current uranium and plutonium technology, scientists had so far thought the country far short of having a 100 nuclear war heads in its kitty - however the new report seems to suggest that Pakistan has much exceeded these earlier estimates, and from being able to build 30-40 nuclear weapons it actually could possess as many as 70-90 – a disturbing figure from India’s point of view and that of the US, currently debating financial and military aid to its friend in keeping with the ****** agreement.

Moreover, if this report is true Pakistan is clearly going beyond the moratorium existing as an unwritten code of conduct in S Asia to halt the arms race. “The sheer aggressiveness of its activities is disturbing,” remarks in-house defence expert Maroof Raza.

According to the report, Pakistan has decided to supplement and replace its heavy uranium-based weapons with smaller, lighter, plutonium-based designs that could be delivered further by ballistic missiles than its current war heads. Ballistic missiles are important as they could reach targets as far a field as Mumbai – cities so far not covered by Pakistan’s earlier delivery programme. Ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and the refitting of nuclear bases and nuclear reactors certainly could be bad news for India and something New Delhi will undoubtedly have to take note of.

In an ironically revealing interview to MSNBC in May this year, Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari had dodged the question whether his country was expanding its nuclear facilities. “It not a fact, it’s a position that some people have taken, we are not adding to out stockpiles as such. Why do need to?” he asked rhetorically, but when pressed to give a categorical answer, he said: “I don’t think so, no” and then added “Even if I did I wasn’t going to tell you.”

The strategy behind Pakistan’s secret nuclear expansion is to increase and enhance its nuclear forces, build new facilities to provide the Pakistani military several options and build new facilities to fabricate weapons that use plutonium cores. It also wants to build new facilities to make composite cores and/or 'boosting' warheads yield, and supplement and replace heavy uranium-based weapons with smaller lighter plutonium-based designs to expand its range of ballistic missiles. In fact, Pakistan is already ready to deploy its short-range ballistic missile the Ghaznavi – a solid-fueled, single-stage missile which can deliver a 500-kg payload and has an on-paper range of 500 kms.

Pakistan is also currently developing two nuclear capable cruise missiles – the Babur cruise missile based on a new and smaller plutonium warhead, and a submarine-launched nuclear capable cruise missile.

It is also poised to induct its Shaheen I missile into its force. Shaheen I is ‘a reverse-engineered M-9 missile supplied by China’ and has a range of approximately 700kms.

Another development is that Pakistan is planning to replace the Ghauri with the Shaheen II, a still under development missile which has a range of 2,050 kms.

So Indian Planner were taking Pakistani stance of not adding to their stockpile at face value?

Im sure Pakistani planners expected India to expand their stockpile. If Indians havent done so.Its stupid.If they have been unable to do so. Its disgusting.

So whats surprising is the 'trust' Indian planners seem to have in rival countries policy statements. If China says it doesnt have any aggresive intentions about India, will we believe them and sit on our %^^&**& hoping that Chinese always say in public what they mean in private also?

Unless, this report is meant to pressure US to take action against Pakistan or allow India strategic space to increase their stockpile dramatically, it would mean India has committed a strategic 'Kargil'. The one's creating the strategy were asleep at the wheel.

 

[Spitfighter]

You can join shchinese on a vacation if you keep up your trolling.

Stick to the topic.

My bad, I meant that as a serious question, I wasn't trying to flame the thread. Nuclear weapons are expensive, and Pakistan only spends something like 7 billion, considering the size of the military and the size of nuclear stockpiles, I didn't think it would leave much room for expansion.

Which is why, I didn't really think the news was true as I figured that Pakistan simply couldn't afford to expand its nuclear arsenal at this time. IMO its simply an attempt to turn up the heat on Pakistan.

 

[sadiqams]

'Its the economy stupid' This new reactor will go a long way to cover the shortfall in power generation the economy and people have to put up with. The by product are the nuclear weapons its like killing two birds with one stone (or one shot).

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

My bad, I meant that as a serious question, I wasn't trying to flame the thread. Nuclear weapons are expensive, and Pakistan only spends something like 7 billion, considering the size of the military and the size of nuclear stockpiles, I didn't think it would leave much room for expansion.

Which is why, I didn't really think the news was true as I figured that Pakistan simply couldn't afford to expand its nuclear arsenal at this time. IMO its simply an attempt to turn up the heat on Pakistan.

As I mentioned in my previous post, and as you can see by following ISIS's reports and satellite images of the Khushab expansion (some posted earlier in this thread), the expansion of Plutonium production facilities and therefore a possible expansion in Pakistan's nuclear weapons and a modernization of its designs (Plutonium based weapons being lighter and more powerful for an equivalent Uranium based weapon) has been going on for several years now, and is almost complete. Most of this work was done during the Musharraf years.

http://www.isis-online.org/publications/southasia/Khushab_23April2009.pdf

http://www.isis-online.org/publications/southasia/PakistanExpandingNewlabs.pdf

http://www.isis-online.org/publications/southasia/PakistanExpandingCPC.pdf


The diversification of Pakistan's missile capability is also no secret - from the various ballistic missiles of increasing range to the LACM and ALCM, it is reasonable to assume that Pakistan is working on both longer range Ballistic Missiles as well as sea based weapon systems - which has been shown correct by the flare up over the alleged harpoon modification.

Whether the harpoon was modified or not, it does appear that Pakistan secretly tested a sea based weapon.

Finally, on the economic question, I'll hazard a guess that funding for Pakistan's strategic programs is kept classified and separate from the defence budget, for obvious reasons. In any case, as the ISIS and NYT reports show, the expansion and diversification is taking place.

 

[ashwin]

WASHINGTON: Pakistan's rapidly ramped up nuclear arsenal is now 70-90 strong with increasingly sophisticated bomb designs and smart delivery
systems aimed primarily at India, two US researchers have said, even as Islamabad is running from pillar to post seeking foreign aid to stem an economic collapse.

In a paper written for the Bulletin for Atomic Scientists, Robert Norris of the Natural Resources Defense Council and Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists say Pakistan is "busily enhancing its capabilities across the board," with new nuclear-capable ballistic missiles being readied for deployment, and two nuclear capable cruise missiles under development.

Two new plutonium production reactors and a second chemical separation facility also are under construction.

The paper essentially upgrades Pakistan's nuclear arsenal both quantitatively (from 60 weapons last year to 70-90 now) and qualitatively -- from uranium-base to being plutonium-centric.

"The fact that they are preparing nuclear-capable cruise missiles suggests their scientists have been able to miniaturize nuclear warheads by using plutonium," Kristensen told ToI. "They are shifting their nuclear base from uranium to plutonium...in a sense, they are turning a chapter."

Plutonium-based warheads are lighter and easier to handle, a better fit for nimble cruise missiles. India's nuclear arsenal is largely plutonium-based.

Kristensen said Pakistan's weapons and deliver-systems can be assumed to be India-specific because Islamabad "has not declared any other adversary." The United States has been expressing concern to Pakistan about its accelerated program and urging it hold back, but there does not appear to be any concerted effort from Washington to influence Pakistan's decisions, he added.

Pakistan is an economically desperate situation and running from pillar to post for foreign aid, including beseeching the so-called Friends of Democratic Pakistan on a monthly basis for financial support to stave off a collapse. But that does not seem to have impacted the multi-billion dollar ramping up of its nuclear arsenal in the absence of any US effort to leverage the economic handle it has on Islamabad.

Islamabad, on its part, uses its role as a so-called ally in the war against extremists to keep expanding its nuclear program by implicitly threatening to cease helping the US – a nightmare scenario for Washington since most of teh supplies to its forces in Afghanistan goes through Pakistan.

"Both countries have a trump card to play. We have not heard any any descriptions about how they play it out," Kristensen said.

In their paper, Kristensen and Norris say Pakistan is improving its weapon designs, moving beyond its first-generation nuclear weapons that relied on Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU). After pursuing plutonium-based designs for more than a decade, Islamabad appears to have mastered the technology.

Central to that effort, the paper says, is the 40–50-megawatt heavy water Khushab plutonium production reactor, which was completed in 1998 and is located at Joharabad in the Khushab district of Punjab. Six surface-to-air missile batteries surround the site to protect against air strikes. Norris and Kristensen say as a sign of its confidence in its plutonium designs, Pakistan is building two additional heavy water reactors at the Khushab site, which will more than triple the country's plutonium production.

Explaining the changing nature of the Pak arsenal, they say all of these efforts suggest that Pakistan is preparing to increase and enhance its nuclear forces. In particular, the new facilities provide the Pakistani military with several options: fabricating weapons that use plutonium cores; mixing plutonium with HEU to make composite cores; and/or using tritium to "boost" warheads' yield.

Without referencing the recent controversy in India about the success or otherwise of its thermo-nuclear test in 1998 (now dubbed the sizzle vs fizzle debate), the paper says "absent a successful full-scale thermonuclear test (by Pakistan), it is premature to suggest that Pakistan is producing two-stage thermonuclear weapons" – in other words, it has yet to acquire a Hydrogen Bomb.

But, they say, the types of facilities under construction suggest that Pakistan has decided to supplement and perhaps replace its heavy uranium-based weapons with smaller, lighter plutonium-based designs that could be delivered further by ballistic missiles than its current warheads and that could be used in cruise missiles.


Pakistan rapidly ramping up India-specific nuclear arsenal - India - NEWS - The Times of India

 

[QADRI]

so what US is also developing modern weapons, they should first watch their steps then count the others. they are now looking for excuses to suppress Pakistan just like they do in case of Iraq by saying that Iraqis are producing chemical weapons of mass distruction, why don't they look at themselves, why don't they look at their chemical, nuclear, hydro and cluster bombs which they are testing and dropping on innocent people. I think they are not afraid of Pakistani nukes their core issue is why a third world developing Muslim country is owning a BOMB, they don't care whether Pakistan will use it on India or not, they actually don't want Muslim country to prosper and to develope bomb for their security, and thats the only reason.

 

[adrenalin]

If you have nuclear weapons capability, you sure will increase your arsenal. India too has an arsenal, enough for deterrence I suppose.

By the way, I have 1-2 hours of power cuts everyday. I was on the verge of making ginger paste in my mixer, when power took off. Can we not use these sources of energy for the right uses??????? Like power generation.....