Pakistan’s nuclear and missile assets -- myth vs reality

[asaad-ul-islam]

Still your navy does not operate on an infinite budget

Assad defence budget or no defence budget, it does not matter, all these aquisitions will have a set budget and would have been planned in consultation with the executive and the remining arms, so navy cannot go on in an endles purchasing spree. It will simply result in your bean counters diverting funds from other arms.

Dude for the n th time I repeat these are replacements for your older frigates and subs...

no "dude", I pretty much know that old frigates and subs like agosta-70 or daphne class will be replaced, but probably not anywhere near the amount you're thinking. we're ordering OHP class which are pretty old. even with the written amount of budget, the army overspends. there's some controversy going on right now, I think as a matter of fact about the hidden expenses that the army keeps from the govt.

Assad there has been intesnse speculation and controversy over the success of the tests , based on air sample. The point is , every design will have certain flaws and these tests are to identify such flaws and rectify and streamline the design.

the air samply had nothing to do with failure, actually it proved the fact the pakistan tested a plutonium device, which we never claimed to do. most of pakistan's test were successful with controversy, just like India's.

Yup , sources say that of, the number of tests carried out , two of them especially did not produce expected yeild, so again the scientists had to go to the drawing board, hey but them we can find the equation of state using super computers ...

exactly

Assad this is the most absurd statement I have ever heard, the budget is relevant for every nation including China and India. If according to your estimates, if the budget is irrelevant, then you'd already be either bankrupt or your air arm would not have the cash to order to hundred odd J17. Period

IPF so far you've given the most absurd statements concerning pakistan's nuclear weapons. the articles that clearly state the pakistan has nuclear capable cruise missiles should make it clear, but you're going to say that it's worthless, right?

must I go through our "bankrupt" past where we drained our economy on defense? since the 90's, we've did either of the following: (guessed estimates)
Pay our debt (40-60% budget)
Defense budget(20% budget)
development/whatever (everything else)
most of our money didn't go into the conventional side, it actually went to the nuclear detterent and delivery systems.

Nope , it is still difficult to buy computers with robust architecture, any university can erect an grid an claim to have super computer, but the point of the matter is, is it robust enough.

the link I posted says otherwise, there's more if you want.

Guess what , your PS2 can perform better than their super computer.

i actually have a PS3, but wow seriously?

Dude super computers begin in civilian laboratories and end up in millitary hands, not the other way around. Building them is no big deal , but perfecting it is the problem and for that you need heck a lot of professors , Univ's working in that area..

not in pakistan or perhaps even the US. over here in Pakistan. technology has to first come into the military then civilian sector. no where will you see anything on sensor network architecture(C4i/net centric warfare, etc.) in Pakistan or any of its univ. does that mean pakistan does not have this base?

Pakistan always has secret "black" projects that run on the "black budget". we didn't know about cruise missiles until it was tested, right? similarily we have to rely on rumours on what pakistan has and doesn't have and believe me, almost everyone here probably has a family member in the military. it's actually military officials who are put in charge of these projects, with no trace of it at all in the civilian sector.

pakistan won't release any information on its prowess in military tech to the public, that's what the ISPR is for. india will announce its intent before it even begins on the project.

Show me, at the minimum Pakistan has grid computing infrastructure first..

show me anything that has to do with missiles, in pakistani univ.

Forget it , Its funny how you can assume that they will transfer such a key and sensitive tech to you in a platter, for which they have toiled for years. ahaam it ain't happening boss, at best they might allow you to run simulation tests in their computers, but then you don't have enough experts to write the code because you did not have the infrastructure to test the code in the first place.

Chinese supercomputer headed to top ranks - CNET News.com
ITworld.com - China to crack supercomputer top 10 list
IndustryWeek : China's High-Tech Export Threatens U.S. Competitiveness
denial, if indians claim that pakistan got nukes from china, i don't see why my statement matters anyway.

Yeah yeah , the hackers and 007s .. and blah blah ... dude for petes sake such software and grids are connected using seperate lines and do not run on lines provided bu ISP's...

um actually here's a link on chinese hackers stealing precious US military tech.
Chinese hackers breach US military defences - Software - Breaking Business and Technology News at silicon.com

Simple, Pakistan by now would have reliable (by your standards) nukes that can be deloivered by BM, SLBM and aircrafts. Period. Pakistan does not have reliable technology to miniaturise nukse that can be mated into cruise missiles. Even if you miniaturise, your engineers do not have infrastructure to test it, that means it is not yet reliable, so givne the resources , Pakistan might mate one or two nukes with cruise missiles, dont expect more...

sigh ... why am i even bothering with an indian who can't accept that fact that pakistan has nuclear weapons, why?

this is almost as stupid as Vajpayee saying, after the "thermonuclear" test that didn't come out to be, "we have the big bomb now!"

pakistan has had MIRV-ed ballistic missiles(for a while now), nuclear-capable cruise missiles, and bombs that can be delivered from aircraft. SLBM is a bit far off, we also don't have the need for it considering the fact that we can do the same thing with SLCM.

pakistan did a hot test in 1998, but we've been doing cold tests for a while now. the more we did tests, the more compact our designs became. however, miniaturisation for uranium becomes impossible after some point. if we want to MIRV our missiles, the only logical choice would be with a plutonium warhead.

the air sample you mentioned concerning plutonium can be proof of the fact the we can MIRV our missiles. that fact that we are using plutonium warheads for BM and CM's, means that we realized that we can't miniaturised uranium warheads after a certain point.

as for miniaturisation, we don't have proof that india can do it either. but you state that supercomputers will help, and I state that we have what we need but we won't mention it (which we never do, but look at what we have now). neither arguments of ours hold that much ground in terms of facts. so pakistan is where india is at, for that much of a fact.

 

[asaad-ul-islam]

as a matter of fact, here's a nice recent article from the NY times:

June 15, 2008
Nuclear Ring Reportedly Had Advanced Design
By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON — American and international investigators say that they have found the electronic blueprints for an advanced nuclear weapon on computers that belonged to the nuclear smuggling network run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the rogue Pakistani nuclear scientist, but that they have not been able to determine whether they were sold to Iran or the smuggling ring’s other customers.

The plans appear to closely resemble a nuclear weapon that was built by Pakistan and first tested exactly a decade ago. But when confronted with the design by officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency last year, Pakistani officials insisted that Dr. Khan, who has been lobbying in recent months to be released from the loose house arrest that he has been under since 2004, did not have access to Pakistan’s weapons designs.

In interviews in Vienna, Islamabad and Washington over the past year, officials have said that the weapons design was far more sophisticated than the blueprints discovered in Libya in 2003, when Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi gave up his country’s nuclear weapons program. Those blueprints were for a Chinese nuclear weapon that dated to the mid-1960s, and investigators found that Libya had obtained them from the Khan network.

But the latest design found on Khan network computers in Switzerland, Bangkok and several other cities around the world is half the size and twice the power of the Chinese weapon, with far more modern electronics, the investigators say. The design is in electronic form, they said, making it easy to copy — and they have no idea how many copies of it are now in circulation.

Investigators said the evidence that the Khan network was trafficking in a tested, compact and efficient bomb design was particularly alarming, because if a country or group obtained the bomb design, the technological information would significantly shorten the time needed to build a weapon. Among the missiles that could carry the smaller weapon, according to some weapons experts, is the Iranian Shahab III, which is based on a North Korean design.

However, in recent days top American intelligence officials, who declined to speak about the discovery on the record because the information is classified, said that they had been unable to determine whether Iran or other countries had obtained the weapons design. Pakistan has refused to allow American investigators to directly interview Dr. Khan, who is considered a hero there as the father of its nuclear program. In recent weeks the only communications about him between the United States and Pakistan’s new government have been warnings from Washington not to allow him to be released.

Dr. Khan’s illicit nuclear network was broken up in early 2004; President Bush declared that shattering the operation was a major intelligence coup for the United States. Since then, evidence has emerged that the network sold uranium enrichment technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya, and investigators are still pursing leads that he may have done business with other countries as well.

While Libya gave up its nuclear program, North Korea and Iran have not, despite intense international pressure, sanctions, and repeated offers of incentives to do so.

On Sunday, Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, said that the administration remained concerned about the possibility that additional plans have been disseminated, but he did not address any of the latest revelations about the Khan network.

“We’re very concerned about the A.Q. Khan network, both in terms of what they were doing by purveying enrichment technology and also the possibility that there would be weapons-related technology associated with it,” he told reporters traveling with Mr. Bush from Paris to London on Sunday.

“That was a concern. That’s one of the reasons we rolled up the network here three years or so ago, and fairly successfully. And part of that rolling up was to roll up the network and part of it was to pursue what kind of relationship the A.Q. Khan network had to individual countries with which they are dealing.”

The existence of the compact bomb design began to become public in recent weeks after Switzerland announced that it had destroyed a huge stockpile of documents, including a weapons design, that were found in the computers of a family in Switzerland, the Tinners, who over the years played critical roles in Khan’s operation.

In May, Switzerland’s president, Pascal Couchepin, announced that more than 30,000 documents had been shredded, saying the government acted to keep them from “getting into the hands of a terrorist organization or an unauthorized state,” according to Swiss news accounts.

But American and I.A.E.A. officials say that destroying one copy of an electronic file was more satisfying to the Swiss than it was reassuring to them. It is unclear whether the Swiss knew that some of the same material had been found in other countries by I.A.E.A. investigators.

Some details of the Swiss action and the bomb design have appeared recently in Swiss newspapers and The Guardian of London and in The Washington Post on Sunday.

The Swiss have provided little information about exactly what they destroyed, but I.A.E.A. inspectors watched the destruction and American intelligence officials were deeply involved. “We were very happy they were destroyed,” one senior intelligence official said Friday. But he added that “what else is out there” remains a mystery. The Swiss destruction of the equipment came in response in the case of Urs Tinner, who has been in custody for more than four years but has not yet stood trial.

Two former Bush administration officials said they believed Mr. Tinner had provided information to the Central Intelligence Agency while he was still working for Dr. Khan, including some of the information that helped American and British officials intercept shipments of centrifuges on their way to Libya in 2003.

When news of that interception became public and Libya turned its $100 million program over to American and I.A.E.A. officials, President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan forced Dr. Khan to issue a vague confession and then placed him under house arrest. Dr. Khan has since renounced that confession in Pakistani and Western media, saying he made it only to save Pakistan greater embarrassment.

It was not until 2005 that officials of the I.A.E.A., which is based in Vienna, finally cracked the hard drives on the Khan computers recovered around the world. And as they sifted through files and images on the hard drives, investigators found tons of material — orders for equipment, names and places where the Khan network operated, even old love letters. In all, they found several terabytes of data, a huge amount to sift through.

“There was stuff about dealing with Iranians in 2003, about how to avoid intelligence agents,” said one official who had reviewed it. But the most important document was a digitized design for a nuclear bomb, one that investigators quickly recognized as Pakistani. “It was plain where this came from,” one senior official of the I.A.E.A. said. “But the Pakistanis want to argue that the Khan case is closed, and so they have said very little.”

In public statements, Pakistani officials have insisted that the Khan “incident,” as the call it, is now history, and they publicly declared nearly two years ago that their investigations are over.

A senior Pakistani official, interviewed in Islamabad in April, said that the information provided by the I.A.E.A. was “vague and incomplete,” and he insisted that because Dr. Khan’s laboratories specialized in the manufacture of the equipment needed to enrich uranium, “he was not involved in weapons designs.”

But investigators have no doubt that he was the source of the digitized bomb design. “Clearly, someone had tried to modernize it, to improve the electronics,” one said. “There were handwritten references to the electronics, and the question is, who was working on this?”

The officials said that parts of the design were coded so that they could be transferred quickly to an automated manufacturing system for the production of parts.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/world/asia/15nuke.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

P.S: honestly speaking, there were a lot of western european companies in the black market proliferating nuclear technology. i don't too much about the warhead, but if i heard correctly, Libya also helped pay for Pakistan's nuclear program.

 

[indiapakistanfriendship]

no "dude", I pretty much know that old frigates and subs like agosta-70 or daphne class will be replaced, but probably not anywhere near the amount you're thinking. we're ordering OHP class which are pretty old. even with the written amount of budget, the army overspends. there's some controversy going on right now, I think as a matter of fact about the hidden expenses that the army keeps from the govt.

Dude, again for the n th time I repeat, no matter what you overspend which is secret or no secret there is a limit to how much you can spend ie the secret budget you are talking about is fixed and will no way exceed above fifty percent of the said budget, or else it will be open.

the air samply had nothing to do with failure, actually it proved the fact the pakistan tested a plutonium device, which we never claimed to do. most of pakistan's test were successful with controversy, just like India's.

Nope the plutonium in airsamples were not enough to suggest that you exploded a plutonium device, it could at best be a trigger.

most of pakistan's test were successful with controversy,

Refer Stuart Slade..

Originally Posted by Stuart Slade
India has, certainly. They have gun-configuration fission, implosion fission and boosted fission devices. They're mostly configured for delivery by Jaguar and Mirage 2000 aircraft but they do have a few missile-compatible device configurations.

Pakistan is a much harder case. Its not certain that they have any functioning devices at all. Of their three initial test shots, two fizzled completely and the third was a partial shot. It appears that all three devices were gun configuration which means that the pakistanis have apparently achieved the impossible and botched a gun-configuration (that's a level of achievment comparable with jumping off a log and missing the ground). They very hastily did two more test shots, both of which were successes. The problem is there are very strong reasons to believe that both those second-series test shots were Chinese devices.

Probably the fairest assessment of the situation right now is that the Pakistanis probably have some gun-configuration devices of uncertain reliability. They probably do not have implosion devices. That means they have the big clumsy bomb-like configurations of which you speak.

exactly

Dude it actually turns out that the seismographic estimates on Indian nuclear tests that said that the yeild was little low turns out to be inaccurate

So, it was an H-Bomb after all

India's first test at Pokhran on May 11 comprised a hydrogen bomb and the yield was closer to 60 kilotons, it has been confirmed following the release of data collected by 125 seismic stations across the world.

There had been scepticism about India's claim that it had exploded a hydrogen bomb as initial data from seismic stations had recorded only 25 kilotons.

The respected New Scientist magazine confirmed the near 60 kiloton yield and set at rest the controversy whether or not India exploded a thermonuclear device.

In Parliament, the government recently described as ''erroneous'' the conclusions that the Pokhran tests did not comprise a hydrogen bomb.

New Scientist said the tests could have had their seismic signals ****led, possibly by ''decouping'' the devices -- suspending them within caverns in the ground or burying them in sand.

In theory, ten kilotons of explosive force can be completely hidden in this way.

There could be peculiarities in Rajasthan's geology that may have weakened the signals, New Scientist says.

Sceptics say the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty will fail because secret nuclear explosions cannot always be detected. New Scientist says the recent nuclear tests by India and Pakistan appear to prove them wrong.

Before dawn on May 11, a seismograph in a research institute outside Washington DC recorded a disturbance deep in the earth on the other side of the world. Over the next few minutes, dozens of other seismographs all over the planet recorded the same event and transmitted their data automatically to the institute, the Prototype International Data Centre.

A computer analysed the signals and gave its interpretation: an ''event'' of magnitude 5.0 on the Richter Scale under Rajasthan in India. Later that morning, seismologists at the PIDC studied the signals and recognised the event as a nuclear test.

The job of the institute is to test the technology for detecting nuclear bomb tests around the world. From next year its successor, the Real International Data Centre in Vienna, will be charged with policing the CTBT, which outlaws all nuclear explosions.

Whether the RIDC can actually police the CTBT has become the subject of a fierce debate. For it emerged that the seismic monitoring network under trial by the PIDC failed to ''diagnose'' India's tests accurately.

In particular, PIDC failed to detect the second explosion, which India claims yielded between 0.2 and 0.6 kilotons.

The reliability of the monitoring system is vital to the success of the CTBT. The treaty is opposed by some in the US who say that testing is necessary to maintain a nuclear deterrent.

They claim the flaws in the monitoring system prove that CTBT cannot work. Such accusations are ''already damaging prospects for US ratification of the CTBT,'' New Scientist quoted Christopher Paine of the Natural Resources Defence Council, and the American Pressure Group that supports the treaty, as having said.

The CTBT has been signed by 149 countries since it was agreed upon in 1996, but to come into force it must be ratified by all 44 nations in the UN Conference on Disarmament that have nuclear reactors.

So far, only 13, including two ''bomb'' states, Britain and France, have ratified it. US ratification, as well as being essential for the treaty to come into force, is crucial to encouraging others to ratify.

The CTBT calls for four separate global networks to listen for nuclear explosions. None is yet complete, but the seismic network -- which includes stations that automatically transmit data as well as some that can be used as necessary -- is the most developed.

In addition, there will be hydroacoustic monitors to listen for undersea tests, atmospheric sensors to detect the radioactive particles and rare gases, such as xenon, that are released by nuclear explosions, and infrasound receivers to listen for near-surface explosions. All are being tested by the PIDC.

The technology at the centre of the current dispute is seismic. New Scientist quoted Frank Gaffney, former US assistant secretary of defence under President Reagan and now head of the Center for Security Policy, an anti-disarmament think-tank in Washington DC, who argues that because the seismic network failed to pick up all of India's tests, ''nuclear testing can be conducted in ways that will be unverifiable, if not undetectable.''

Roger Clarke, a seismologist at the University of Leeds, argues that the problem such as with regard to the peculiarities in Rajasthan's geology that weakened the signals would diminish with experience of monitoring earthquakes.

''The more stations we have feeding seismic data into the system, the more details like that we will understand,'' he says. Seismologists point out that the network detected both of Pakistan's tests.

But Gaffney's team maintains that the waveforms that allow seismologists to distinguish earthquakes from explosions are not always clear.

''If the Indians hadn't announced their tests, CTBT supporters would have claimed the seismic events that were recorded were natural,'' he says.

"Nonsense," says Clarke. The wave forms of the explosions in India's first test and those in both of Pakistan's were clearly caused by explosions.

UNI

Rediff On The NeT: So, it was an H-Bomb after all


India tests nuclear bombs

13 May 1998

The Indian Government surprised the world this week with a series of five nuclear tests, the county's first since a 'peaceful' explosion in 1974. On Monday, the country detonated a hydrogen bomb, a low yield atomic device, and a tactical nuclear weapon 100 metres below ground. Today, two sub kiloton explosions were carried out at the Pokhran test site in Rajasthan. These last two tests were not picked up by seismic stations set up for monitoring the comprehensive test ban treaty (CTBT). According to experts, no monitoring network could have picked up these last two explosions.

The British Gelogological Survey registered Monday's hydrogen explosion at 4.7 on the Richter scale - similar to a light earthquake. But the failure of seismograph stations to register today's explosions highlights some of the problems with a nuclear test ban. The CTBT says that monitoring stations only need to detect explosions from bombs averaging more than 1000 tonnes of explosives, which would only produce a ground 'shake' of 1 nanometre in size. Below this level, noise from other events, such as mudslides, earthquakes or building construction sites interfere with nuclear 'signatures'. Smaller explosions, particular those taking place underground, are therefore hard to observe.

For this reason, the treaty also implements on-site inspections, radionuclide monitoring and acoustic sensors to look for nuclear testing on known test sites. In all cases it is unlikely that underground sub-kiloton yields will leave enough signatures to pinpoint the location of any clandestine explosions outside these areas.

India has so far refused to sign the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NNPT) and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. It claims the treaties discriminate in favour of the the official 'nuclear' club - the US, Russia, UK, France, and China - who can hold onto and refine nuclear arms indefinitely and with no commitment to disarm.

The international response to the news has been vocal, but only the US and Japan, the largest donors of economic aid to India, have introduced sanctions against the country. Pakistan, which is only 93 miles from the test site, has threatened to implement its own nuclear weapons programme if India builds up a nuclear arsenal. The explosions also undermines the NNPT observed by 185 countries.

United Nations Secretary - General Koffi Annan expressed "deep regret" over the blasts and the European Union issued a statement voicing dismay over India's decision. However, non-profit organisations such as Abolition 2000 UK say that India should not get all the blame. "Unless all the nuclear weapon states begin serious multilateral negotiations now, nuclear weapon proliferation is inevitable" they say.
physicsworld.com

IPF so far you've given the most absurd statements concerning pakistan's nuclear weapons. the articles that clearly state the pakistan has nuclear capable cruise missiles should make it clear, but you're going to say that it's worthless, right?

must I go through our "bankrupt" past where we drained our economy on defense? since the 90's, we've did either of the following: (guessed estimates)
Pay our debt (40-60% budget)
Defense budget(20% budget)
development/whatever (everything else)
most of our money didn't go into the conventional side, it actually went to the nuclear detterent and delivery systems.

Thats the whole point dude, any nuclear weapons programme during the initial stages of development would require huge budget, but there is a point after which the budget is streamlined in order to show a notion of sanity in spending, you cannot expect the same allocation to continue year on year infinitely..

the link I posted says otherwise, there's more if you want.

The link you posted says nothing, as I mentioned earlier , it is easy to export clusters but no nation will provide you with super computer with robust architecture.

i actually have a PS3, but wow seriously?

Hmm in that case you have far better computing power than the iranians have. Even my univ tried a grid network.

not in pakistan or perhaps even the US. over here in Pakistan. technology has to first come into the military then civilian sector. no where will you see anything on sensor network architecture(C4i/net centric warfare, etc.) in Pakistan or any of its univ. does that mean pakistan does not have this base?

Pakistan always has secret "black" projects that run on the "black budget". we didn't know about cruise missiles until it was tested, right? similarily we have to rely on rumours on what pakistan has and doesn't have and believe me, almost everyone here probably has a family member in the military. it's actually military officials who are put in charge of these projects, with no trace of it at all in the civilian sector.

pakistan won't release any information on its prowess in military tech to the public, that's what the ISPR is for. india will announce its intent before it even begins on the project.

Assad, super computers are not considerd to threat or millitary weapons, one on is going to threaten you or place sanctions on you for designing super computers, in fact they can be used in various field ranging from managing stock markets to predicting wheather pattern etc, and above all believe me it takes several universities, civilian labs and Phd's and research groups working in the specific fields to come up with a super computer with robust architecture.

show me anything that has to do with missiles, in pakistani univ.

Thhe easisest way to design super computers is to go the grid route, several univs acros the world are doing it, if your nation has super computers , at the most there must be a robust grid network to train in the first place.

Chinese supercomputer headed to top ranks - CNET News.com
ITworld.com - China to crack supercomputer top 10 list
IndustryWeek : China's High-Tech Export Threatens U.S. Competitiveness
denial, if indians claim that pakistan got nukes from china, i don't see why my statement matters anyway.

It shows China has super computers, did I say otherwise?

um actually here's a link on chinese hackers stealing precious US military tech.

Assad you mentioned regarding Pakistani hackers, my question is how can they hack when the deefence networks are not connected through civilian lines in the first place.

sigh ... why am i even bothering with an indian who can't accept that fact that pakistan has nuclear weapons, why?

When did I say that?

pakistan has had MIRV-ed ballistic missiles(for a while now)

Rumours

pakistan has had MIRV-ed ballistic missiles(for a while now), nuclear-capable cruise missiles, and bombs that can be delivered from aircraft. SLBM is a bit far off, we also don't have the need for it considering the fact that we can do the same thing with SLCM.

What does this have to do with miniaturisation of nukes.

pakistan did a hot test in 1998, but we've been doing cold tests for a while now. the more we did tests, the more compact our designs became. however, miniaturisation for uranium becomes impossible after some point. if we want to MIRV our missiles, the only logical choice would be with a plutonium warhead.

Dude this is the most absurd statement I have ever heard, how can you perform cold tests without seismographs ringing bells, how can you find the equation of state without a super computer.

the air sample you mentioned concerning plutonium can be proof of the fact the we can MIRV our missiles.

Nope the airsamples at best showed that Pakoistan used Plutonium trigger.

as for miniaturisation, we don't have proof that india can do it either

Dude the level of research that goes into the areas of simulation indicates taht India can easily find the equation of state of the design, even some tier two universities have super computers.

but you state that supercomputers will help, and I state that we have what we need but we won't mention it (which we never do, but look at what we have now)

Dude again I repeat, super computers are not missiles or nukes, you have no Idea how super computing research starts.

so pakistan is where india is at, for that much of a fact.

We have one of the best super computing infrastructure and research design labs in the whole world, so dont even start of with it , you country cannot perform fundamental nuclear research or physics research in a fundamental level without super computers in univs..

 

[EagleEyes]

Dude again I repeat, super computers are not missiles or nukes, you have no Idea how super computing research starts.

Please give links of the super duper computers you are talking about.

Thanks.

 

[asaad-ul-islam]

Nope the plutonium in airsamples were not enough to suggest that you exploded a plutonium device, it could at best be a trigger.

Please provide some back up to your claim. no, actually pakistan has the capability of producing plutonium weapons. initially only a few in the beginning and mostly uranium, but now that's changed. Like I said, "denial".

Dude it actually turns out that the seismographic estimates on Indian nuclear tests that said that the yeild was little low turns out to be inaccurate

likewise that controversy for the pakistani tests turn out to be innaccurate, since they claim that their tests were successful.

Thats the whole point dude, any nuclear weapons programme during the initial stages of development would require huge budget, but there is a point after which the budget is streamlined in order to show a notion of sanity in spending, you cannot expect the same allocation to continue year on year infinitely..

what? that made no point at all? pakistan cannot compete conventionally with india, that's why it invests a ton of money into the nuclear deterrant. we have only increased our spending in the nuclear arena.

Assad, super computers are not considerd to threat or millitary weapons, one on is going to threaten you or place sanctions on you for designing super computers, in fact they can be used in various field ranging from managing stock markets to predicting wheather pattern etc, and above all believe me it takes several universities, civilian labs and Phd's and research groups working in the specific fields to come up with a super computer with robust architecture.

IPF, I thought you said they were. after all, you said it's difficult exporting supercomputers to third world nations, right? why does the pentagon want more tighter controls on supercomputer exports? so that rogue countries like Iran cannot get their hands on them for nuclear weapons. fortunately for us, controls have been relaxed since we have MNNA status which gives us access to dual use technology.

like I said before, this stuff is military technology first, then onto the civilian sector. pakistan has, as i mentioned before, "black projects" that go on within the military. india, japan, etc, all these countries are the exact opposite.

Thhe easisest way to design super computers is to go the grid route, several univs acros the world are doing it, if your nation has super computers , at the most there must be a robust grid network to train in the first place.

It shows China has super computers, did I say otherwise?

yeah

Assad you mentioned regarding Pakistani hackers, my question is how can they hack when the deefence networks are not connected through civilian lines in the first place.

IPF, what info did the link give you? do you have any idea how much effort is being put by the chinese in espionage of us tech?

Rumours

"denial" no, news reports actually. the same news report gave us news of missile range, test, and nuclear tests.

What does this have to do with miniaturisation of nukes.

let me go through that with you
"pakistan has had MIRV-ed ballistic missiles(for a while now), nuclear-capable cruise missiles, and bombs that can be delivered from aircraft. SLBM is a bit far off, we also don't have the need for it considering the fact that we can do the same thing with SLCM.

pakistan did a hot test in 1998, but we've been doing cold tests for a while now. the more we did tests, the more compact our designs became. however, miniaturisation for uranium becomes impossible after some point. if we want to MIRV our missiles, the only logical choice would be with a plutonium warhead.

the air sample you mentioned concerning plutonium can be proof of the fact the we can MIRV our missiles. that fact that we are using plutonium warheads for BM and CM's, means that we realized that we can't miniaturised uranium warheads after a certain point."

Dude this is the most absurd statement I have ever heard, how can you perform cold tests without seismographs ringing bells, how can you find the equation of state without a super computer.

the cold tests happened before the hot test. here's a piece of interview with samar mubarakmand:
Hamid Mir: Dr. Sahib please tell us that the former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission of Pakistan, late Munir Ahmed Khan sahib once told us that our first cold test was conducted in 1983, will you please tell us something regarding this?
Samar: Yes, when our program began in 1974, first of all we had to develop an infrastructure, which included a very big design team of nuclear physicists which by the Grace of Allah still exists and is very competent and if required can deliver a new atomic bomb design to the country every three to four months, as per our requirements. Then facilities were also created for manufacturing, because when a bomb is being designed and made, facilities for explosives are needed, ultra-high precision facilities of mechanical engineering are required, then electronics have to be fully mastered, then once a weapon has been developed, then a totally different technology has to be mastered to test that weapon because testing is such an event that once you press a button, the bomb is detonated and the entire test is over in a few micro-seconds. So you should have such a capability of testing that in those one or two microseconds, the yield of the bomb is measured accurately and the performance of the bomb is properly gauged and understood. So all this was done and by 1983 the first bomb was also developed, which was ready for a cold test. Then you need some tunnels in the mountains for conducting a test, which should be in a strong rock wherein the tunnels should be constructed so that during a test no radiation or damage is leaked outside the mountain. This infrastructure also took 5-6 years to develop, and work on it continued from 1977 to 1982-83. When we were ready for a cold test, the government gave us permission to conduct it, and it was the month of March, during which the first cold test was conducted and believe me, it was conducted very discreetly. We drove big trucks without drivers for many hundreds of kilometers ourselves and our scientists acquired heavy driving licenses for this purpose and then conducted the cold test.

Nope the airsamples at best showed that Pakoistan used Plutonium trigger.

"denial" sounds like your opinion. keep your opinions to yourself, this isn't bharat rakshak, hindutva, or akhand bharata

Dude again I repeat, super computers are not missiles or nukes, you have no Idea how super computing research starts.

i'm not the one who brought up supercomputers. you brought them up, stating that we need them for ballistic missiles.

We have one of the best super computing infrastructure and research design labs in the whole world, so dont even start of with it , you country cannot perform fundamental nuclear research or physics research in a fundamental level without super computers in univs..

most of our nuclear research happens in the military zone, not the civilian sector which you seem to be so in touch with. everything including missile technology, sensor tech, netcentric warfare, satellites, SLV, etc. is in the military sector.

IPF, you might as well reveal what you're really trying to say here, "pakistan doesn't have nuclear weapons." or should i put that into language you can understand, "pakistan does not have the big bomb! india has the biggest bomb!"

otherwise, stop wasting my time. pakistan has nuclear weapons and can use them in anyway. i don't know how long it's going to take you to realize that, but it might hurt when it does, judging by the way you think.

 

[Tang0]

On the subject of Super Computers. As someone who has worked at NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) in an extremely minor role, I can tell you that the hardware is not the issue. The current fastest supercomputer is built out of PS3 game consoles(Not to say it is cheap either...). The issue is the money and time to get hundreds of the best engineers to get all that hardware to do something in parallel. Multi-threading an application is hard, creating a grid to take a single process and break it into thousands of sub-processes is even harder. Any more, supercomputing hardware is not considered "Sensitive". To many foreign nations have found the knack of it, and the civilian supercomputing world has turned towards an "Open Source Distributed" model. Secretive corporations like Cray just don't dominate the market anymore.

 

[Tang0]

Some links

Not the best, since Roadrunner is a military project, but still, civilians get first crack
Hitching a Ride with Roadrunner

The worlds first petascale computer will likely be for a university noted for its acceptance of foreign students and professors...
About the Blue Waters Petascale Computing System

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

IPF:

Stuart Slades comments in the context of this NYTimes report are interesting:

Originally Posted by Stuart Slade
India has, certainly. They have gun-configuration fission, implosion fission and boosted fission devices. They're mostly configured for delivery by Jaguar and Mirage 2000 aircraft but they do have a few missile-compatible device configurations.

Pakistan is a much harder case. Its not certain that they have any functioning devices at all. Of their three initial test shots, two fizzled completely and the third was a partial shot. It appears that all three devices were gun configuration which means that the pakistanis have apparently achieved the impossible and botched a gun-configuration (that's a level of achievment comparable with jumping off a log and missing the ground). They very hastily did two more test shots, both of which were successes. The problem is there are very strong reasons to believe that both those second-series test shots were Chinese devices.

Probably the fairest assessment of the situation right now is that the Pakistanis probably have some gun-configuration devices of uncertain reliability. They probably do not have implosion devices. That means they have the big clumsy bomb-like configurations of which you speak.

The NYTimes:

WASHINGTON — American and international investigators say that they have found the electronic blueprints for an advanced nuclear weapon on computers that belonged to the nuclear smuggling network run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the rogue Pakistani nuclear scientist, but that they have not been able to determine whether they were sold to Iran or the smuggling ring’s other customers.

The plans appear to closely resemble a nuclear weapon that was built by Pakistan and first tested exactly a decade ago. But when confronted with the design by officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency last year, Pakistani officials insisted that Dr. Khan, who has been lobbying in recent months to be released from the loose house arrest that he has been under since 2004, did not have access to Pakistan’s weapons designs.

In interviews in Vienna, Islamabad and Washington over the past year, officials have said that the weapons design was far more sophisticated than the blueprints discovered in Libya in 2003, when Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi gave up his country’s nuclear weapons program. Those blueprints were for a Chinese nuclear weapon that dated to the mid-1960s, and investigators found that Libya had obtained them from the Khan network.

But the latest design found on Khan network computers in Switzerland, Bangkok and several other cities around the world is half the size and twice the power of the Chinese weapon, with far more modern electronics, the investigators say. The design is in electronic form, they said, making it easy to copy — and they have no idea how many copies of it are now in circulation.

Now is there more to this report, in terms of this "new design" originally being Chinese, or is this as the report seems to imply, a Pakistani design?

 

[indiapakistanfriendship]

Now is there more to this report, in terms of this "new design" originally being Chinese, or is this as the report seems to imply, a Pakistani design?

Agno, I am sure that Chagai tests must have given your scientists enough data on what does not work, which means narrowing the probability of working designs. I am sure this data could have been employed to design more advanced designs of Pakistani origin, however I am skeptical as to how reliable these designs are since I am yet to find a source indicating Pakistan has simulation facilities to understand the equation of state.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Agno, I am sure that Chagai tests must have given your scientists enough data on what does not work, which means narrowing the probability of working designs. I am sure this data could have been employed to design more advanced designs of Pakistani origin, however I am skeptical as to how reliable these designs are since I am yet to find a source indicating Pakistan has simulation facilities to understand the equation of state.

IPF, the NYT report suggests that the more advanced warhead design was the one that was tested.

There is no doubt over your first sentence, but I am intrigued by the implication here that unlike what has been broadly speculated (by non-Pakistanis mostly) the warheads tested were far more advanced Pakistani designs than assumed earlier (primitive Chinese designs).

You would then apply the argument of your first sentence and have to extrapolate where Pakistan is now, based on that more advanced warhead design, if something similar is what was tested.

With regards to information on Pakistan's nuclear program and the facilities available, given the secretive nature of the program it isn't surprising how little is known.

 

[asaad-ul-islam]

With regards to information on Pakistan's nuclear program and the facilities available, given the secretive nature of the program it isn't surprising how little is known.

this sums up everything about pakistan! unfortunately for us diehard military maniacs, we just won't know what pakistan will bring out next. i've come across some pretty interesting stuff about pakistan's black programs.

 

[Jliu]

I think Pakistan should also get an UNSE permanent seat. It is the most responsible nuclear power in the world.

Maybe, but your nuclear security is far too lax to justify the last statement. The Khan affair is a major fiasco for Pakistan as well as the fact that the US has major suspicions regarding the fission devices in the Taiwanese nuclear program that could only have originated from Pakistan and Khan.

 

[vish]

Maybe, but your nuclear security is far too lax to justify the last statement. The Khan affair is a major fiasco for Pakistan as well as the fact that the US has major suspicions regarding the fission devices in the Taiwanese nuclear program that could only have originated from Pakistan and Khan.

Welcome back Sir.

Sir, even Taiwan solicited Khan?

I've heard there were suspicions about South Korea. Any take on that?

 

[Jliu]

Welcome back Sir.

Sir, even Taiwan solicited Khan?

I've heard there were suspicions about South Korea. Any take on that?

You're welcome.

Its an open secret that the first Pakistani nuclear detonation of around five devices was substandard, half baked, due to the incompetance of Khan and his team of weapons designers in measuring the yield of the devices-virtually identical to NK's 2006 detonation. Two or more of the devices were detonated at the same time to give the impression of a full yield.

What is puzzling is the fifth/sixth (nobody is sure) detonation was a full yield device. Now the evidence is pretty damning that it was the PRC that supplied the additional device and subsequently the blueprints for the bomb that somehow the Taiwanese got hold of. Now PRC OPSEC for their nuclear program borders on the draconian with scientists imprisoned just for chatting about the weather to strangers so it would be impossible for the Taiwanese to walk out of there with a complete blueprint. What I suspect is that they penetrated Khan's network posing as Chinese. As for the ROK I don't know but all indications is that they only possess a civilian capability.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Jliu,

I am aware of the speculation surrounding the tests Pakistan conducted, and for a while (from what I understand) the speculation was in fact centered around the designs that the world knew about being peddled by Khan - the primitive (1960's era) nuclear device of Chinese design. I believe that is the design Stuart Slade refers to when he talks of the fifth/sixth test being a Chinese weapon, along with the probability that it was not advanced (gun type trigger) or small enough to be fitted on Ballistic Missiles that Pakistan possessed. The above assumptions are now questionable given the new design that has been found.

Pakistani scientists have always maintained that the devices they tested did not have gun type triggers (I'll post an interview of Dr. Samar Mubarakmund, who was in charge of the program when the tests occurred). Add to that the latest discovery of a much more advanced design on the market that has been discussed in the article by David Albright, which his article refers to as a "Pakistani design".

I am not sure whether that is the design you are referring to when you say that the fifth/sixth device was Chinese and also peddled to the South Koreans, since this revelation by Albright is quite new. Nonetheless, I am interested in reading about it (the South Korean connection) if you cold post some links, and hearing your views about how the new design mentioned by Albright fits into the puzzle.


Also, the tests were carried out by the PAEC team, not KRL. Khan was invited as an observer. Khan and PAEC functioned autonomously from each other for the most part, and the people leading PAEC disliked Khan intensely due to his "hogging the credit" for the nuclear program. We know that there were essentially two nuclear and missile programs running in Pakistan simultaneously -KRL's and PAEC/NESCOM.

Both of Khans' achievements (the missile Ghauri - Nodong, and nuclear warhead design - the peddled Chinese one, were apparently straight up imports. I am not certain if the tests in 1998 involved any of Khan's designs, with the last two ones being PAEC's designs, but the following interview by Samar Mubarakmund does provide the Pakistani version of events.

P.S: I highlighted some of his comments related to the number of tests conducted, yields, types of devices, and his views on the Indian tests in bold.