Tit for Tat: Hataf V test vs. Prithvi Test

[sonicboom]

Tit for Tat: Hataf V test vs. Prithvi Test

Friday, 24 December 2010 18:55


Pakistan’s Nuclear program is based on minimum deterrence, and self preservation. Pakistan lives in a tough neighborhood with a belligerent bully bent upon hegemony, conquest and assimilation. The missiles provide basic survival for the Pakistani state. The Pakistani program is cloaked in secrecy and no one discusses the it publicly. It is pedagogical to understand what the Koreans have published.

Pakistan has first strike capability covering the entire South Asian Subcontinent . It also has 2nd strike capability with missiles that can reach deep into Indian territory. The 250 Nuclear and Hydrogen bombs keep the enemies at bay.

Pakistan has reportedly addressed issues of survivability through second strike capability, possible hard and deeply buried storage and launch facilities, road-mobile missiles, air defenses around strategic sites and concealment measures,” the Congressional Research Service (CRS) said in its report on Pak nuclear weapons dating May 15. CRS is the research wing of US Congress, which prepares reports on issues of interest of the US lawmakers.

More than 50,000 scientists and engineers work on the Pakistani Nuclear program. 50,000 soldiers protect the program with concentric levels of security-best known to man. It is one of the most sophisticated projects in the history of the world and has been completed by a country in record time. The India-specific program calls for targeting major targets in India, to prevent is from occupying Pakistani territory or from crossing the sacrosanct Pakistani border. Not only does Pakistan have a first strike capability, Pakistan also has a second strike capability. Pakistan’s bombs are secure in hardened silos which would survive a nuclear attack from India.

Assessing Pakistan’s missile program is extremely difficult becuase of the dearth of information and the variety of sources which may come from biased sources. Tracking missile development in Pakistan is all the more difficult becuase, for obvious reasons of sanity and security, Pakistani government agencies deliberately resort to using a plethora of nomenclatures to describe one or another missile program. Indian analysts reduce the efforts of the Pakistani by labeling the missiles as imports. Pakistani misslies like the Indian missiles is based on Russian and Chinese technology. It also got cooperation from North Korea. HATF-3 (Ghaznavi), HATF-5 (Ghauri), HATF-4 (Shaheen-1) have already been handed over to Pakistan Army’s Strategic Force Command.

Pakistan defense is based on missile Nuclear deterrent Hataf, Shaheen, Babar, and Abdali.

Designation Comparable to Range (km) Payload (kg) First Launch Operational Inventory Comments
Hatf-1 Short Range 60-100 500 Jan 1989 testing Some?
Hatf-2 Short Range Shadoz 280 500 Jan 1989 Cancelled None
Shaheen Medium RangeHatf-3 ? PRC M-11 300 500 15 April 1999 1995? ~34-80?
Shaheen-I Medium RangeHatf-4 ? DF15NATO CSS-6PRC M-9 800 500
Shaheen-II(IRBM) Medium RangeHatf-6 PRC M-18 2,000 09 March 2004 April 2008 Some
Ghauri Long RangeHatf-5 DPRK ND-1.Similar to North Korea (No-dong) and Iran (Shehab-3). 1,350-1,500 700 kg 06 April 1998 1998? Some
Ghauri-III Long RangeAbdali DPRK TD-1 ?? 2,500
Tipu DPRK TD-2 ?? 4,000
Ghaznavi ?,000
Designation Comparable to Range (km) Payload (kg) First Launch Operational Inventory Comments
Hataf IV
Taimur SLV 350 500 Jan 2009? Testing None
Hataf V
Hataf VI
Hataf VIII 8 Raad-Cruise Missile 350 May 2008 testing Hataf VIII
Hataf
Hataf XI
Hataf XII
Hataf XIII

Hatav IX

Source: Pakistan’s Nuclear Capable Missiles, The Risk Report Volume 5 Number 1 (January-February 1999), and publicly available press reports.

RAWALPINDI: President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani have congratulated Pak Army and the whole nation on succesfull test of Ghori Hataf-V.

According to Geo News, ISPR spokesman stated that the missile is capable of carrying all kind of warheads besides hitting its target at a range of 1300 kilometers.

Pakistan successfully test-fired ballistic missile Ghauri Hataf-V capable of carrying all kind of warheads, the military spokesman said.

The test of Ghauri Hataf-V is normal experiment to identify its capability.

The Prithvi has been plagued by past failures. Bharat had to scrap the old program, and purchase missiles to make it look like they worked.

BALASORE: India on Wednesday claimed to have successfully test-fired nuclear-capable Prithvi-II ballistic missile, which has a striking range of 350 km, from the Integrated Test Range (ITR) at Chandipur off the Orissa coast.

“The missile mounted on a mobile launcher was test-fired from the launch complex-3 in the ITR at around 0815 hours”, sources said.

The test-firing of the missile, which has already been inducted into the Indian armed forces, was successful, authorities claimed, adding it was a routine trial conducted by the personnel of strategic force command (SFC).

“The entire trajectory of today’s trial was tracked by a battery of sophisticated radars, electro-optic telemetry stations and ships launched in the down range impact point area in the Bay for the post-launch analyses,” the sources said.

The Pakistan Nuclear program has prevented Bharat (aka India) from aggressive adventurism in 2002 and 2008. The program is India specific and Pakistan has had the nuclear bombs for more than two decades without incident or accident.

The Pakistani missile program is a program of survival, self-preservation, dreams, defense and direct competition with India. In many ways, the program is ahead of its much larger neighbor’s program. Its deterrent value was proven, even in its early stages of development when it kept more than 250,000 soldiers on the Pakistani borders at bay in 2002. It also prevented Bharat from attacking Pakistan in the 90s when Zia Ul Haq was president.

Much to the chagrin of its enemies, Pakistan has expedited its nuclear program. The ISIS makes it look its breaking news. It is now reporting that Pakistan has a Plutonium program. The ISIS analysts may have been living in a cave, because Islamabad has always had a Plutonium program. Obviously the program is ongoing and and will surely add to the number of bombs that it possesses.

Pakistan’s Nuclear doctrine is based on something like what the North Koreans have perfected over the years. Of course the North Korean offensive defense is against the USA, the Pakistani doctrine deals with an India specific threat.

Kim Myong Chol is author of a number of books and papers in Korean, Japanese and English on North Korea, including Kim Jong-il’s Strategy for Reunification. He has a PhD from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s Academy of Social Sciences and is often called an “unofficial” spokesman of Kim Jong-il and North Korea. Nuclear war is Kim Jong-il’s game plan By Kim Myong Chol

Kim Choi in various articles, one published in the Asia Times has outlined North Korean plans to deal with America, and Japan. Apparently his writings have been studied all over the world, and the Pakistan Army is no exception. The following scenario is based on what what Choi wrote.

Four types of hydrogen bomb raids can do the job. The game plan for nuclear war specifies four types of thermonuclear assault:

1. The bombing of operating nuclear power stations;
2. Detonations of a hydrogen bombs in seas off Mumbai and other ports
3. Detonations of H-bombs in space far above their heartlands; and
4. Thermonuclear attacks on the major urban centers like Delhi and Kolkota.

The first attack involves converting operating nuclear power plants on the coastline into makeshift multi-megaton H-bombs.

If bombed, one average operating nuclear power station is estimated to spew out as much deadly fallout as 150-180 H-bombs. Bombing one Indian nuclear power station would render most of Bharat uninhabitable.

Nothing is easier than bombing a power plant on a coastline. There is no need to use a ballistic missile. Primitive means will do the job.

North Korea has planned this to the tee. According to North Korean experts “The US has 103 operating nuclear power stations with onsite storage of a huge quantity of spent fuel rods and Japan has 53 operating atomic power stations. Japan has a stockpile of weapons-grade plutonium – enough to assemble more than 1,000 atomic bombs in a short period of time. South Korea has 20 operating nuclear power stations with onsite storage of a huge quantity of spent fuel rods.”

The detonation of sea-borne or undersea H-bombs planted on the three countries’ continental shelves will trigger nuclear tsunamis with devastating consequences.

cont'd....

[sonicboom]

A 2006 RAND study of a ship-based 10-kiloton nuclear blast on the Port of Long Beach had some harrowing conclusions:

“Within the first 72 hours, the attack would devastate a vast portion of the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Because ground-burst explosions generate particularly large amounts of highly radioactive debris, fallout from the blast would cause much of the destruction. In some of the most dramatic possible outcomes:

Sixty thousand people might die instantly from the blast itself or quickly thereafter from radiation poisoning.

One hundred and fifty thousand more might be exposed to hazardous levels of radioactive water and sediment from the port, requiring emergency medical treatment.

The blast and subsequent fires might completely destroy the entire infrastructure and all ships in the Port of Long Beach and the adjoining Port of Los Angeles.

Six million people might try to evacuate the Los Angeles region.

Two to three million people might need relocation because fallout will have contaminated a 500-square-kilometer area.

Gasoline supplies might run critically short across the entire region because of the loss of Long Beach’s refineries – responsible for one-third of the gas west of the Rocky Mountains.

RAND projects that the economic costs would exceed $1 trillion.

The third possible attack, a high-altitude detonation of hydrogen bombs that would create a powerful electromagnetic pulse (EMP), would disrupt the communications and electrical infrastructure of the US, the whole of Japan, and South Korea.

Many of the essential systems needed to survive war would be knocked out, as computers are instantly rendered malfunctioning or unusable. Military and communications systems such as radars, antennas, and missiles, government offices, would be put out of use, as would energy sources such as nuclear power stations and transport and communications systems including airports, airplanes, railways, cars and cell phones.

Ironically the ubiquity of high-tech computing gadgets in the US, Japan and South Korea has made them most vulnerable to EMP attacks.

The last and fourth attack would be to order into action a global nuclear strike force of dozens of MIRVed ICBMs – each bearing a thermonuclear warhead on a prefixed target.

The Yongbyon nuclear site has always been a decoy to attract American attention and bring it into negotiations on a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War. Since as far back as the mid-1980, North Korea has assembled 100-300 nuclear warheads in an ultra-clandestine nuclear weapons program. The missiles can be mounted on medium-range missiles designed to be nuclear capable.

A prototype ICBM was assembled by the end of the 1980s. Two prototype ICBMs were test-fired on May 29, 1993, with one splashing down off Honolulu and the other off Guam. The Kim Jong-il administration gave an advance notice to the US government of the long-range missile test. But the American reaction was skeptical.

Pak1stanFirst-Tit for Tat: Hataf V test vs. Prithvi Test | Defence