Jaidev Jamwal Profile picture
Order of Battle #ORBAT, military Open Source Intelligence #OSINT, Imagery intelligence #IMINT & Travel. #RealOSINT = Satire. Other stuff may or may not be.

Jan 6, 2023, 13 tweets

A thread about Pakistani Nuclear Forces, their assets and Command & Control structure. If you want just the basics, then read this thread.
For details and maps, go to this link: jjamwal.in/yayavar/pakist…
Questions (not dumb), corrections & feedback welcome.
#orbat #osint
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Pakistan has managed to create a fairly good nuclear command structure and arsenal with help from China and US which ignored the illegal proliferation attempts and even helped the project in some ways. Although not as advanced and susceptible to internal security risks,
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it accounts for a huge portion of Pakistani defence spending. 

Nuclear Command & Control consists of following organisations:

1. National Command Authority (NCA): Highest decision making command with 6 civilian ministers, 3 military and 1 intelligence as members.

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It's headed by PM or dictator.

2. Employment Control Committee (ECC): Tasked with policy making decisions. Chairman is Joint Chief of Staff (JCS). 9 permanent members and others can be included.
3. Developmental Control Committee (DCC): This body implements the decision made
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by ECC. Headed by JCS and has military and civilian scientists and officials.

4. Strategic Plans Division (SPD): Headed by a Lt Gen ranked military officer, it takes care of operations, development, communications, construction, design and security of nuclear arsenal.

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5. Security Division (SD) is a specialised force under SPD which is tasked with security of personnel, nuclear installations, factories, labs & other installations. It has received help from US for training & equipment.

IMAGE: SPD Training Academy in Chakri, near Islamabad
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6. Strategic Force Command (SFC). Army, Air Force & Navy each have their own SFC tasked with maintenance and training of weapon crews.

Types of weapons and delivery systems:

Army:
Pakistani Army relies on ballistic missiles as primary delivery platform with a wide

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variety of ballistic missiles sourced from China and North Korea. A few of them have been modified a bit to suit their own requirements. All the known ballistic missiles are road mobile SRBMs and IRBMs. They also claim that Nasr SRBM is nuclear capable, but they don't have

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any useful warhead or proper use case scenario for it.

Pakistani Air Force is believed to have around 36 air tossed #nuclear bombs with F-16s and ancient Mirage-IIIs as their primary delivery platform. They may also try to use Ra'ad ALCM (Babur, reverse engineered Chinese

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copy of Tomahawk), but it's not clear if they have small enough warheads for it. Nuke capable squadrons are: 5, 7, 8, 9, 11 & 22. 3 have F-16s, 2 Mirage-III and 1 Mirage-V.

Navy lacks any submarines capable of launching SLBMs or SLCMs, though it may change in future.

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Nuclear Storage Sites

There are 12 known nuclear storage sites spread all over the country with a few more suspected under construction. Some sources say that warheads and missiles are usually stored separately. Many of the newer sites are built into tunneled mountains,

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usually quite far from populated areas. Older #nuclear storage sites like Rahwali were built in cantonments, right next or inside cities. Although it is likely that some of those sites don't store warheads, just missiles.

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Research & Manufacturing.
The list has 26 points that I know of. Includes reactors, manufacturing, assembly and research of #nuclear warheads and #missiles. Take a look at the link in 1st tweet for all with maps and other details.

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