PAKISTAN’S NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Pakistan possesses uranium-enriched atomic bombs. This became clear when it detonated five nuclear devices on May 28, 1998 — its first nuclear weapons tests — in response to the detonation of six nuclear devices by India two weeks earlier. The radiation emitted from the nuclear test site indicated the weapons were uranium-enriched atomic bombs
Ordinary Pakistanis are very proud of their country’s nuclear weapons. The Pakistan government has said it had to develop nuclear weapons as a response to India’s nuclear weapons. When asked why her country is obsessed with bomb Benazir Bhutto replied, "It's our history. A history of three wars with a larger neighbor. India is five times larger than we are. Their military strength is five times larger."
In 2004, Pakistan possessed an estimated 24 to 48 nuclear warheads. It is believed to possess around 160 nuclear warheads today. Pakistan has the capability of mounting its nuclear weapons on Chinese M-11 missiles and F-16 fighters. It is believed that Pakistan has the nuclear material to build more bombs. In comparison it is estimated that India has 150 nuclear weapons and can mount them on Agni/Prithvi rockets.
Pakistan’s two nuclear test sites are Balochistan about 160 kilometers (100 miles) from the Iranian border. The Kahuta Khan Research Laboratories outside Rawalpindi is where much of Pakistan’s missile and nuclear weapons research takes place. In the early 1990s, as prime minister Benazir Bhutto visited China and North Korea, suppliers of Pakistan’s nuclear weapon’s and missile technology.
Hans Kristensen and Robert Norris characterize Pakistan as having, "the world's fastest-growing nuclear stockpile." The International Panel on Fissile Materials concluded in 2015 that Pakistan possesses fissile material sufficient for over 200 weapons. Islamabad has stockpiled approximately 3.1 ± .4 metric tons of highly enriched uranium (HEU), and produces enough HEU for perhaps 10 to 15 warheads per year. Pakistan currently has a stockpile of about 190 kg of weapons-grade plutonium, with the ability to produce approximately 12 to 24 kg per year. In addition, the Chashma reprocessing plant is nearing completion, which the IPFM estimated in 2015 would expand Pakistan’s plutonium production capability by 50-100 kg per year. Pakistan has completed work on all four reactors at the Khushab facility, where the Khan Research Laboratories greatly increased its HEU production capacity by employing more efficient P-3 and P-4 gas centrifuges. Satellite imagery of the fourth and last reactor at Khushab from January 2015 verified the complete external construction, including the presence of steam, a signature of its operation. [Source: Nuclear Threat Initiative, April, 2016]
Atomic Bomb Designs
Nuclear bombs are made with either plutonium or highly-enriched uranium. Around four kilograms (nine pounds) of plutonium or 15 kilograms (33 pounds) of highly-enriched uranium is necessary to make a nuclear bomb. Both materials are only available through nuclear weapons programs. Plutonium or highly-enriched uranium contain extraordinary amounts of energy: one gram of enriched uranium contains the energy potential of three tons of coal. Obtaining weapons-grade nuclear materials is one of the biggest obstacles that has to overcome in making a nuclear bomb.
The bomb dropped on Hiroshima was a gun-type uranium bomb in which critical mass was created with two-half-moon-shaped masses of uranium placed separately inside a tube that looks like a cannon barrel, with the two uranium masses combining into a sphere at the time of detonation. Implosion-technology described with plutonium bombs below can also be used to make atomic bombs with uranium.
Uranium 235 is the uranium isotope used to make uranium-type nuclear bombs. Enrichment typically begins with gas that is 0.7 percent uranium 235. If purified to levels of around 5 percent the uranium can be used for nuclear power plants. If it is enriched to 90 percent it capable of creating the chain reaction for nuclear bombs.
Getting explosive material — in the form of weapons-grade, highly enriched uranium or weapons grade plutonium — is generally considered the hardest part of building a nuclear bomb. Uranium enrichment involves feeding UF6 gas — obtained from uranium ore — into centrifuges, machines made with a cylinder of superlight material that enriches materials by spinning them at supersonic speeds or around 70,000 times per minute. When uranium is spun at high speeds a small portion of the heavier uranium 238 drops away, increasing the proportion if Uranium 235. The process is repeating using thousands of centrifuges that are connected with complex and fragile connections. Any slight imperfection can cause the whole system to break down.
Early History of Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons Program
After losing the war with India over Kashmir in 1965, Pakistan vowed to build a nuclear bomb if India did. In 1965, future Pakistani leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto declared,"If India builds a bomb, we will eat grass or leaves, or go hungry, but we will get one of our own." He also insisted it was time for an Islamic nation to possess an "Islamic bomb" since the other "great civilizations" — Christians, Jews, Communists and now Hindus — had nuclear weapons.
In 1955, the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission was established. In 1965, a light-weight research reactor, supplied by the United States, began operation at the Pakistan Institute of Science and Technology in Rawalpindi. In 1972 Canada supplied Pakistan with a heavy-water reactor put in the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant.
Pakistan refused to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 1968 and launched its program to build a nuclear bomb in 1971, shortly after the 1971 war with India. After India conducted its first test of a nuclear weapon in 1974, Bhutto held a meeting with Pakistan's top scientists and announced his intention to build a nuclear bomb.
A massive effort was launched that comprised 3,000 scientists at 30 different scientific facilities. It cost Pakistan, one of the world's poorest countries, an estimated US$5 billion to do this. There has been some speculation that Saudi Arabia may have bankrolled Pakistan’s nuclear program with the ultimate aim of obtaining the technology to build nuclear weapons for itself. Pakistan’s nuclear weapons development program has been run by the army, at least for a while, with little or no civilian oversight. It relied on a global campaign to buy or steal the materials and know-how to construct a bomb. Smugglers and scientists working under the cover of mythical research institutes and corporations fanned out across the world.
Pakistani Nuclear Weapons Program and the United States
The United States provided Pakistani nuclear scientists with technical training from the 1950s through the 1970s and provided Pakistan with its first research reactor fuel as part of the "Atoms for Peace" program.
Realizing that getting Pakistan and India to renounce nuclear weapons was futile, the U.S. has tried to get them least to stop producing weapon-grade uranium and plutonium. In the 1970s aid was cut off to Pakistan when it became clear that uranium intended for a nuclear power plant was being used for to make a bomb. In the 1980s, Pakistan received tacit consent for its nuclear weapons program in return for assistance in the conflict against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. When the Soviets were driven out, the United States no longer needed Pakistan and the supported ended.
In 1990, the United States said that it could no longer verify that Pakistan didn’t not possess nuclear weapons. Washington imposed sanctions on Pakistan for pursuing a nuclear weapons program.
Abedel Qadeer Khan, Father of the Pakistani Nuclear Bomb
Abedel Qadeer Khan is regarded as the "Father of the Pakistani Nuclear Bomb." A nuclear scientist who is an adored nation hero and a media superstar in Pakistan, he was trained as a metallurgist in Germany. Not only did he help design the devices he carried out espionage that provided Pakistan's nuclear program with vital information to make nuclear devises.
Khan worked in lab named after him and lives in a mansion with a house next door for entertaining foreign visitors. He reportedly has large stakes in hotels, restaurants and, for a while, Islamabad's only nightclub, Hotshots. He also has money in foreign accounts and maintained several houses. It is not clear how he got the money. His salary was US$2,000 a month. In his free time he liked to write poetry and feed wild monkeys and ants.
Khan is regarded as a national hero. Hospitals have been named after him. Schoolchildren praise him with their songs.
Khan and the Development of Nuclear Weapons
Pakistan built gas centrifuges to enrich uranium based on a design by the European consortium Urenco. The design was stolen by Pakistani scientists in 1970s. These centrifuges require ultra-strong aluminum, highly-specialized magnets and bearings and a metal known as maranging steel. It is unlikely that Pakistan could have made these things itself. It needed to obtain them from outside Pakistan.
Khan admitted to stealing secrets on uranium enrichment from Urenco whem he worked for European consortium in Holland the 1970s. In 1983, he was sentenced in absentia to four years in jail by a Dutch court for espionage.
Just as valuable as the blueprints for the centrifuges was a valuable list of suppliers that ultimately provided Pakistan with the technology it needed to build its bomb. Khan proved to be particularly adept at using shell companies to procure the technology and hardware he needed to make a bomb from companies in the United States, Canada and Europe, who practically fell over themselves to supply the necessary equipment in their quest to make money.
According to Nuclear Threat Initiative: The Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, headed by Munir Ahmad Khan, focused on the plutonium route to nuclear weapons development using material from the safeguarded Karachi Nuclear Power Plant (KANUPP), but its progress was inefficient due to the constraints imposed by the nuclear export controls applied in the wake of India's nuclear test. Around 1975 A.Q. Khan, a metallurgist working at a subsidiary of the URENCO enrichment corporation in the Netherlands, returned to Pakistan to help his country develop a uranium enrichment program. Having brought centrifuge designs and business contacts back with him to Pakistan, Khan used various tactics, such as buying individual components rather than complete units, to evade export controls and acquire the necessary equipment. By the early 1980s, Pakistan had a clandestine uranium enrichment facility, and A.Q. Khan would later assert that the country had acquired the capability to assemble a first-generation nuclear device as early as 1984. [Source: Nuclear Threat Initiative, April, 2016]
“Pakistan also received assistance from states, especially China. Beginning in the late 1970s Beijing provided Islamabad with various levels of nuclear and missile-related assistance, including centrifuge equipment, warhead designs, HEU, components of various missile systems, and technical expertise. Eventually, from the 1980s onwards, the Khan network diversified its activities and illicitly transferred nuclear technology and expertise to Iran, North Korea, and Libya. The Khan network was officially dismantled in 2004, although questions still remain concerning the extent of the Pakistani political and military establishment's involvement in the network's activities.”
Pakistani Nuclear Weapons Program and China
Pakistan is believed have to received much of the technology and materials to build nuclear weapons from China. China supplied Pakistan with designs for a 25-kiloton bomb, a supply of weapons-grade uranium, tritium, heavy water, and key components for nuclear weapons production such as powerful ring magnets and a powerful industrial furnace used to produce weapons-grade uranium and plutonium The Khushab Reactor, which produces plutonium, and the Chasma Plutonium reprocessing facility, which extracts plutonium from spent fuel, were built with Chinese assistance.
In 1984, Pakistan began producing enriched uranium at its nuclear facility at Kahuta. In the 1980s, Pakistan completed a computerized "cold test" of nuclear bombmaking technology but Pakistan needed help from China to make glitch-free test bomb.
In the early 1980s, Khan obtained blueprints for a nuclear weapon that China had detonated on its fourth nuclear test in 1966. The device was especially useful because it was relatively small and could easily be placed on the top of a missile. It is believed that Khan traded its centrifuge technoloy to the Chinese for their bomb designs. In 1987, Khan claims that Pakistan had a nuclear bomb. In 1992, the Pakistani government announced it has the know-how to build a nuclear bomb.
Pakistan Tests a Nuclear Bomb in 1998
On May 28, 1998, Pakistan detonated five nuclear devices at a remote site in mountains and desert in the Chagai Hills in the Balochistan region of western Pakistan near the Iranian border. Nawaz Sharif was the prime minister and leader of Pakistan at the time.
The Pakistani government reported that the devices included one big bomb with a yield of 30 to 35 kilotons, making it twice as large as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The other four were small tactical devices intended for battlefield use.
The strongest blast measured 4.8 on the Richter scale compared to the strongest Indian explosion which measured 5.3 on the Richter scale. Some wonder whether the test may have been a failure or smaller than claimed because a 4.8 Richter scale reading corresponds with a blast of between 8 and 15 kilotons.
In contrast to the "no first strike" pledge made by the Indian government, Sharif said, "These weapons are to deter aggression, whether nuclear or conventional." The government also announced, the "long-range Ghauri missile is already being capped with nuclear warheads to give a befitting reply to an misadventure by the enemy."
Sharif also said, "Today, the flames of the nuclear fire are all over. I am thankful to God that...we have jumped into these flames...with courage." He also said, "We are prepared to resume Pakistan-India dialogue to address all outstanding issues, including the core issue of Jammu and Kashmir, as well as peace and security."
Response to the Nuclear Tests in 1998
It was considered quite an achievement for one the poorest countries in the world to detonate an atomic bomb. Many ordinary Pakistanis celebrated and partied when they heard the news the Pakistan had conducted nuclear tests.
Newspaper ran headlines like "Long Live Nuclear Pakistan." People walked through streets with a mock-up of an "Islamic bomb" and crowds shouted for a "holy war" with India.
The response of other Muslim nations was equally as enthusiastic. A London-based Arabic newspaper declared, "The Islamic bomb: dream come true." The Iranian foreign minister said. "From all over the world, Muslims are happy that Pakistan has this capability."
These days, Pakistani celebrate the nuclear test with a celebration called “Youn — e Takbeer” ("The Day of God's Greatness"). Most Pakistani cities have traffic circles with a model of the long-range missile that can deliver nuclear devices.
Wealthy nations, including the United States, Japan, Germany and other nations, cut aid to Pakistan as punishment or conducting the nuclear tests. Loans and assistance from the World Bank was also canceled or delayed.
Pakistani scientists have said they can build a neutron bomb, which kills only people and living things and leaves buildings and infrastructure intact so they can be used after the blast.
Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons Capabilities
According to Nuclear Threat Initiative: In 1998, Pakistan commissioned its first plutonium production reactor at Khushab, which is capable of producing approximately 11 kg of weapons-grade plutonium annually. Through analysis of the cooling system of the heavy water reactors at Khushab, Tamara Patton, of the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, estimated the thermal capacity and thus the plutonium production capacity of Khushab-2 and Khushab-3 to be around 15 kg and 18 kg of plutonium, respectively, per year. Satellite imagery of the fourth plutonium production reactor at Khushab appeared complete and operational as of January 2015. Patton estimates that "if Khushab-4 has at least an equivalent thermal capacity as Khushab-3, the entire complex could be capable of producing 64 kg of plutonium per year or enough fissile material for anywhere from 8–21 new warheads per year depending on their design." Associated facilities and their associated security perimeters are also being expanded, including the plutonium separation facilities at New Labs, Pakistan Institute of Science and Technology, to reprocess spent fuel from the new reactors at Khushab. [Source: Nuclear Threat Initiative, April, 2016]
Islamabad has yet to formally declare a nuclear doctrine, so it remains unclear under what conditions Pakistan might use nuclear weapons. In 2002 then- President Pervez Musharraf stated that, "nuclear weapons are aimed solely at India," and would only be used if "the very existence of Pakistan as a state" was at stake. General Khalid Kidwai further elaborated that this could include Indian conquest of Pakistan's territory or military, "economic strangling," or "domestic destabilization." Because of India's conventional military superiority, Pakistan maintains the ability to quickly escalate to the use of nuclear weapons in case of a conventional Indian military attack.
In October 2015, Islamabad declared that it had developed tactical nuclear weapons. The Pakistani government has clarified that these would be used only in the event of a conflict with India. However, even though Pakistan had been suspected of building tactical nuclear weapons for many years, the official announcement has caused concern within the international community, especially in the United States. The weapons’ small size and yield have ignited concern over their possible destabilizing effects in a potential conflict with India.
Protecting Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons
There were reports that after the 9-11 attack that Israel’s Unit 262 — the unit that seized the hostages at Entebbe Airport — was working with an elite Pentagon undercover unit to help in training for an “exfiltration” (theft and destruction) of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons in the event the Pakistan government was threatened by an Islamist coup or mutiny in the military.
According to Nuclear Threat Initiative: The security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons has been of significant concern to the international community in recent years, with increased terrorist and insurgent violence and expanded geographical areas of the country under Taliban control. Sparked by al-Qaeda affiliate Abu Yahya al-Libi’s pamphlet, “Sharpening the Blades of Battle Against the Government and Army of Pakistan,” in early 2009 forums associated with al-Qaeda called for attacks on Pakistani nuclear facilities in order that the the group might gain control of the weapons. In June 2009, Saaed al-Masri, allegedly Al-Qaeda’s chief of finance, expressed hope that the Pakistani Taliban would gain control of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and use the weapons against the United States. Such developments increase the likelihood of scenarios in which Pakistan's nuclear security is put at risk. Since 2007, Taliban-linked groups have successfully attacked tightly guarded government and military targets in the country. Militants carried out small-scale attacks outside the Minhas (Kamra) Air Force Base in 2007, 2008, and 2009, and gained access to the site during a two-hour gunfight in August 2012. Pakistani officials have repeatedly denied claims that the base, which houses the Pakistan Aeronautical Complex, is also used to store nuclear weapons, and a retired army official asserted that Pakistan's nuclear weapons are stored separately from known military bases. However, several Pakistani nuclear facilities, including the Khushab facility and the Gadwal uranium enrichment plant, are in proximity to areas under attack from the Taliban. Additionally, there have been attempts to kidnap officials and technicians working at nuclear sites in western Pakistan, although suspected parties and intentions are unclear. [Source: Nuclear Threat Initiative, April, 2016]
Nevertheless, Islamabad has consistently asserted that it has control over its nuclear weapons, and that it is impossible for groups such as the Taliban or proliferation networks to gain access to the country's nuclear facilities or weapons. After 11 September 2001 and the exposure of the A.Q. Khan network, Pakistan has taken measures to strengthen the security of its nuclear weapons and installations and to improve its nuclear command and control system. The National Command Authority (NCA), composed of key civilian and military leaders, is the main supervisory and policy-making body controlling Pakistan's nuclear weapons, and maintains ultimate authority on their use. In November 2009, then-Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari announced that he was transferring his role as head of the National Command Authority to the Prime Minister, Yusuf Gilani. The Strategic Plans Division (SPD) is the secretariat of the NCA, and is responsible for operationalizing nuclear doctrine and strategy, managing nuclear safety and security, and implementing the command and control system.
Pakistan has also strengthened its personnel reliability program (PRP) to prevent radicalized individuals from infiltrating the nuclear program, although various experts believe that potential gaps still exist. Pakistani analysts and officials state that they have developed a version of "permissive action links" or PALs to safeguard the warheads, and have not relied on U.S. assistance for this technology. Satellite imagery also shows increased security features around Khushab-4. In recent years, the United States has provided various levels of assistance to Pakistan to strengthen the security of its nuclear program. According to reports in April 2009, with the expansion of Taliban control in western Pakistan, Islamabad shared some highly classified information about its nuclear program with Western countries in order to reassure them of the country's nuclear security. At the Nuclear Security Summit in The Hague in 2014, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced that Pakistan was considering ratifying the 2005 Amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material (CPPNM). On 24 March 2016, Pakistan announced that it had ratified the amendment. The amendment needs seven additional states to ratify it before it can enter into force.
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons
Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Lonely Planet Guides, Library of Congress, Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation (tourism.gov.pk), Official Gateway to the Government of Pakistan (pakistan.gov.pk), The Guardian, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Wikipedia and various books, websites and other publications.
Last updated February 2022