Pakistani military is creating an independent Rocket Force with two divisions, each with three brigades. Four of these brigades are likely to be rocket brigades equipped with Fatah (Fatah-1/ 🇨🇳A-100, Fatah-II/🇨🇳A-200, Fatah-3/🇨🇳HD-1) , Babur cruise missile and perhaps Nasr (🇨🇳WS-2) class of short ranged guided rockets.
I am still not sure if they will move any of their North Korean and Chinese origin nuclear capable MRBM regiments like Ghauri (🇰🇵Nodong-1), Shaheen (🇨🇳M-9) and others from SFC into this new command just now.
Most of the ballistic missiles they got from North Korea and China were technologically obsolete when they were being inducted. China was already retiring most of its M-9 and M-11 during those years and it’s quite likely that some of that old stock ended up in Pakistani inventory. Shelf life of such missiles is 20-25 years.
From what is known so far, most of the units under the new Rocket Force are not new units raised from scratch. Some of them will be transferred from Army’s artillery divisions like Nasr units stationed in Pano Aqil. So actual increase in firepower of Pakistani military is marginal for now, perhaps 2 new brigades at most.
Now all these new missiles are almost entirely Chinese with minimal Pakistani contribution. All the major sub-systems like engines, propellant, guidance systems and even the TEL for all are mostly Chinese.
All things said, Pakistani military is not very incompetent, irrespective of the fact how stupid their bots on social media are.
At the same time, performance of their somewhat organisationally similar Air Defence Corps has been pretty abysmal. IAF smoked a vital command centre and a few expensive aircraft on apron just 1-2 km away from the ADC HQ in 2025. Other losses while PAF was forced to sit out the conflict after Day 1 are extra.
Creating a new command is not too difficult, more so after using the panic generated after massive failures last year and how Iran war is progressing. At the same time, building, maintaining and replenishing a sufficiently large missile inventory is considerably more difficult, particularly when most of the critical technology and manufacturing capacity remains dependent on an external supplier.
Without it, this new Force may be a good administrative consolidation of existing assets. But it can’t be a substantial expansion of Pakistan’s conventional and strategic strike capabilities.
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