{"id":2680,"date":"2021-06-06T11:16:52","date_gmt":"2021-06-06T11:16:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jjamwal.in\/yayavar\/?p=2680"},"modified":"2024-11-29T09:31:21","modified_gmt":"2024-11-29T09:31:21","slug":"pakistani-armed-forces-orbat-part-2-anti-tank-air-defence-army-aviation-units-and-weapons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jjamwal.in\/yayavar\/pakistani-armed-forces-orbat-part-2-anti-tank-air-defence-army-aviation-units-and-weapons\/","title":{"rendered":"Pakistani Armed Forces ORBAT, Part 2: Anti Tank, Air Defence & Army Aviation units and weapons"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This section covers some of the components (can\u2019t remember the right word for it at the moment) of Pakistani army like regiments, armour and anti-tank units. There is surprisingly little information about even basic information like infantry regiments of Pakistani army and a lot of data is missing.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anti Tank <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Pakistani Army utilises dedicated vehicle mounted anti-tank infantry battalions and organic anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM) with some infantry battalions.These battalions have good mobility and are meant for harassing enemy armour formations as in defensive as well as offensive operations. Starting from the late 1950s, 1-2 battalions from certain divisions were assigned the role of Reconnaissance and Support (R&S) by arming them with weapons mounted on light vehicles. At that time jeep like vehicles were fitted with recoilless rifles and medium (and heavy?) machine guns. This formed a fast moving screening and reconnaissance element for rest of the forces. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later on, most of these battalions were converted into Light Anti Tank (LAT) battalions  assigned to brigade level command. There are some Heavy Anti Tank (HAT) battalions which are most probably under Corps or Division level control. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Light
IMAGE 1: Light anti tank troops of Pak army firing a Bhaktar Shikan ATGM (opindia.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

LATs usually have Bhaktar Shikan (copy of Chinese HJ-8), Milan ATGMs and Alcot\u00e1n-100, RPG-29 rockets mounted on light vehicles such as Land Rovers. HATs units usually use TOW or BS ATGMs mounted on Talha, copy of M113 Armoured Personnel Carrier.This ATGM mounted version is called Maaz. PA had imported 24 M-901 TOW vehicles in the mid 1980s. It\u2019s not clear how many of them are still operational. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"IMAGE
IMAGE 2 : Maaz APC with Bhakaar Shikan<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"IMAGE
IMAGE 3: M113 PA2 with TOW 2, belonging to 40 AK, XXXI corps<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

All of the above anti-tank units, specially the Heavy ones are sub-optimal solutions in the sense that these are just APCs with an ATGM launcher installed on top of the vehicle. These have to be fired by a crew member by sticking his head out of vehicle and aiming it manually. There seems to be very few dedicated ATGM vehicles like M-901 below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"IMAGE
IMAGE 4: M-901 ATGM vehicle with TOW, II Corps<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Considering that the vehicle belongs to II Corps based in Punjab with offensive role and the fact that only 24 were purchased, it is likely that there are no more than a regiment worth of these machines in operation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following are some of the known anti-tank units:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

UNIT<\/strong><\/td>LOCATION<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
19 Baloch LAT battalion<\/td><\/td><\/tr>
5 Punjab? LAT Regiment<\/td>Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa<\/td><\/tr>
21 Punjab LAT Battalion<\/td><\/td><\/tr>
23 Punjab LAT Battalion<\/td><\/td><\/tr>
26 Punjab LAT Battalion<\/td>Sialkot<\/td><\/tr>
34 Punjab LAT<\/td>Okara Cantt<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table>
TABLE 1: Known Light Anti-Tank Units<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

UNIT<\/strong><\/td>FORMATION<\/strong><\/td>WEAPONS<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
39 AK HAT<\/td><\/td><\/td><\/tr>
40 AK HAT<\/td>XXXI Corps<\/td>TOW on M113PA2 APCs<\/td><\/tr>
44 AK HAT<\/td>XXX Corps<\/td>Bhaktar Shikan on VCC-1 APCs<\/td><\/tr>
226 AK HAT Company<\/td><\/td><\/td><\/tr>
227 AK HAT Company<\/td><\/td>TOW on M113PA2 APCs<\/td><\/tr>
36 Baloch<\/td><\/td>Bhaktar Shikan on VCC-1 APCs<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table>
TABLE 2 : Known Heavy Anti-Tank Units<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

TOWs are also used on  AH-1 Cobras  attack helicopters. 20 of these helicopters were procured in 1985, 12 in 2007 and 14 in 2010. Some have been lost in crashes and combat operations and the remaining fleet is struggling with lack of spares.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pakistan was looking to acquire 1000 AGM-114R Hellfire ATGMs along with 15 AH-1Z Viper attack helicopters in a deal worth USD 952 million with the US, but it was never finalised. Then they ordered 30 T-129 attack helicopters from Turkey along with UMTAS (8 km range) and laser guided Cirit missiles. But even that deal was vetoed by US over Turkey\u2019s purchase of S-400. Turkey is hopeful of developing and fitting a different engine in the helicopter to bypass the American sanctions, but it seems unlikely for now. Earlier, Pakistan had tested and rejected Chinese Z-10 attack helicopters due to poor performance. With other deals failing to materialise, they now may be forced to buy sub-par Chinese machines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Burraq drone (copy of Chinese CH-3) was weaponised with laser guided Barq missile (copy of Chinese HJ-10) which can be used in anti-tank roles. There is not much information available about number of these drones and missiles in service. Another ATGM they have in their arsenal is Ukranian Kombat laser guided ATGM which is fired from 125mm smooth bore cannon of Al Khalid tank. Its range is 200-5000m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EQUIPMENT:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TOW and TOW 2: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pakistan purchased around 1000 TOW wire guided missiles with AH1-F Cobras and M-109 vehicles. Later 2nd gen 2769 RF TOW 2A and 415 RF bunker buster versions  were acquired in a deal worth USD 185 million in 2004. Some of the TOWs were used by Pakistani army to target Indian posts on LoC and a few against Pashtoons and anti-govt islamists. Remaining should be beyond their shelf-life and possibly retired or used for training. Newer TOW2 are not a fire-and-forget type missile, but still quite a threat to almost any armoured vehicle due to its heavy warhead. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bhaktar Shikan:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a licensed copy of Chinese HJ-8, which itself copies from TOW and Milan. There are multiple versions of this missile, but its not clear which are deployed by PA. Pakistan started manufacture of this missile in 1997. ISPR claims a production run of ~21000 missiles and some sources claim 23350 between in 22-24 years. Actual number is likely to be lower.  There is also an air-launched version which is probably integrated on Cobras. This missile too needs to be guided to the target by the  operator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kornet-E<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pakistan ordered 52 9K129 Kornet-E launchers and 200+ ATGMs from Russia in 2017-18. This includes a few anti-structure missiles and thermal sights for night operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instalaza<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A total of 1799 Instalaza ALCOTAN-100 man-portable anti-tank unguided rockets and 158 launchers were purchased between 2016 and 2018. It has a 100mm HEAT charge and weighs 14 kg. Its not clear which units were equipped with these.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Air Defence<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Pakistan puts a huge emphasis on Air Defence as evident by Army\u2019s dedicated Air Defence Command, comprising of two divisions and one independent brigade; 3rd Air Defence Division (Sargodha) 4th Air Defence Division (Malir) and 105th (I) Air Defence Brigade and a total of 12-14 brigade HQs.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This command created an integrated Air Defence Control and Reporting System in the mid 1980s which was supposed to be highly efficient and with good integration among the air force, army as well as navy. PAF shoulders the responsibility of overall defence of Pakistani air space with assistance from army and navy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n