Islamabad: Pakistan has added a new arm to his army, the Army Rocket Force Command, responsible for building a long -range conventional attack capacity to give the army a more acute advantage over India Archival.
This was announced by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif during a ceremony on the eve of Independence Day in Islamabad. “On this occasion, he announced the establishment of the Army Rock Force Command,” he said during his speech.
The new command will be responsible for operating conventional missiles, including Ballistic, Cruise and possibly even Hypersonic, designed to reach goals far beyond the front lines.
The idea is to hit deeply, hard and without reaching the nuclear trigger. Prime Minister Shehbaz described force as “equipped with modern technology and have the ability to attack the enemy from different directions … another milestone to strengthen our conventional war capacity.”
The moment of the ad is significant. He arrived almost three months after a four -day war with India, the most intense in decades. It was the first successes of the Pakistan Air Force that tilted the balance in favor of Pakistan, but the deficiency of not having much was observed with what to shoot at a longer range.
A senior security official, cited by ReutersHe said that “force would have its own command in the army, which would be dedicated to the management and deployment of missiles in case of conventional war.” “It is obvious that it is intended for India,” said the official.
The establishment of the new command seems to be the result of the lessons learned from that conflict: dissuade India in conventional space, more than combatants and artillery were needed.
“Crucially, it is a lesson of the May War. Pakistan did not have much on the path of the conventional rockets of greater reach, which could be used for a deep targeting,” said Muhammad Faisal, an academic from the Sydney University of Technology, who specializes in Safety of South Asia.
This is not a completely new concept. China has its own dedicated missile arm, the rocket force pla. Iran, in recent conflicts with Israel, has used mass missile releases to flood enemy defenses. Pakistan now joins this small club. The registration of missile use is mixed. Iran’s 12 -day clash with Israel in June saw many missile releases and, in fact, caused substantive damage, but could not bring any real change in the strategic image.
In Ukraine, the vast Russian missile arsenal has mistreated cities without offering victory. Recent conflicts have shown that drones have imported more.
This raises the obvious question: Will the Pakistan rocket force be a real change of play, or simply a new expensive project? Long -range precision missiles are not cheap to build, buy or maintain. Similarly, its place in the widest military doctrine of Pakistan also still does not be clear.
“It is a significant development and could lead to changes in our military doctrine and a stance of strength. Since there is not much available in the public domain on the role of this new entity and the concept of employment, it can be premature to speculate on its effectiveness against the Indian threat,” said Dr. Adil Sultan, dean of the Faculty of Airpiation and Strategic Studies (FASS) at Air University to the Air University.
Posted in Dawn, August 15, 2025
