lol seriously against nasr? even if it is placed 150km away from border 80% of u r airforce stations will be covered by it most of u r cities as well will be no fly zone and on mercy of it
Pakistan has the fastest growing nuclear programme in the world. By 2020, it is expected to get 200 nuclear devices most of which are targeted at India.
While countries around the globe are talking about diminishing their nuclear stockpiles, the opposite seems to be happening in the case of Pakistan.
It is true that Pakistan is producing more weapon-usable fissile material each passing year. So, for that matter, is India!
Estimates of Pakistan's rate of growth of nuclear warheads are often exaggerated in the West and blindly quoted by some by Indian analysts as well.
The main thing to understand about estimates of the number of nuclear bombs is that no one outside the respective governments will really know how many weapons have been assembled. And the government people are not likely to talk.
Most estimates by non-governmental think-tanks and analysts are just unverifiable hearsay. The only responsible outside estimates are based on nuclear fissile materials production and stocks.
So I will go by the estimates made by our International Panel on Fissile Materials which has been tracking fissile material production of all countries year after year.
It is true that the Pakistanis have set up 3 plutonium (Pu) producing reactors at Khushab and a fourth is in the making. But these are believed to be heavy water reactors of about 50 MWth (Megawatt thermal) capacity.
Such reactors typically produce, at 65 per cent efficiency, about 7 kg of Pu each per year. At best the three reactors can together produce only 105 kg in five years, which can fuel about 21 warheads.
Moreover, once the Pu is produced in the reactors it is not immediately available for making bombs. The fuel rods have to be cooled for a couple of years and then reprocessed to have the weapon-usable Pu extracted. So the actual production of assembled weapons will be much less.
The current arsenal, frequently quoted in think-tank reports, is supposed to be about 110 weapons. So even if that is correct and they add 21 more in the next five years, Pakistan cannot reach 200 warheads by 2020.
You must remember that the earlier Pakistani weapons used highly enriched uranium produced by A Q Khan's centrifuges. But as Zia Mian, M H Nayyar and I have shown in an audit we did of Pakistani uranium availability, their domestic supply of raw uranium is limited and can barely feed the four Khushabh reactors.
So there is unlikely to be much left for enrichment by centrifuges. Therefore I would keep the estimate of Pakistan's arsenal at 130 warheads or less by 2020.
Both Pakistan and India have doubled their nuclear stockpiles since 2007 with their weapons increasing at the rate of ten a year.
India's rate of warhead production is not 10 warheads a year. Its only functioning Pu production reactor is the Dhruva at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre which annually produces about 18 kg of Pu which can fuel about 3, 4 bombs per year, not 10 as is stated.
The CIRUS reactor that used to produce weapons-grade Pu at BARC was closed down as part of the India-US nuclear deal.
Yes, this should be a matter of great concern to the people of both countries. Unfortunately, it is not.
In response to India stating it would not hesitate to go beyond its border to eliminate terrorists, former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf responded to say nuclear stockpiles were not being collected to be used at the time of a festival.
HAPPY HOLII raj
