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Pakistan test-fires enhanced version of Babur cruise missile
Gabriel Dominguez, Kuala Lumpur - IHS Jane's Defence Weekly
17 April 2018
Pakistan successfully test-fired what it described as an enhanced-range version of its indigenously developed Babur cruise missile on 14 April, according to a statement by Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR): the media wing of the Pakistani military.
A still taken from a video released by Pakistan's ISPR on 14 April showing the country’s Babur-1B cruise missile in flight. (ISPR)
Called the Babur Weapon System-1 (B), or Babur-1B, the missile was shown in video footage released by ISPR being launched from a transport-erector-launcher (TEL) vehicle, cruising and later hitting a target at an undisclosed location.
While the range to which the missile was tested was not revealed, ISPR said that the weapon “can strike targets both at land and sea with high accuracy at a range of 700 km”.
The Pakistani military described the Babur as a low-flying, terrain-hugging missile, capable of carrying various types of warheads, and equipped with state-of-the-art navigation technologies of terrain contour matching (TERCOM) and all-time digital scene matching area correlators (DSMAC), which enable the weapon to engage “various type of targets with pinpoint accuracy even in the absence of GPS navigation”.
The ISPR has repeatedly referred to the Babur series of missiles, which are capable of delivering both conventional and nuclear payloads, as “important force multipliers” for Pakistan's policy of strategic deterrence.
The latest development came some two weeks after ISPR announced that Pakistan had conducted a test-firing of its Babur-3 submarine-launched cruise missile (SLCM).
