WASHINGTON: To enhance its nuclear capability, Pakistan is developing non-strategic nuclear weapons, and thus joining the ranks of countries like the US and Russia, an Americanthink-tank has said.
India, however, not listed among five of the nine-nuclear weapons powered countries that has or is developing non-strategic nuclear weapons, said Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project, and Robert S Norris, senior fellow for Nuclear Policy, in a new edition of Nuclear Notebook.
"At least five of the world's nine nuclear weapons states have, or are developing, what appears to meet the definition of a nonstrategic nuclear weapon: Russia, the US, France, Pakistan, and China," they concluded.
In their report, the two US nuclear scientist wrote that the new weapon, the Nasr, is a 60-km ballistic missile launched from a mobile twin-canister launcher. Following its first test launch in April 2011, the Pakistani military news organization described the Nasr as carrying a nuclear warhead "of appropriate yield with high accuracy," with "shoot and scoot attributes" that was developed as a "quick response system" to "add deterrence value" to Pakistan's strategic weapons development program "at shorter ranges" in order "to deter evolving threats."
"This language, which has been repeated after subsequent Nasr tests, strongly indicates a weapon with a new mission that resembles nonstrategic nuclear weapons," they wrote.
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