Pakistan’s Tactical Nuclear Missiles : Safety, Stability and Security

Contents: Preface. 1. Pakistan’s tactical nuclear weapons. 2. Development of nuclear weapons in Pakistan. 3. Safety and security Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. 4. Pakistan: nuclear stability and Diplomacy. 5. Pakistan’s tactical nuclear weapon and deterrence stability. 6. Nuclear security and risks of nuclear terrorism in Pakistan. 7. Pakistan’s nuclear program. 8. Nuclear Pakistan: implications for national and international security. 9. The peril of prestige in nuclear power. Bibliography. Index. 

Nuclear weapons today are a part of Pakistan’s belief system, having been built up over the years because they seem to have provided a credible deterrent against Indian aggression. Pakistan is convinced, may be rightly so, that is nuclear capability has been able to deter India from escalating hostilities in the last three decades. Pakistan is now on a journey to strengthen its deterrent. Pakistan today has the world’s fastest growing nuclear stockpile. Given the rate of its plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU) production, it may be able to produce another 200 nuclear warheads in next five to 10 years, taking its arsenal to close to 350 warheads. The production of such a staggering stockpile has been associated with an extremely worrisome trend, a majority of nuclear warheads produced by Pakistan in the last decade are thought to be low yield tactical weapons. The rapid tacticalization of a strategic asset in a region considered to be a nuclear flashpoint has raised plethora of security and strategic questions. Pakistan’s ability to credibly and deliberately generate risk relies on the country’s command and control (C2) structure. The existing system leaves some unresolved questions about how Pakistan is going to create a credible risk without forward deploying TNWs or how it is going to play a deliberate strategic game when its weapons lack negative controls.