Pakistan's missile aims at India's 'Cold Start' doctrine

Islamabad: Pakistan's new short-range nuclear-capable Hatf-9 missile is primarily geared toward deterring India's Cold begin military doctrine that envisages fast thrusts by tiny integrated battle teams within the event of hostilities, specialists and analysts here have claimed.

The Hatf-9 or Nasr, described as a missile with a spread of sixty km and designed to hold "nuclear warheads of acceptable yield with high accuracy", was tested for the primary time at an undisclosed location yesterday.

The missile are deployed with a mobile multi-barrel launch system that has "shoot and scoot attributes", or the flexibility to fireplace at a target and immediately relocate to a different position to avoid enemy counter-fire.

The new system is primarily geared toward deterring India's Cold begin doctrine, that the Indian army has created integrated battle teams comprising infantry and mechanized parts that might be quickly mobilized and used for launching speedy thrusts into Pakistani territory within the event of hostilities, claimed an analyst who didn't wish to be named.

The Hatf-9 missile system may be a tactical nuclear weapons and "low-yield battlefield deterrent" capable of inflicting injury on mechanized forces like armed brigades and divisions, military sources told the categorical Tribune newspaper.

With the event of the Hatf-9's shoot and scoot capability, "Indian planners can currently be deterred from considering choices of restricted war", the military sources said.

The Pakistani military had formulated its "new war fighting concept" in response to India's Cold begin doctrine, the Dawn newspaper quoted unnamed sources as saying.

The development of the Hatf-9 is additionally being seen as a serious achievement in terms of miniaturization of nuclear warheads, the daily reported.

Another analyst, who didn't wish to be named, said that weapons just like the Hatf-9 missile can limit the house for "limited war underneath a nuclear umbrella".

However, the analyst noted that the military could ought to use such a system inside Pakistani territory within the event of an Indian thrust and this might have adverse consequences, like nuclear fallout or the radiation hazard from an atomic blast.

Pakistan has usually criticized India's Cold begin doctrine, that Army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani once described as a "very offensive" strategy.

The Foreign workplace too has described the doctrine as "irrational" whereas the military had pledged that it might take steps to counter the strategy.

In a statement issued once yesterday's take a look at, the Pakistani military said the Hatf-9 had been developed to "add deterrence price to Pakistan's strategic weapons development programmed at shorter ranges".