Today's Pakistan Independence Day! And on this independence day comes a huge announcement to activate "Pakistan Army's Rocket Force". We are using the word "activate" as the organization had already been built under silence. There are two aspects to reading the purpose and need for this newly created "Rocket Force". We'll cover the geo-political and geo-Strategic aspects first:
A few things happened way too quickly for Pakistan that usually happen over many years. A short war with India, loss of critical and super expensive assets by India. A global embarrassment of losing French Rafale's by Chinese J-10C and overall excellent battlespace management by Pakistan's military. This was not a short war. This was a "reset" moment for many world militaries, including the US, UK and NATO. This was what they had been planning on a future war to be, this was a complete architecture and execution of strategy and tactics that they had spent billions after billions since year 2000 when they realized "China is growing". This is the war they expected them to have between US and China, India and China, or NATO and Russia. But as it was obvious, they never thought this war would be fought between Pakistan and India. With Pakistan gaining such a decisive edge that after the loss of it's strategic air cover with S-400, India called almost 4 big nations to mediate a ceasefire.
This war gave extremely rude awakening. Dreams shatter, plans mixed, moods depressed but yet, reality had to be understood. The US was quick to not only understand the reality, it accepted it and immediately course corrected its foreign policy. The hyphenation went into effect. "Indo-Pak" term and the region was born again. Per India's pressure and US's lack of Pakistan's military might, the term since Obama's time was "Af-Pak". How do you take a 6th largest military and a nuke power and link it with Afghanistan? It can't happen. The South Asian region did not belong to India only. There were two claimants, India and Pakistan.
Soon later, the US asked its trust worthy partner for three decades to stop buying Russian oil so Russia is forced to ceasefire and killings of innocent people can end. The US asked India to take some actions towards QUAD responsibilities against China. India, to US's surprise refused both requests, but NOT to Pakistan's surprise and Pakistan had warned the US years ago about deceitful tactics India employs.
US and Indian relations went near a halt and are further downwards lately. In this time, the US found that Pakistan was the ONLY country who was maintaining cordial relationships with the US, China, Russia, UK, Canada, EU, Iran, Saudia, Central Russian States, Bangladesh, and many other nation. Pakistan helped the US and China come to agreement on some issues already. This made it a trust worthy partner again to work together and have a strategic relationship so thing don't escalate to wars. The US could see BRICS and other anti-US alignments. So it was better to have partners like Pakistan to mediate issues behind the scenes than get into conflict and push nations further away. So Pakistan and US will form a long term nation to nation strategic partnership and both economies will benefit. A smaller military to military weapons acquisition relationship will thrive also but Pakistan's war fighting machine is now China based and that's the way it will be in the future. No questions on China being a strategic ally.
Rocket Force's Military Aspects: Now we've covered the strategic aspect in details. Now we'll cover the military aspect. The outcome of above mentioned global issues has elevated Pakistan's status to a large military power with positive influence over half the world, at least on all countries that matter. Therefore it now needs to have structure in place that establishes proper mechanism within itself as a regional military power.
That means, like the US, Russia and China, it needs to also have a conventional war fighting structure and a nuclear command and control structure that is strategic in nature.
Pakistan has established to the world and to India that it employs a significant conventional war fighting capability. Currently, the nuclear command is the same that's also managing Pakistan's missile arsenal. So there was a need to change the structure. Pakistan due to its close relationship with US, China and other nations, always analyzes the "best practices". It used the ever growing Chinese military's example and like the PLA, it realized a Rocket force will be needed.
To manage India conventionally, thousands of missiles will be built, acquired and kept. These missiles will include subsonic rockets and cruise missiles, supersonic missiles and soon to be tested, hypersonic weapons. These thousands of high speed weapons of destruction need a proper structure under Pakistan's army that autonomous, understands its own weapon's requirements to create a deterrence. The rockets and missile acquisitions will become the highest growth area in Pakistani military in years to come. Especially with the introduction of hypersonic weapons. There will be an institution like approach by the Rocket Force, to keep, maintain and use thousands of rockets and missiles that will come under this specialized force.
The US and China have given Pakistan a status that will require Pakistan to act like a big military power. The Rocket force will ensure Pakistani military achieves its goals conventionally through its vast inventory of conventional rockets and missile stockpile.
Then there is the SPD aka, Pakistan's Strategic Command that in the future will only be responsible for nuclear attack, retaliation and strategic posturing. It will have it's strategic assets in the shape of Pakistan's existing nuclear delivery capable missiles, like Nasar's, Abdali's, Ghauri's, Shaheen series and Ababeel. The SPD or the strategic command will only focus on keeping nuclear deterrence and it's delivery mechanism. In conventional wars, the world will see a clear distinction between when a conventional war is being fought and when something escalates to a nuclear threshold. Although, in recent events, due to India's unwise and uncalculated warfare tactics, the nuclear threshold can be achieved relatively quickly, but having proper larger military structure in place furthers Pakistan's posture of a responsible nation and a top 6th largest military of the world.
