DEFENSE NEWS

APLN Senior Research Adviser Frank O’Donnell was quoted in Defense News, where he commented on the implications of the Fatah 2 MLRS system for military planning and postures. Read the original article here.

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan successfully test-fired a new indigenous long-range precision strike weapon with a range of about 249 miles, according to the military’s media branch.

This distance is a considerable leap over the existing Fatah 1 round, which has a range of about 87 miles.

The Fatah 2 is “equipped with state of the art avionics, sophisticated navigation system and unique flight trajectory,” Inter Services Public Relations said in Wednesday’s announcement.” Based on footage of the test released by ISPR, the Fatah 2 appears to be a two-round guided multiple launch rocket system based on the Chinese Taian TAS5450 eight-wheel drive chassis.

Its predecessor, the Fatah 1, is manufactured by Global Industrial Defence Solutions. The conglomerate says the Fatah 1 is intended “to precisely attack and destroy enemy’s group and area targets, such as military bases, massive armored troops, missile launching sites, large airports, harbors and other important facilities.”

The Fatah 1 is an eight-round guided multiple rocket launch system based on the same Taian chassis as the 10-round A-100 multiple launch rocket system in service with Pakistan.

The Fatah 2 test “marks another step in Pakistan’s efforts to field multiple precision strike artillery systems with variable ranges to hold adversary targets at risk,” said Frank O’Donnell, a nonresident fellow with the Stimson Center think tank’s South Asia Program and a senior research adviser at the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network.

The fact Pakistan developed the weapon, he added, demonstrates the country has learned lessons from recent or ongoing conflicts.

“When viewed in the context of Pakistan’s parallel efforts to field a similarly diverse arsenal of combat drones, its implementation of certain lessons — which the military feels the Azerbaijan-Armenia and Russia-Ukraine wars have reinforced — become clear,” O’Donnell told Defense News. “They include the advantages of assigning adversary precision ground bombardment missions to relatively low-cost artillery and combat drone systems, preserving manned fighter aircraft for higher-end strike missions and interception of their counterparts.”

India’s S-400 air defense system is likely a key target of the Fatah 2, he added, as Pakistan could fire the weapon as a decoy to create “greater room for a combat drone to strike the S-400 itself in the midst of the bombardment.”