Pakistan’s Defence Industry Lays Out Ambitious Future Roadmap Plus

Global Industrial and Defence Solutions (GIDS), the commercial representative of multiple Pakistani state-owned defence suppliers, released its roadmap for future products.

The roadmap can be accessed from GIDS’ official website, and it contains a wide variety of potential arms ranging from, among others, new high-altitude long-endurance (HALE) unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAV), active phased-array radars, surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems, and torpedoes.

Overall, GIDS’ future roadmap ranges from improved variants of existing, mainstay solutions – such as the Fatah-series of surface-to-surface missiles (SSM) and Burq-series air-to-ground missiles (AGM) – to newly revealed systems, like the “Group 5 UCAV” or “LOMADS” SAM system.

It should be noted that GIDS itself does not develop or manufacture any of the systems it is promoting and selling. Rather, GIDS serves as the commercial wing of a conglomerate of Pakistani state-owned enterprises that specialize in defence, such as NESCOM, for example. Basically, it is these state-owned enterprises that carry out the development and production work of GIDS’ products.

New HALE UCAVs

According to GIDS, there are two HALE UCAVs are under development: the 3,000-kg “Group 5 UCAV” and the 1,650-kg Shahpar III (also designated as “Group 4”).

The Group 5 UCAV seems to leverage twin turboprop or piston engines. The Group 5’s designers (possibly, if not likely, NESCOM) is aiming to achieve an endurance of over 35 hours and external payload in excess of 450 kg. Though it is called a UCAV, it seems that NESCOM is optimizing the Group 5 for the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) role, especially imaging-related missions.

The Group 4 UCAV carries the designation of NESCOM’s flagship MALE UAV series, the Shahpar. Being the third drone of the Shahpar family, the Shahpar-III will be larger and offer over 20 hours of endurance and a payload of 400 kg to 530 kg across six external hardpoints. Though a single engine design, it appears that the Shahpar-III will follow a similar airframe design approach as the larger Group 5 UCAV.