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The Pakistan Army’s new
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While this may seem like a bespoke Pakistani solution, it aligns with a global trend. The doctrinal concept of using massed, rapid missile launches to neutralize an adversary’s capabilities before they can mobilize has long been a feature of Chinese and Russian military thinking. However, this philosophy is now gaining traction in Western-oriented militaries. The significant investment by the U.S. Army into its PrSM program is a clear indicator that land forces are increasingly being equipped with organic long-range precision-strike capabilities.
For Pakistan, the lessons from May 2025 crystallized this necessity. While India’s strikes were limited, they successfully penetrated Pakistani air defenses and hit air bases. The crucial takeaway for Pakistani planners was not the immediate damage but the demonstrated vulnerability to a large-scale, preemptive salvo of BrahMos missiles in a period of relative quiet, when Pakistan is not on high alert. (Related: 2025 conflict wrap-ups & analysis.)
Although Pakistan has proven capable of tracking and disrupting large-scale Indian Air Force strike packages, stopping massed land-based cruise missile attacks presents a far more complex challenge. Consequently, Pakistan must now operate under the constant risk that India will seek to preemptively degrade its airpower as a prelude to any wider conflict.
Given this reality, it can be inferred that the ARFC is the striking arm of a wider strategic system that binds robust, real-time ISTAR (intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance) – leveraging dedicated military satellites – and electronic support measures (ESM), with a wide-scale strike capability designed to act decisively on the intelligence gathered. (See space/ISR coverage: PRSC-S1 SAR satellite and PakSat-MM1 comms satellite; C4ISR series: overview.)
The Logic of Independent Strike Capabilities
The decision to vest a powerful, long-range precision-strike capability within the Army, independent of the Pakistan Air Force (PAF), stems from both global military trends and specific local necessities. Historically, dedicated rocket forces have been a hallmark of Eastern militaries like Russia and China.
However, the trend of Army-owned deep-strike assets is now becoming widespread. A key driver for this shift is the changing economics of manufacturing. Precision-guided surface-to-surface missiles (SSMs) and ground-launched cruise missiles (GLCMs) were once niche, expensive capabilities reserved for high-value targets. As production scales up and technology matures, their costs are decreasing, enabling land forces to employ them more liberally against a wider array of targets that contribute to an enemy’s overall warfighting capacity.
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