nuclear-news

Pakistan successfully test-fired a new version of its Ra’ad ii nuclear-capable air-launched cruise missile on February 16, in the latest sign of the nation’s thermonuclear weapons advancement.

The Pakistan military’s Inter-Services Public Relations (ispr) said in a statement that the new version of the Ra’ad ii can travel up to 375 miles, nearly twice the range of the earlier model. It noted that the missile is “equipped with state-of-the-art guidance and navigation systems ensuring engagement of targets with high precision.” The combination of the longer range and the precision navigation “significantly enhances” the military’s “air delivered strategic standoff capability on land and at sea,” the ispr said…….

Pakistan has steadily developed more powerful, more compact and more numerous nuclear warheads—and, as evidenced by the new Ra’ad ii variant, more deft systems to deliver them.

Meanwhile, parts of Pakistan have become hotbeds of intensifying Islamic radicalism, which calls the security of these unfathomably destructive weapons into question. “Pakistan is the most dangerous country in the world,” Michael Morell, a former acting Central Intelligence Agency director, told Axios in 2018. “[A]nti-state jihadist extremism is growing in Pakistan, creating the nightmare society down the road: an extremist government in Islamabad with nuclear weapons.”

The Pakistani military has control over the nation’s 70 to 90 nuclear weapons. But the military routinely works with some of the most dangerous terrorist groups on the planet, including the ruthless Haqqani branch of the Afghan Taliban. The Brookings Institution noted, “Pakistan has provided direct military and intelligence aid” to the Haqqani, which has resulted in “the deaths of U.S. soldiers, Afghan security personnel and civilians, plus significant destabilization of Afghanistan.” …….. https://www.thetrumpet.com/21979-pakistans-nuclear-weapons-get-a-longer-range-and-greater-precision