Polaris  

Are Pakistan’s demands for U.S. drone technology intended to advance its cruise missile program?

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Army Chief Ashfaq Kayani are not often in agreement. They’ve contradicted one another on control over the ISI and on Kerry-Lugar aid. But acquiring drones from the United States? They’re both in favour of that, and they’ve been working at it for over a year now. Appearing on Wolf Blitzer’s CNN show last May, Zardari was asked, “Do you need American help?” The president’s response: “I need drones.” Elsewhere, he has been a bit more specific: Pakistan needs “drone technology. (Emphasis mine.)

This consistent demand is, to say the least, peculiar. The American UCAV program has been successful in taking out Pakistan’s most wanted man, Baitullah Mehsud. It affords the United States a considerable amount of plausible deniability, and in that sense is preferable to hot pursuit from the Pakistani leadership’s standpoint. And most strikingly, it turns out that Pakistani officers are often working closely with their American counterparts on drone missions, occasionally even piloting the unmanned vehicles. The leadership’s particular emphasis on technology is even stranger. Pakistan lacks the indigenous military-industrial base to produce drones en masse, and even if it could, attaining licensing rights from the United States would be unprecedented.

But it looks like Islamabad and Pindi finally got their wish, at least partly. During Secretary of Defense Bob Gates’ recent visit to Pakistan, details were finalised for the transfer of tactical Shadow drones. Have the recipients been grateful? Not at all. According to a Dawn report,  Pakistan expected a “better offer” in the form of larger Predators or Reapers. It’s all the more cheeky because Pakistan only recently swore off offensive operations against militants for the entire year and still refuses to divulge its military plans to its American partners.

Amid all of this reporting, the reasons for the consistent, often strident, Pakistani demands for American drone technology have not been adequately investigated. One hypothesis: Pakistan intends to use the latest drone technology the United States has to offer to not only potentially deploy UAVs against regional adversaries (read: India), but also to develop its nascent land attack cruise missile (LACM) capabilities.

This should not sound far-fetched. After all, the same propellent and guidance technology that go towards developing drones can as easily be put towards LACMs. India’s attempts at missile defense make LACMs an attractive alternative to Pakistan’s already-robust ballistic missile program, or at least nicely complement it. If nothing else, this represents a brilliant plan for circumventing restrictions on missile technology exports from the United States to Pakistan.

This may not be the first time that Pakistan has tried to use American technology to advance its cruise missile program. According to Ted Postol, its Babur missile resulted from reverse-engineering American Tomahawks  that had been launched at Afghanistan in 1998.