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[Magnus]

Pakistan Employs China's Beidou Guidance System, but Access Not Guaranteed
May. 7, 2013 - 05:09PM   |    By USMAN ANSARI  

ISLAMABAD — Access to China’s Beidou satellite guidance system for navigation and precision strike weaponry is welcomed by Pakistani analysts, but guaranteed availability of the Beidou signal cannot be assumed.

“Pakistan’s armed forces cannot rely on US GPS because of its questionable availability during a conflict that has overtones of nuclear escalation,” former Pakistan Air Force pilot Kaiser Tufail said.

“With Pakistani cruise missiles having satellite navigation as an option, it would actually be very naive to believe that US would abet in any such venture,” he said.

The Beidou military signal will be more accurate than available commercial systems.

Mansoor Ahmed from Quaid-e-Azam University’s Department of Defence and Strategic Studies, who specializes in Pakistan’s national deterrent and delivery program, said the Beidou signal is vital for Pakistan’s defense.

“Pakistan is likely to follow a two-pronged strategy aimed at providing redundancies in conflict situations for secure guidance of its cruise missiles,” he said.

“This would call for reliance on Beidou as well as inertial guidance, the latter being used for indigenous cruise missiles like Babur, which can be used for counterforce precision strikes with or without conventional warheads,” he added.

Pakistan’s indigenous cruise missiles, the air-launched Hatf-VIII/Vengeance-VIII Ra’ad, and the surface or sub-surface-launched Hatf-VII Babur, use satellite guidance in addition to inertial navigation and terrain contour mapping.

Some Pakistani ballistic missiles, such as the Shaheen-II, are also claimed to have a satellite guidance option.

Despite its benefits, access to Beidou cannot be fully guaranteed.

Though Tufail believes “China would not outright withdraw [Beidou] at least in the relatively less dangerous early stages of a conflict. … For Pakistan to depend on Chinese satellite guidance systems for weapons delivery [which could be nuclear too] is fraught with uncertainties driven by international concerns.

“Total reliance on the Chinese Beidou satellite positioning system in any conflict would, therefore, also have to be tempered with these stark realities,” he added.

Tufail said Beidou is important mainly with regards to conventional precision strike.

“The very large destruction hemisphere of a nuclear weapon, even a low yield one, mitigates any lack of delivery accuracy of a small order,” he said.

Ahmed, however, believes Beidou will have at least one important part to play regarding Pakistan’s nuclear deterrent.

“Beidou would be particularly effective for a naval Babur that is believed to be the platform for Pakistan’s second-strike capability,” he said.

Its value will mainly be through the accurate positioning of the launch submarine rather than the guidance of the missile itself, because inertial navigation should still be sufficient for a submarine-launched weapon as long as the submarine’s position is accurately determined.

Ahmed does not believe large numbers of conventionally armed variants of the Babur missile will be carried on Pakistani submarines.

For the Navy “Babur primarily fits in with a second strike platform carrying nuclear warheads” he said.

In the South Asian context, the use of precision guided munitions can be hampered, however.

The skies over Pakistan are often obscured by thick fog in winter and dust storms in summer, which complicate accurate weapons delivery.

Tufail, therefore, highlights Beidou as important for aircraft navigation and conventional weapons delivery. Though he thinks Pakistan “must retain options like laser guided weapons, not withstanding their limitations in adverse weather conditions.

“In a 24-hour cycle, there are ample opportunities that can be exploited and these weapons can be useful backups,” he said.

China’s aid to Pakistan’s goes further than Beidou, however. While as Pakistan continues to develop its own precision-guided weaponry, only China can expeditiously deliver such such munitions in volume.

The Stockholm International Policy Research Institute (SIPRI) cites deliveries of the LS-3 and LS-6-500 satellite-guided glide bombs, and the LT-2 LGB in connection with the JF-17 Thunder fighter program as the latest examples.

SIPRI also confirms the acquisition of 50 Chinese CM-400AKG supersonic standoff missiles for the anti-shipping strike role under a 2010 deal. A variant of the missile is believed to also be satellite guided for precision strikes against land targets.

He is inclined to believe the CM-400AKG will remain a specialist anti-aircraft carrier weapon for the time being therefore.

http://www.defensene...-Not-Guaranteed

[Tiberia]

Pakistan should develop technological solutions to GPS jammers since GPS availability is questionable in a possible future nuclear war.
What we can do is conduct more R&D in the fields of atomic clocks, quantum navigation, digital scene-matching guidance(Babur cruise missile already has more then one of these), optical instruments and Laser navigation systems just to name a few.
A fixed or mobile microwave source emitting high burst of EMF on the same GPS frequency from the Rajasthan desert of India can create nightmare scenarios with in 50 to 100 miles of radius for a purely GPS guided missile.
Russia has got one so we can assume India has as well.
Some websites are offering GPS gammers for as low as $45 with free worldwide shipping.
It means its a cheap microwave device and every technical person can create one for less then 3000 Pakistani Ruppees and parts available in Hall road Lahore and DAV college road Rawalpindi.
So you can guess how easy it is to jam GPS and there's no real protection against jamming.
All you need is an easily portable radio transmitter and if you set it up on an elevated location, you can cover a large area, i had created such prototypes while i was studying electronics.
So spoofing and blocking GPS is a child play but remember in a limited area and with a limited range.
If a cruise missile is launched from a sub and from an unknown location in the Arabian sea then there is no way to stop it.
I believe Inertial Navigation Systems is the only best solution for Pakistan because of the very close proximity of Indian targets.
Its an old technology but if combined with digital scene-matching guidance in a powerful computer then its even better then GPS.

[platinum786]

Until we develop our own satelite network, we will be reliable on others. INS is a backup but it's as accurate as GPS. If we were using our own military sattelite networks purely for missile guidance, signal wavelengths and frequencies could not be detected and blocked until it was too late.

[PakShah]

platinum786, on 13 May 2013 - 09:29 AM, said:

Until we develop our own satelite network, we will be reliable on others. INS is a backup but it's as accurate as GPS. If we were using our own military sattelite networks purely for missile guidance, signal wavelengths and frequencies could not be detected and blocked until it was too late.

When will we develop our own satellite network? I mean we are very weak in this day and age.
We also have a very costly territorial dispute with Republic of India.

I suppose we have 3 real strengths. Our geopolitical position in Asia/Greater Middle East, our population resources (200 million people), and nuclear weapons.

[Dizasta]

^^ I had applied for a job at SUPARCO, 6 years ago when I came back to Pakistan, permanently. The state of this organization is pathetic and to utter disappointment, I was over looked and some a-hole Soomro got the job. Why? Well because the a-hole's father was an MPA of Sindh province.

One of my contacts told me that had I come a year before (during Musharraf's rule) I would've immediately been hired due to my qualifications and experience. But I guess that there was some reasoning for this, as I came back to Parachinar and worked very hard to establish autonomous Data-Transponder network for the commercial sector in FATA. Today, there is a wider ranged, improved cellular connectivity across the Kurram Agency.

I hope that SUPARCO is adequately funded and responsibly managed from now on. As their is an acute requirement for Pakistan to have its own Satellite network, both military and civilian sectors. We need Satellites to establish terrain and border-demarcation Data-Bank. This would help improve our ability in future construction of major highway networks, bridges, dams, troop deployments, UAS development, Satellite-Navigation, River Indus monitoring for the creation of Data-Bank that archives the river's route patterns, levels and floods.

The possibilities are limitless in the Satellite

[Dizasta]

Double Post!