On the eve of 79th Independence Day, PM Shahbaz Sharif announced the formation of Pakistan Army Rocket Force Command (PARFC), which will be “equipped with modern technology,” and will have the capability to “target the enemy from every direction.” This force, as per the PM, “will prove another milestone in further strengthening [Pakistan’s] conventional war capabilities.”
Not much is known about this new entity, whether it would be an independent force at par with the other three forces headed by a four-star general, or a new command within the existing force structure of the Army. There is also very little information available about its perceived role and task, and what conventional missiles would be placed under this new force, other than the Fatah series of rockets and missiles.
Nevertheless, the establishment of PARFC is a significant development that could lead to changes in Pakistan’s military doctrine and force posture, and therefore, there is a need to understand its implications for the future conflict between the two nuclear neighbours.
Learning from the Chinese Experience; China established the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) in 2015, replacing its 2nd Artillery Force that was established in the 1960s after it acquired nuclear capability in 1964. PLARF hosts both conventional and nuclear-capable missiles and has emerged as a separate arm of the military under the Central Military Commission (CMC). China has opted not to separate its conventional and nuclear-capable missiles, even though it has an unambiguous ‘No First Use’ (NFU) posture, i.e. it will not use nuclear weapons first, unless attacked by another nuclear power with nuclear weapons.
Pakistan Army Rocket Force Command (PARFC), on the other hand, is a new entity with very little information available about its role and tasks. It is expected that PARFC will host mainly Fatah series of conventional rockets and missiles, including the recently introduced Fatah-IV cruise missile that has a range of 750 km. PARFC is not expected to host nuclear-capable ballistic or cruise missiles, which would continue to remain under the National Command Authority (NCA).
It is pertinent to note that, unlike China, Pakistan does not subscribe to an NFU posture, which means that it retains the option of nuclear use under certain circumstances. This hyphenation of conventional and nuclear threats had served well in deterring India from embarking on a major offensive against Pakistan. However, after the separation of its conventional and nuclear missiles, Pakistan may be signalling that it is willing to engage in a conventional conflict, while the nuclear capability would mainly be for deterrence purpose. This may be misinterpreted by India as a ‘de facto NFU’, thus opening space for a conventional war that Pakistan has worked hard to deny through its Full Spectrum Deterrence (FSD) posture.
Why conventional and nuclear entanglement is useful for Pakistan? As a relatively smaller military power with no regional or extra-regional ambitions, the primary objective of Pakistan’s conventional and nuclear deterrence was to prevent major aggression from India. However, when India started to explore space for fighting a limited war under a nuclear overhang, Pakistan introduced its nuclear capable short-range ballistic missiles, also known as tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs) as part of its Full Spectrum Deterrence (FSD) posture to send a message that there exists no space for a conventional or nuclear war between the two nuclear armed adversaries.
This conventional and nuclear entanglement as part of the FSD helped Pakistan to offset India’s conventional advantage and prevent the past military crises from spiralling into major wars. Giving up on this entanglement to pacify international concerns may not necessarily be in Pakistan’s national interests. Moreover, to build and maintain a separate conventional missile capability that could inflict sufficient damage to its adversary would require significant resources and engaging in an arms race that Pakistan has avoided for a long time due to resource constraints.
How is Fatah-IV different from the other missiles? As per the reports, PARFC will host Fatah series of rockets and ballistic missiles, including the newly introduced Fatah-IV sub-sonic cruise missile that has a range of 750 km and can hit the target with more accuracy. Pakistan already has dual-capable ground-launched cruise missile (GLCM) Babur, with a range of 700 km and the Raad air-launched cruise missile (ALCM), having a range of 350 km.
If India can employ its ‘dual-use’ Brahmos missiles against Pakistan, there is no reason why Pakistan cannot use its dual-purpose ballistic and cruise missiles for conventional strikes inside India. It is also being argued that with the creation of a new rocket force, Pakistan’s ‘conventional deterrence will get teeth’. Looking at the outcome of 2019 and the 2025 crises, and notwithstanding the military asymmetry between the two regional adversaries, Pakistan has been able to demonstrate that it has a credible conventional capability to deal with the existing challenges, besides its nuclear deterrent.
The future wars are likely to be different from the previous war. The lessons from the 2019 and May 2025 crises, the recent Israel-Iran conflict and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war suggest that air power and emerging technologies, including the manned and unmanned aerial platforms, will play a major role in shaping the outcome of future conflicts.
Pakistan was able to successfully demonstrate the utility of multi-domain operations during the 2019 conflict and more recently in the May 2025 conflict. The use of space-based assets, cyber, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in support of its military objectives helped Pakistan achieve early success. India, despite its large inventory of cruise missiles and drones, could not get a favourable outcome against its relatively smaller adversary.
The Iran-Israel conflict is another recent example where air power emerged as the key factor, while the limited number of Iranian missiles that were able to penetrate the Israeli air defence system could not influence the outcome of the conflict. The effectiveness of conventional missiles is also being questioned in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict. Despite enjoying a significant advantage in numbers and quality, Russian missiles have not been able to achieve their war objectives against a much smaller adversary that is using cyber and AI-integrated drones to deny Russia an easy victory.
Given these recent experiences, it would be interesting to know how Pakistan plans to achieve its military and political objectives through the newly formed PARFC, especially when the global trends are towards developing lean and smart militaries that are less dependent on traditional modes of fighting and are integrating new and emerging technologies into the existing systems.
This becomes important for a country like Pakistan that cannot afford to engage in a conventional arms competition with India that spends almost eight times more than what Pakistan can barely manage, and also keeping into consideration the fact that the primary purpose of Pakistan’s military capability has always been to prevent and deter conventional as well as nuclear war, and not to engage in a prolonged conventional war that none of the two adversaries could afford.
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