Pak test-fires new cruise missile

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Saturday successfully test fired a new air-launched cruise missile capable of carrying nuclear weapons, the military said in a statement. The locally developed Ra’ad (Hatf-8) missile — Ra’ad means thunder in Arabic — has a range of 350 kilometres and uses stealth technology, it said.

The missile “has been designed exclusively for launch from a variety of Pakistan’s air platforms, providing these with a strategic stand-off capability on land and at sea,” it said. “The Ra’ad can carry all types of warheads and has an accuracy comparable to Pakistan’s longer Babur cruise missile,” the statement said.

Pakistan last test fired the Babur, which has a 700-kilometre range, in July. “The missile has a low detection probability due to stealth design and materials used in its manufacturing,” it said.

President Pervez Musharraf and prime minister Shaukat Aziz congratulated the scientists and engineers involved in designing the new cruise missile, it added.

“Pakistan’s defence will continue to be strengthened as an imperative of national security,” the military statement quoted the two leaders as saying. Pakistan and India have routinely conducted missile tests since the countries carried out tit-for-tat nuclear detonations in May 1998.