Pakistan began focusing on nuclear development in January 1972 under the leadership of Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who delegated the program to nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan and military administrator Zahid Ali Akbar[citation needed]. This program would reach fruition under President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. Pakistan's nuclear weapons development program was in response to neighboring India's development of nuclear weapons. Bhutto called a meeting of senior scientists and engineers on 20 January 1972, in Multan. It was here that Bhutto rallied Pakistan's scientists to build the atomic bomb for national survival. At the Multan meeting, Bhutto also appointed Pakistani nuclear scientist, Munir Ahmad Khan (a U.S. trained scientist), as chairman of Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), who till then had been working as Director of Nuclear Power and Reactor Division at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in Vienna, Austria. This marked the beginning of Pakistan's pursuit of nuclear capability. Following India's surprise nuclear test, codenamed Smiling Buddha in 1974, the first confirmed nuclear test by a nation outside the permanent five members of the United Nations Security Council, the goal to develop nuclear weapons received considerable impetus.[citation needed]
Consequently, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, a metallurgical engineer, working at the Dutch research firm URENCO, also joined Pakistan's nuclear weapons-grade Uranium enrichment program. The uranium enrichment program had been launched in 1974 by PAEC chairman Munir Ahmad Khan as Project-706. A.Q. Khan joined the project in the spring of 1976 and was made Project-Director in July 1976 after taking over from another nuclear scientist, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood. In 1983, Khan was convicted by a Dutch court in absentia for stealing the blueprints, though the conviction was overturned on a legal technicality.[5]
Through the late 1970s, Pakistan's program acquired sensitive uranium enrichment technology and expertise. The 1975 arrival of Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan considerably advanced these efforts. Dr. Khan is a German-trained metallurgist who brought with him knowledge of gas centrifuge technologies that he had through his position at the classified URENCO uranium enrichment plant in the Netherlands. He was put in charge of building, equipping and operating Pakistan's Kahuta facility, which was established in 1976. Under Khan's direction, Pakistan employed an extensive clandestine network in order to obtain the necessary materials and technology for its developing uranium enrichment capabilities.[3]
On 28 May 1998, a few weeks after India's second nuclear test (Operation Shakti), Pakistan detonated five nuclear devices in the Chagai Hillsin the Chaghai district, Balochistan. This operation was named Chagai-I by Pakistan, the base having been long-constructed by provincialmartial law administrator Rahimuddin Khan during the 1980s. Pakistan's fissile material production takes place at Kahuta and Khushab/Jauharabad, where weapons-grade plutonium is made by the scientists.[6]
Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons Program was established in 1974 when the Directorate of Technical Development (DTD) was set up in PAEC by chairman Munir Ahmad Khan.Munir Ahmad Khan was credited as the one of the pioneers of Pakistan's atomic bomb by a recent study from theInternational Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), London's dossier on Pakistan's nuclear program. DTD was assigned the task of developing the implosion design, trigger mechanism, physics calculations, high-speed electronics, high-precision chemical and mechanical components, high explosive lenses for Pakistan's nuclear weapons. The DTD had come up with its first implosion design of a nuclear weapon by 1978 which was then improved and later tested on 11 March 1983 when PAEC carried out Pakistan's first successful cold test of a nuclear device. Between 1983 and 1990, PAEC carried out 24 more cold tests of various nuclear weapon designs. DTD had also developed a miniaturized weapon design by 1987 that could be delivered by all Pakistan Air Force fighter aircraft.[7]
No comments:
Post a Comment