After India's missile flight test success, Pak gets tracking system from China

New Delhi: In an unprecedented deal, China has sold Pakistan a powerful optical tracking and measurement system that could speed up the Pakistani military’s development of multi-warhead missiles, a media report said.

Zheng Mengwei, a researcher with the CAS Institute of Optics and Electronics in Chengdu, Sichuan province, confirmed to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post that Pakistan had bought a highly sophisticated, large-scale optical tracking and measurement system from China. 

The Pakistani military recently deployed the Chinese-made system "at a firing range" for use in testing and developing new missiles, he said. 

According to a statement on the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) website, China is the first country to export such sensitive equipment to Pakistan.

The report attributed the sale of the equipment to Pakistan to India testing the most advanced nuclear-ready intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) Agni-V with a range long enough to hit Beijing or Shanghai.

Earlier in January, India successfully test-fired its nuclear capable surface-to-surface ballistic missile Agni-5 - the most advanced missile in the Agni series with a strike range of over 5000 kms, which brings the whole of Asia and China as well parts of Europe and Africa within its nuclear strike envelope.

Agni-5 is most advanced missile in the Agni series with new technologies incorporated in it in terms of navigation and guidance, warhead and engine.

Earlier on Thursday, the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile was successfully flight tested from Rajasthan's Pokhran test range.

The missile flies almost three times the speed of sound at Mach 2.8 and has a range of 290 km.

The range of the BrahMos missile, an Indo-Russia joint venture, can be extended up to 400 km as certain technical restrictions were lifted after India became a full member of the Missile Technology Control Regime or MTCR in 2016.

(With PTI inputs)