LAHORE: Pakistan has test-fired two extended-range missiles in eight days and may be preparing a third, signalling a concerted drive by its new rocket force to push conventional strike ranges deeper while defence watchers look to the Arabian Sea for what comes next.
The army’s media wing announced on Tuesday the successful launch of an extended-range Fatah-2, a hypersonic ballistic missile that it said carries advanced navigation and avionics and can defeat enemy missile defence systems through its trajectory and manoeuvrability. The added range, it said, would expand the army’s ability to strike deep targets. On Oct 6 it had tested an extended-range Fatah-4 ground-launched cruise missile.
Lieutenant General Nauman Zakaria, commander of the Army Rocket Force Command, watched the launch with senior officers, scientists and engineers. President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Chief of Defence Forces Field Marshal Asim Munir congratulated the team, and Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif called it a proud achievement of the army’s scientists and engineers.
The military did not disclose the new range. The original Fatah-2, first tested in December 2023, flies about 400 km. Pakistani defence commentators on social media have put the extended version at 750 km or more, figures that have not been officially confirmed. Launch footage suggests the missile is longer than its predecessor but keeps the same 600 mm diameter, pointing to more fuel.
It was the rocket force’s fourth publicly announced test this year. Pakistan has also issued at least seven overland notices to airmen in 2026, according to defence analysts, and an Oct 6 to 7 notice covered corridors running to the Arabian Sea coast.
Defence watchers say another notice has been issued for Oct 14 and 15 from the Sonmiani Flight Test Range near Karachi, which would suggest a further ballistic launch. The Lahore Times could not independently verify the notice, and the military has announced no test. Sonmiani, set up in the 1960s as Pakistan’s first rocket range, has hosted the country’s Hatf ballistic missile tests since 1989.
The Fatah-2 programme has a naval twin. The Pakistan Navy’s SMASH ship-launched anti-ship ballistic missile shares many of the Fatah-2’s features, has an officially stated range of about 350 km and has been fired from frigates and, in April, from a Babur-class corvette. Analysts say a longer-range Fatah-2 could lead to an extended SMASH or a mobile coastal battery able to hold enemy warships at bay far out in the Arabian Sea, though the navy has announced no such plan.
Such a capability would matter at sea, where Pakistan’s surface fleet has relied largely on Chinese-made anti-ship cruise missiles with export-restricted ranges of up to about 290 km. A land-based battery firing a faster, longer-range ballistic missile would be harder for an adversary to target.
The rocket force was created after last year’s conflict with India to bring the army’s conventional missiles under one command, and the Fatah series has since been developed in successive variants. Quwa, a Pakistani defence analysis site, said the October tests confirmed that each member of the Fatah family will see iterative upgrades.
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