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By: Teve Torbes

Pakistan is not unique among nuclear powers in its lack of permissive action link technology. Both China and India also lack PALS. Pakistan does, however, pose a unique risk of loss of control over its nuclear arsenal. While any country that possesses nuclear weapons would gain security benefits from installing the technology, Pakistan’s current lack of an established command and control regime makes it an urgent case for a U.S. transfer of technology.

Pakistan faces several challenges in creating an effective command and control system for its nuclear weapons. It has basic geographic problems that interfere with efforts to control its nuclear weapons in an emergency. It is a relatively narrow country, with few locations that weapons can be hidden at and its proximity to India largely reduces the amount of time available for a second-strike decision to be made (Man).

These geographic problems limit Pakistan’s command and control efforts as they force the central government to loosen its control over weapons in the event of a crisis. They also radically inhibit early warning systems, as the amount of warning time Pakistan would have in the event of an Indian nuclear attack would be a few minutes at the maximum (Man). Without the benefit of any prior experience with nuclear weapons, Pakistan has had great difficulty in establishing a clear set of controls to prevent the unauthorized use of nuclear weapons. As discussed earlier, the only real rule that has been established is the “3-man” requirement. This sort of consensus would be relatively easy to achieve in a military organization trained to obey commands from superior officers. Without a stronger system of organizational safeguards, a technical solution may be Pakistan’s only effective option of increasing the safety of their arsenal.

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