Missile Lobby

BABUR

The Babur Ground Launched Cruise Missile [GLCM] is a low flying, terrain hugging missile with high maneuverability, pinpoint accuracy and radar avoidance features. It has the same external dimensions as the US Tomahawk sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM). It can carry both nuclear and conventional warheads and has stealth capabilities. It also incorporates the most modern cruise missile technology of Terrain Contour Matching (TERCOM) and Digital Scene Matching and Area Co-relation (DSMAC), which enhances its precision and effectiveness manifolds.

The term "cruise missile" means a missile that is an unmanned, self-propelled weapon-delivery vehicle that sustains flight through the use of aerodynamic lift over most of its flight path. This definition distinguishes cruise missiles from ballistic missiles and remotely piloted airplanes. Cruise missiles are jet-propelled pilotless aircraft designed to strike distant targets with great accuracy. Traveling at hundreds of miles an hour, cruise missiles use the global positioning system, inertial guidance, optical scenery correlation, and terrain comparing radar to find their targets. Their accuracy makes them especially useful in attacking military targets in urban areas with limited damage to nearby civilian facilities.

The TEL vehicle used to fire the ASCM featured three container launch units (CLUs) and is also almost identical to that used by the YJ-62 mobile coastal defense system operated by China’s People’s Liberation Army. The TEL vehicle has a main front cab, a separate rear command cab, a power-generation system, and an elevating launch platform holding the three CLUs. Although arranged differently and of a different coloration, the CLUs also appear to be exactly the same as those used by the Chinese Navy’s Luyang II (Type 052C)-class destroyers.

Babur Weapon System is an imported and modified Chinese C-602 shore-based anti-ship cruise missile. The nature and extent of the modification is evident in the press release. Pakistan ordered about 120 C-602 anti-ship cruise missiles from China in 2009. The first batch of the missiles, enough to equip a company, were delivered in 2011. The Naval Missile Regiment is divided into companies, each with a defined AOR along the coast. After personnel completed training on using the missiles, the Pakistani government said that the C-602s had already been deployed by frontline naval units. PN got an upgraded version of C602 that is the longer range YJ62 that with 400+ km range with 450kg warhead. The C-602 relies on INS/GPS guidance and switches to seeker at terminal stage. So it needs to be fed with a location or waypoints to navigate. When its in seeker detection range of target switches to own guidance.

Some sources suggest the Babur is based on Kh-55SM/Korshun LACM, which had been developed by Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk-based Yuzhnoye State Design Bureau, with detailed production engineering data bought from Kiev in 2001.