November 4,
2008: Pakistan is buying some A100 rocket systems from China, for evaluation
purposes. The A100 is a reverse engineered Russian BM-30. Both are 300mm rocket
launchers. Both employ a 40 ton wheeled vehicle carrying 12 rockets and a crew
of three. The BM-30 entered service in the late 1980s, and was seen as the
Russian answer to the U.S. MLRS (a 27 ton tracked vehicles carrying twelve, 650
pound, 227mm rockets). All these rockets
are more accurate than earlier generations of unguided rockets. The U.S. took
this one step further two years ago, when it stopped using unguided rockets.
Now only GPS guided MLRS rockets are used, which can reach out as far as 70
kilometers.
Pakistan is
looking at the A100 (which fires 550 pound rockets as far as 80 kilometers)
because India has bought the BM-30 system. No satellite guided BM-30 or A100
rockets have appeared yet. Russia pioneered the development of modern
battlefield rockets in the late 1930s, but the U.S. introduction of the
high-tech MLRS in the early 1980s made these weapons much more effective.
