Pakistan’s effort to launch 750km range missile crashes
According to national security planners and Pakistan watchers, this was the second consecutive test failure of the Babur II sub-sonic missile after the previous test failed on April 10, 2018.
Pakistan’s efforts to build a 750 km range ground-launched cruise missile Babur II have suffered a set-back with the delivery platform crashing to the ground after two minutes or 14 kilometres in flight from the launch point at Sonmiani test range in Balochistan on March 19.
A Pakistani-made Cruise missile Ra’ad is shown during a military parade to mark Pakistan’s Republic Day in 2016. (PTI file photo)
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According to national security planners and Pakistan watchers, this was the second consecutive test failure of the Babur II sub-sonic missile after the previous test failed on April 10, 2018. The second test launch failed while being witnessed by Lt Gen Sahir Shamshad Mirza, Chief of General Staff, Pakistan General Headquarters, Rawalpindi, and top officials of Army Strategic Forces Command (ASFC) and Strategic Plans Division.
Senior officials told Hindustan Times that Pakistan with the help of China is trying to build missile named after first Mughal Emperor Babur to match the 1,000 kilometre range Nirbhay cruise missile being developed by the DRDO.
Both the missiles are said to have terrain hugging and sea skimming capabilities with nuclear as well as conventional warhead.
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The Nirbhay missile has already undergone six test trials with the last one achieving full mission objectives.
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The Nirbhay missile has already undergone six test trials with the last one achieving full mission objectives.
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It is understood that before testing Babur II missile, a team of Pakistan missile scientists had visited China. Islamabad has already developed a 700 kilometre range Babur I cruise missile that can be fired both from land as well as sea with terrain contour matching and GPS satellite guidance.
It is also trying to develop air launched cruise missile by the name RAAD.
The Pakistani cruise missiles are derivatives of Chinese C-602 and C-802 missiles with both the countries not members of missile technology control regime.
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.
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