Pakistan's secret nuclear weapons storage facility tracked in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

New Delhi: Pakistan, which recently test-fired its 2,750-km range Shaheen-3 missiles to prevent India from gaining a second-strike nuclear capability from Andaman and Nicobar Islands, has built a secret nuclear weapons storage facility at the foot of Peer Than Mountain near Haripur in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

According to the military intelligence, Pakistan's secret nuclear weapons storage facility in Peer Than mountain was unknown until recently.

Inputs gathered by the military intelligence through satellite imagery suggest that Pakistan's Shaheen-III ballistic missiles, which are capable of delivering a nuclear weapon, could have been secretly deployed there.

The possible deployment of Shaheen series ballistic missiles in the secret storage facility poses a grave threat to India as it is located about 320-km from Amritsar, 520-km from Chandigarh and 720-km from New Delhi.

This assumes significance since the Shaheen-III ballistic missiles are capable of delivering a nuclear weapon and can hit targets as far as 2,750 kilometres effectively.

According to the Outlook magazine, Pakistan has been working assiduously to safeguard its nuclear first strike capability and to maintain second strike capability. 

Over the years, Pakistan has built many secret nuclear weapons storage facilities to ensure survivability of its nuclear arsenal from India’s first strike. 

In a series of exposes through open source Google Earth satellite imagery, we will sketch out Pakistan’s various underground and tunneled nuclear weapons storage facilities.

The construction of the tunneled facility began in the first half of 2003 and possibly completed around 2011. 

In all these years, the Indian Army possibly had no clue regarding Pakistan's secret nuke weapons storage facility.

According to Outlook report, it has two main tunnels with three layered perimeter fence, support area with administrative office, mechanical transport (MT) garages, residential buildings and two Masjids.

However, it is still unclear as to how many such nuclear-capable missile bases are there in Pakistan, which has a stockpile of around 140 nuclear warheads.