The convenient landing of Indian BrahMos supersonic missile 124km into Pakistan on March 9, 2022 raised several concerns regarding the Indian command and control and technological progression as well as Pakistan’s lauded response. The incident sparked a debate among the South Asian experts about risks of escalation and ideas for bilateral talks on expanding existing and/or negotiating new confidence-building measures.
The key is that this landing has presented Pakistan with an opportunity of reverse engineering – the opportunity that several media reports blamed India has sacrificed.
Reverse engineering could benefit the imitating country in astutely steering clear of certain stages of design and development of foreign weapons, using existing industrial infrastructure. There are two value aspects related to reverse engineering of an enemy or a foreign weapon – one, engineers can learn from the foreign weapon design and apply those lessons in their own weapons programmes; two, engineers can also get the chance to study foreign weapons design to deduce a design function to defend against such weapons.
States have reverse engineered aircrafts, missiles and other weapons crashed in their territories. For instance, the US reverse engineered German V-1 Buzz Bomb cruise missile. Germany began bombing London with V-1 missiles in June 1944 and the parts of dud missiles were transported to Ohio. The learning from V-1 missiles helped the US built an improved version of JB-2 followed by further innovations during the Cold War. Likewise, Soviets reverse engineered the Sidewinder air-to-air missiles. China extensively learnt from F-117 that crashed in Serbia in 1999 through inspection and analysis of aircraft’s stealth features.
Interestingly, several Russian Kalibr cruise missiles fired from warships against targets in Syrian may have crashed in the Caspian Sea. We can expect reverse engineered versions of Kalibr cruise missiles in different battlegrounds.
Besides reverse engineering of foreign weapon landed in one’s territory, there are options of industrial and cyber espionage and reverse engineering of technologies purchased through commercial or other means. However, imitating a foreign weapon through reverse engineering could be challenged by the complexities and precision involved in the state-of-art weapons that in turn require unique manufacturing process. For instance, China is known to have reverse engineered several foreign weapons yet manufacturing a foreign stealth aircraft is a challenge due to precision that this aircraft requires. China experienced difficulties in reverse engineering of Russian fighter – Su-33 — that it allegedly bought from Ukraine. The Su-33 is a carrier-borne fighter that is more than two decades old, yet China faced challenges in copying Russian engine technology evident from problems arising from J-15 – a copy of Russian Su-33.
Imitating a foreign weapon through reverse engineering could be challenged by the complexities and precision involved in the state-of-art weapons that in turn require unique manufacturing process.
Therefore, before imitating, states need to address the challenges associated with precision of foreign weapon as well as overhauling its own industrial base to develop such a weapon. Besides, the increasing trend of reverse engineering, especially in case of weapons brought from commercial markets, is a challenge for original manufacturer to develop unique weapon systems that are not easy to imitate.
Joint-production programmes and arms transfer with a technology transfer clause are another way to accelerate development of weapon system/platform and enhance industrial capabilities. For example, the JF-17 aircraft is a joint production of Pakistan and China. The JF-17’s technological features resemble Chinese J-20 stealth fighter. The JF-17 is installed with Russian ED-93 engine and this instalment facilitated modernising servicing, overhauling and repair expertise with the establishment of a full-scale facility in Pakistan. The aircraft was used during the Pulwama-Balakot crisis of 2019, and is competing with Indian Tejas and South Korean FA-50 aircrafts available in the market. China had undergone several joint production ventures with Israel and Russia however later violated licensing agreements with an objective to indigenously develop and imitate foreign weapons.
Nonetheless, these joint ventures not only provided China an opportunity to produce a specific foreign weapon but also to design and develop an entirely new weapon.
We also witnessed the way Iran improved TOW anti-tank missiles that Tehran imported from the US before the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Iran used these missiles during the Iran-Iraq war, and in other combat fields in the Middle East. Likewise, North Korea reverse engineered Soviet Scud Bs that it acquired from Egypt.
Pakistan has, if not extensive, experience of reverse engineering and learning from foreign weapons. In 1998, the US Tomahawk was fired at terrorist outfit in Afghanistan but landed in southern Pakistan. Tomahawk is a subsonic jet-powered land attack cruise missile and is more reliable as its guidance system enhances satellite and inertial navigation with digital scene mapping. The missile was speculated to have landed unexploded, that allowed Pakistani scientists and weapon experts to study its guidance system, propulsion system and onboard computer that helped in the development of the Babur cruise missile. Both Tomahawk and Babur bore resemblances in several design features including missile airframe.
Whether or not Pakistan has applied lessons learned from reverse engineering of Tomahawk, the indigenous development of Babur cruise missile by Pakistan astounded the world. It is also widely reported that Chinese engineers scrutinized the missile to enhance its weapons programme.
Whether or not Pakistan has applied lessons learned from reverse engineering of Tomahawk, the indigenous development of Babur cruise missile by Pakistan astounded the world. It is also widely reported that Chinese engineers scrutinized the missile to enhance its weapons programme.
In case of Indian BrahMos missiles, there are opportunities for Pakistani engineers to reveal secrets. BrahMos is a medium-range ramjet supersonic cruise missile. At large, from its electronic vivisection, engineers can study about its combined inertial navigation system (INS) and global positioning system (GPS) guidance system to learn how the missile tracks its targets; its communication antenna to learn about its effectiveness against jamming; its engine details to learn about the working of ramjet engine; and its navigation data to learn how to use defensive radar against it.
Pakistan’s new Type 054A class warship may be fitted with YJ-12/CM-302 supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles, however, since cruise missiles are preferred choice to engage depth targets, this learning can be applied to scale-up the existing cruise missile inventory and to augment its experience of operating and production in future — and develop advanced versions of UAVs.
Experts raised questions about Pakistan’s response – at operational level, what factors and assumptions guided the Pakistan Air Force response, and at policy level, why did Pakistan not take this issue up with maturity. The lessons inferred from reverse engineering of Indian missile could help Pakistan introspect at both operational and policy level to prevent such incidents to happen in future.
Reverse engineering is becoming a norm. Michael C. Horowitz, a renowned professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania expressed his concern about military technology becoming increasingly “lootable” because of reverse engineering. He was referring to the growing synergies in commercial sector. However, in case of a weapon/missile landed in a country as a result of advertent or inadvertent firing, reverse engineering is an obvious course of action.
Pakistan was able to reverse engineer Tomahawk cruise missile only because it got hold of one that had landed intact. Not much is left of the Indian missile that landed in Miami Channu and therefore it would be impossible to glean any useful technical information, let alone reverse engineer the missile in question.
There is nothing wrong with command and control of Indian missile systems nor there is anything laudable in the response of Pakistan. Indians very well wanted to test the air defence systems of China origin and they were satisfied about the outcome. Also, the Indians very well know about Chinese counterfeiting every American product and ensured nothing worthwhile will be in the hands of Pakistan or China. China end up giving outer look to their counterfeited product but inner mechanism do not meet the standards. The JF fighters may look like F 16 but Chinese planes needs servicing after every 60 hours flying and American original product needs servicing after every 800 hours of use. Reverse Engineering is not as easy as made out to be.
reverse engineering has its positives but not too much should be made out of that. remember, a working system is both hardware and software. there is nothing you’d get for the latter here. how the hardware components act and behave and with what triggers and the logic behind it all is not something you can gain by having access to a crashed missile. depending on the physical damage, reverse engineering even the h/w part can be challenging. if the missile jetissoned any of its components during take-off/flight, that will just add to the complexity. similarly, although some chemical analysis can be done on the propulsion system, much of it will still be incomplete, due to depleted fuel.
Why can’t we join hands and reverse engineer PEACE? Let’s make weapons obsolete.
Tum log reverse engineering karte raho. Hum indians tumhari g*nd me fod denge jab dekhlena reverse engineering aur paas se