On August 14, 2025, Pakistan formally announced the Army Rocket Force Command (ARFC) to unify its conventional missile and rocket units. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif declared it a “milestone in strengthening our conventional warfare capacity,” capable of striking India “from different directions”. This announcement has generated a wider debate among strategic circles as hitherto Pakistan has relied upon its aerial and traditional artillery firepower as strike components of its conventional deterrence.

“The move signals Pakistan’s intent to mass precision fires as a conventional deterrent, a central pillar of its defense.”

Strategic Force Commands (SFCs) under all three military services operate strategic arsenal of the country. Prime Minister’s address emphasized that these rockets are “conventional” and strike far without crossing nuclear thresholds. The move signals Pakistan’s intent to mass precision fires as a conventional deterrent – a “central pillar” of its defense – rather than rely solely on its nuclear arsenal or manned air strikes.

As far as the rationality of developing ARFC is concerned, it stems from lessons learned from multiple ongoing or recent wars. Conflicts like the ongoing Ukraine-Russia War and the recently concluded Iran-Israel War, even the May 2025 showdown between Pakistan and India, have established the evolution of warfare with stand-off engagement being the nucleus. Pakistan’s Air Force had early success, but the Army lacked longer-range conventional fires to retaliate deep inside India.

Creation of a dedicated rocket force command to engage enemies with conventional arsenals has become an integral part of the operational construct of modern militaries, along with maintaining strategic force commands to maintain non-conventional deterrence. Conventional rocket forces, like those in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China and Iran, work in conjunction with air power.

Extensive use of long-range ballistic and cruise missiles from both sides in the ongoing Ukraine-Russia conflict further demonstrates how cheaper rockets have become the weapon of choice amid air defense saturation, which makes conventional air power operations risky and challenging. Both sides have lost multiple aircraft to each other’s air defense systems.  Consequently, stand-off range engagements by battlefield ballistic missiles and cruise missiles are enabling strikes on high-value targets without risking pilots.

In a scenario where both sides are struggling to establish air superiority, the formation of “reconnaissance-fire complexes” by respective armies (land forces) comprising drones and loitering munitions operating in conjunction with precision rockets is replacing traditional air force operations like close air support, deep strikes, and ground attacks.

But this doesn’t mean rocket forces are going to replace air forces completely. Modern Rocket force and artillery units and airpower play different but complementary roles. Air forces bring flexibility and real-time targeting. Modern fighter aircraft can be re-tasked mid-flight, can be armed with multiple types of payloads, and are able to carry sophisticated sensor suites to conduct operations like Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) and Bomb Damage Assessment (BDA).

“Rocket forces suppress enemy air defenses, enabling safer subsequent air and ground operations.”

They are inherently vulnerable to modern air defense systems. By contrast, ground-launched missiles can be deployed en masse without any risks associated with conventional Suppression / Destruction of Enemy Air Defense (SEAD/DEAD) operations like losing aircraft or pilots. Thus, military experts advocate using rocket forces to suppress or destroy enemy A2/AD at the commencement of the conflict so that subsequent air or ground assaults become easier and safer. In practice, guided rockets can deliver sudden, saturating firepower on enemy rear-area targets (airfields, radars, logistics) that might otherwise require an air strike.

Inclusion of cruise missiles and guided multiple rocket systems in the rocket force command structure has added lethality to the conventional rocket force by enabling precise target acquisition and engagement capabilities. These capabilities make the rocket force more flexible in various operational scenarios.

The advent of drone warfare has added yet another layer of operational adaptability of rocket forces, as witnessed during the Ukraine and Nagorno-Karabakh wars. Units from both these forces have often substituted for manned aircraft in various roles in contested air spaces where employing fighter jets is not without risks. These conflicts also showed that a rocket force does not replace an air force, but provides persistent and low-warning strike options to suppress enemy air defenses.

Based on these lessons, it is safe to assume that the structure of the proposed Pakistani ARFC will be modeled to consolidate Pakistan’s conventional ground launched rockets, guided rockets, battlefield missiles, cruise missiles under a unified command Such a command will address operational shortcoming experienced during May 2025 conflict when Pakistan Army struggled to hit strategic targets located deep inside India with conventional weapons to avoid unnecessary escalation. Deployment of any of Pakistan’s medium-range ballistic missiles (Shaheen-II, Ababeel, Shaheen-III, etc.) could have triggered strategic miscalculation, which was not desired.

ARFC’s arsenal will include GMLRS (Fatah-1 & II), SRBM (Fatah-III), cruise missiles (Fatah-IV), and upcoming supersonic cruise and hypersonic ballistic missiles in the Fatah series. Older non-guided rocket systems will also be part of it. But all these weapons will constitute the strike arm of the command. Ideally, ARFC would like to fuse drone and radar surveillance with these strike units, allowing rapid “sensor-to-shooter” target acquisition and launching multi-axis salvos.

By unifying these assets, Pakistan gains a scalable precision deep-strike capability, allowing PAF to concentrate on defending air frontiers and provide critical close air support in case of ground invasion by India in the future. By combining target acquisition, engagement decision making, and weapon of choice for selected target under a single command, ARFC will streamline command and control for faster kill chains and fuse sensors (drones/AWACS) with shooters. In conflict, such a combination promises the saturate India’s air and missile defenses and seize the early initiative.

“Pakistan is going to deny India an opportunity to exercise limited war under the nuclear threshold.”

Apart from this operational dominance, ARFC’s strategic implications are far-reaching in the regional stability context. India has been looking for a “limited war under the nuclear threshold” since the 2010s, when the Cold Start Doctrine was introduced. With the creation of ARFC, Pakistan is going to deny India an opportunity to exercise such a limited war.  Pakistan Army is going to achieve both deterrence by denial (making conventional aggression harder) and deterrence by punishment (imposing high costs).

Missile flight times are short (minutes to many targets), so national leaders will have far less time to interpret or de-escalate compared to conventional artillery engagements. This compresses decision cycles and raises the stakes for any border skirmish.  This dual deterrence level may usher in an era of prolonged peace between two nuclear arch-rivals in South Asia.

Under the current leadership of the BJP/RSS, India will not give up on its plan to invade Pakistan in an attempt to snatch Pakistan-administered Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan, as has been promised by India’s ruling political elite. Hence, it is logical that India would raise its similar command structure. As far as weapons are concerned, India too has developed multiple surface-to-surface missiles.

India’s Army and Air Force operate multiple MLRS and rockets: the Pinaka Mk-II system (range ~75–90 km) and older Soviet MLRS (Smerch), mainly for battlefield targets. India has developed SRBMs like the Pralay (up to ~500 km) and cruise missiles like BrahMos (300–450 km). Yet, unlike India currently lacks a single service command for all conventional missiles.

In response to Pakistan’s ARFC, India is expected to strengthen its missile defenses and counter-strike forces. Reports suggest accelerating deployment of layered air/missile defenses and improving early warning and anti-ISR (Counter-ISR) capabilities. Furthermore, veterans of the Indian armed forces have even proposed that India form an Integrated Rocket Force (IRF) of its own to unify tri-service conventional missiles under one command.

“Pakistan’s dedicated rocket command reshapes South Asia’s crisis dynamics by adding rapid, long-range precision fires.”

Pakistan’s dedicated rocket command reshapes South Asia’s crisis dynamics. By adding rapid, long-range precision fires to its arsenal, Pakistan introduces another escalation vector into an already tense arena. India, in turn, will likely accelerate investments in countermeasures – from fast runway-repair teams to even more sophisticated BMD and EW systems. In effect, Pakistan’s ARFC forces a deeper, technology-driven competition over precision fires and defenses in the region.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. They do not represent the views, beliefs, or policies of the Stratheia.